Goblin Slayer Review

Ahoy me mateys Captain Cats here. Today I’m going to review the entire season of Goblin Slayer and see if it lived up to its hype and controversy.

The series is based on a book series of light novels written by Kumo Kagyu with illustration work done by Noboru Kannatsuki that started back in February of 2016 and continue to this day in Japan. Both the book and anime series is about a man only know as “Goblin Slayer” who only mission in life is to eradicate goblins with any mean necessary, even if it means to wipe them off, as a whole out of existence. The series setting and backdrop is in the realm of Dark Fantasy, the best comparison to this series is if you take either Guts from Berserk or Conan from Conan the Barbarian book series and throw them in a D&D setting and let them loose.

During the series run Goblin Slayer team up with other adventures such as Priestess, High Elf Archer, Dwarf Shaman, and Lizard Priest. If you are wondering why they do not have names, I’ll explain that in a bit later in the review.

From beginning to end this series had a lot of good and bad moments, most notoriously the first episode. I won’t dive into it, but I think after that episode, it weeded out a lot of people who are not used to this world and such. Those who stayed on either watch it to see what shocking moment will come up next or wanted to see what will happen next to Goblin Slayer and company.

The series story arc IS an excellent one. Yes, it had slow moments, sometimes even very dark moments and straightforward sad moments, but if you can get past all of that and focused on the story, you have a great series. The art is excellent as well and so is the music, they all work well together.

Now for the simple names and why you never see the main hero’s face at all. The series wants you to invest your time and see that everyone in this series are either OTHER people who are playing in a D&D game and this is how we look at their game first hand. The other outcome could be that this is how Kumo Kagyu wants to make everyone see that not everything is black or white, even in a two-color world, there will be other colors that will scare people and sometimes make them want to stop what they are doing all together. As for not seeing Goblin Slayer face, to me, they took the Judge Dredd motif. In the 2000 AD comic universe Judge Dredd is a street judge, and throughout the ongoing series you never see his face at all, you only see his mouth and jaw, and that is it. John Wagner, one of the creators of Judge Dredd said this about why he never let the readers see his whole face:

“It sums up the facelessness of justice – justice has no soul. So it isn’t necessary for readers to see Dredd’s face, and I don’t want you to.” – John Wanger

This motif is the same with Goblin Slayer, and to be honest; it works very well with this character alone. He is a soulless man that wants nothing more than to see the extermination of every goblin in his world.

In short is this series going to catch on fire, yes and no. Yes because it has a great story, a unique cast of characters, a great dark setting and an ending that will leave you wanting for more. For the no it’s because it can be too dark, the pacing can be off at times and people who can’t pass the first episode, I understand.

The series ran from October 7 till December 30 of 2018 and can be seen on CrunchyRoll and a second season is in the works.

Let us know what you think about this series in the comments below.