Manga Mania: Goblin Slayer

Clarification of Terms:

Ecchi （エッチ）

*Sigh* I wish I didn’t have to explain this, but I guess I did this to myself. Ecchi is a Japanese slang word meaning “sexy,” “dirty,” and “naughty.” As a literary genre it covers more raunchy stories that feature several lascivious characters, and in a Seinen manga like Goblin Slayer that means those characters are the females. ‘Fanservice,’ essentially. There is a whole spectrum of how ‘Ecchi’ a manga can be, and Goblin Slayer for the most part falls on the more tame end. Honestly, I wouldn’t have even pegged it as Ecchi if it weren’t for the multiple love interests and a certain character *cough cough, looking at you Sword Maiden cough cough*

Official Summary

A young priestess has formed her first adventuring party, but almost immediately they find themselves in distress. It’s the Goblin Slayer who comes to their rescue–a man who’s dedicated his life to the extermination of all goblins, by any means necessary. And when rumors of his feats begin to circulate, there’s no telling who might come calling next… Adaptation of the Novel “Goblin Slayer“

Content Warnings

If you want to read this, be aware of the fact that there’s an excessive amount of violence, gore, naked women, and a few instances of semi-graphic rape by goblins.

Review

Something completely different from Isekai Omotenashi Gohan. Instead of a wholesome slice of life here is a dark fantasy battle manga filled with blood, gore, crushed dreams, and orphan tears. Predictably, Goblin Slayer’s purpose as a written work seems to be to answer one question: how many ways can a goblin be absolutely wasted?

Goblin Slayer has plenty of really interesting elements at work within it. It’s set within a world that’s a fun mashup of elements from Lord of the Rings, Dungeons and Dragons, classic JRPGs, and a dash of grimdark. Filled with many cheeky quirks, such as the fact that not a single character has a name and are only referred to by their occupational title. (ie, the main character is only called ‘Goblin Slayer,’ the girl who runs the Adventurer’s guild is called ‘Guild Girl,’ and so on.)

Cutting to the chase, the best parts of this manga by far are the well choreographed action scenes. Fast paced, dynamic, with enough gore to be satisfying. How many ways can a goblin be killed? Apparently more than I ever imagined, because each chapter comes up with new ways to do so. What’s particularly nice is that the story doesn’t limit itself to its medieval fantasy setting to do this. Goblin Slayer, the character, isn’t reliant on genre typical tropes like magic and swords. He’s shown using tricks like improvised molotov cocktails and carbon monoxide poisoning of all things. The creativity of the battles is one of the series’s greatest strengths.

As much as I would love to sing Goblin Slayer more praises, there are some flaws that keep this work from being a 5/5.

For one, the plots of Goblin Slayer’s various arcs tend to be rather repetitive. All of them essentially boil down to ‘goblins have invaded x and we will go and defeat them with y.’ While it handles the battles with goblins very well, that’s pretty much the only thing it does. The answer to any question you might have while reading will always be goblins. That should be obvious based on the title, but with a length of 49 and counting chapters and only minimal progress on a foreshadowed ‘larger plot,’ it’s getting kind of tedious. The down moments are filled with more fluffy scenes to give the reader a break, the largest portion of which being made up of the ecchi-seinen typical merry-go-round of various girls pining after the protagonist. It’s mildly entertaining, but there is nothing special about it to make it more compelling than all other series with the same trope.

The second major downfall is how flat the main characters are. They’re not bad by any means, just simple and fairly one dimensional. Take our protagonist Goblin Slayer for example; his personality traits are hating goblins and competency, neither of which are actual personality traits. While that makes him entertaining to watch it does not constitute a realistic personality. Most of the other characters stick around ‘for fun’ as their main motivation, and while occasionally a few of them are given an internal monologue to flesh out their deeper thoughts they tend not to receive much development afterwards.

Goblin Slayer ranks at a 3/5 for me storywise. This is due to the fact that it is an entertaining read that you don’t have to think much about, just sit back and enjoy the fight scenes. As for the art, it sits at a 4.5/5. The fight scenes are incredibly well illustrated with great feeling of movement and intensity, and the detail on the goblins is so well done they come off as very disturbing. The only reason it doesn’t rank a solid 5/5 is that the inspiration for the character designs feel generic; not bad, but lacking a bit of unique creativity.