Goblin Slayer (Kumo Kagyu, 2018), is largely an unpalatable anime for its content and narrative, despite brilliant animation and gore. Goblin Slayer is a guild member that specializes in the meticulous extermination of goblins, an attitude developed from childhood trauma. Priestess, the secondary character, is a rookie guild member that joins him, and then proceeds to radically alter him to suit her tastes despite those particular traits being utterly useless and in fact, largely counterproductive.
“Some dumb and naïve moron preach that you should let the children go as if they are sanctimonious. But they fail to realize that those children will attack villages and steal livestock in order to survive,” is Goblin Slayer’s (henceforth GS) initial characterization of Priestess’ naivete in relation to goblins. She is at best a rookie and at her worst, completely unaware of the wide-ranging consequences of naivete on the battlefield. Goblins have a great nose for the scent of women, elves, and the like, so GS often douses his equipment and self with goblin blood. Despite the utter utility and effectiveness of this, Priestess squawks and protests. This is perhaps understandable given her rookie status. However, GS later acquires more team members, one of which is a 2,000-year-old elf archer. She too displays the same childish disdain and embarrassment over being doused with goblin blood.
Archer Elf and Priestess are perhaps the most intolerable of the lot. “Also, you are not allowed to flood the goblins with water. Do not set them on fire, either”, are some of the demands both of them make of GS. GS is an effective adventurer guild member whose solitary, independent, without-any-help exploits vis-à-vis goblin slaying are well known. In those ventures, he made of water, fire, and poison, all of which these new ladies outlaw. This severely limits long-range combat and most of his future injuries are a direct result of the limitations of close-range combat. Utter rubbish. There are no moral grounds to prevent him using such measures; several of the action sequences could have ended rapidly if they had such long-distance measures. In a particular difficult goblin confrontation, he makes use of an explosion, which is far from water, fire, or poison, and is a brilliantly clever measure given his atrocious and arbitrary restrictions and all the Archer Elf can say is “Wait, explosion!” instead of being grateful that his tactic allowed them to live. GS is the only one who formulates a plan and thus, is the only one constricted by such idiotic demands. He, despite being the most effective of the entire group, is stupidly limited by such demands, and for what? For: “Looks like you have learned to show consideration”, on account of Priestess.
Never mind that, Priestess does not, not once, attempt to comprehend why GS acts and is the way he is. In her naïve entitlement, she expects GS, goblins, and combat to unfurl the way she wishes. Perhaps she is too aware of her incompetence and compensates by reducing GS’s abilities: “Was she eaten? Just murdered? Are there any other things…” GS asks, and given his vast knowledge of goblin biology and psychology, it is no different from contemporary interrogation and even contemporary psychotherapy to ask sensitive queries, but Priestess sees it fit to interrupt with “That is too insensitive!”. How on earth will he acquire data if he never asks the difficult questions? Given that priestess finds it difficult to confront anything difficult on her own and without GS’s plan, it makes sense that she impose a sense of incompetence on others to make them more familiar to herself. “You could have said that better.”; “But that is the truth.”; “The way you phrase it matters precisely because it is the truth”. Absolutely disagree. It is often better to not offer false hope. Priestess displays overconfidence because she is always protected by GS, but GS has no one to depend on but himself, or has had no one to depend on for five years. She has been with him for “only a few months” and expects a radical personality shift, particularly one that does away with his preferences and morals to impose hers.
Despite his resolute and unwavering personality style in the beginning, in the end he is reduced to pathetically high levels of agreeableness, take for example, this conversation with Priestess towards the end: “I see”; “Also, you say ‘I see’ a lot!”; “I’ll try to reduce them”. What on earth does he need to reduce them for? Merely because she hints that she does not like them? She’s attempting to foster some sort of codependency, which is merely a projection of her own condition. On account of her ordinary chain mail being damaged, she states that she will get hers repaired and not take the obvious choice of purchasing a new set, because, “this is the first thing you praised me for”. Repair is one thing and upgrading is another.
Priestess again: “You’re really a handful.”; “I’m sorry.”; “I don’t want to hear that.”; “I’m sorry”. However, she and Archer Elf are the handful. They require constant validation from him, often attempt to acquire his attention. They reduce his inventory of attack tactics and material to a short sword and a shield, then sob when he is gravely injured from close combat. Utter rubbish that I could not stomach. I would have tossed aside Priestess and Archer Elf had I wished to ensure some character development in GS. Instead, they’ve reduced his value and restricted his prowess in its entirety. This ultimately made Goblin Slayer unbearable to watch.
I never write long reviews for 12-episode anime, but this one drove me quite mad when I watching it. Quite a lot of anime prefer to have one or two clever characters whilst keeping the rest rather idiotic and comical. This allows for some level of enjoyable complexity. Only great anime can afford to have several, if not all, intelligent characters, for that then produces dialogue, plot, and character development of a complex and difficult nature. Writing intelligent characters changes the entirety of the narrative, no longer can there be outright idiotic actions, dialogues, or idiotic character alterations. Which may be why so many anime have several of the idiotic-comical types, aside from the obvious requirement of a greater imaginative capacity required to write such characters.
The rape and gore I found no issue with; the juxtaposition of near childlike naivete and horrific gore is a notable tactic; the first episode renders the viewer uneasy. I would have thoroughly enjoyed the anime had it been a pastiche of such elements, but the aforementioned intolerable characters and plot made it near impossible to like the anime. However, I will give credit where credit is due: the animation is rather good, the background quality and foreground quality are well, matched, unlike in most digital animation. The audio is well done, with a notable opening sequence to the OP. The overt sexualization of the female characters is the usual fanservice, but GS and Cow Girl clearly have much better chemistry than the empty-headed Priestess and Archer Elf lot. Even Guild Girl will do. Notably, I was relieved to see that Cow Girl understood and accepted GS for himself; she demanded very little of him and was able to communicate with him in her own manner. Infuriatingly, though GS never takes off his helmet unless to sleep/when it breaks, for her final reward, Priestess asks him to take it off. I realized about halfway through that Priestess cares very little for GS’s true self, trauma, and preferences.
Ultimately, I was left rather sickened by how much she was able to change GS, and not in a manner for the better. He did not “learn to show consideration”, for five years he toiled away at a job “no one else will do”. He merely learned to act and present himself in the way Priestess and Archer Elf desired. This subjugation of self to external demands, external demands which are clearly unreasonable, impractical, and inconsiderate, was slightly sickening to see. Perhaps that is largely because I am somewhat of a Contrary Mary who abhors conformity. Then this reading is mere projection or to use technical terms, countertransference!