It seems gore is a very impactful factor when creating hype over light novel adaptations. Multiple shows filled with blood and deaths try to build upon the concept of despair, sense of imminent danger, and a harsh reality permeating the world where the story takes place. Yet, for as much as these shows try, most of the them end up sliding towards the typical standards of the industry, such as deres, boring male leads, siscon, lolis, or any other disgusting thing poisoning the media. We got Re:Zero, Akame ga Kill, Muv-Luv and a few others which initially seemed as a show about death and survival, yet ended up being about dating sims, typical shounens, or annoying ecchis.

Goblin Slayer is the newest member of such group. Initially, this is a show about a young adventurer, a cleric, trying her luck against some goblins with a few other young and vibrant friends. Reality, however, is deadly and the group is ambushed, slaughtered and raped in front of our cute cleric. This is the entry scene for the Goblin Slayer, a veteran hero whose life purpose has been hunting and killing goblins.

That is a very good start

The initial impact of Goblin Slayer is impressive. Although this formula of butchering and raping people randomly is not exactly new (we had Grimgar, Ga-rei: Zero, Re: Zero, and a few others), the show manages to deliver these scenes with an amazing impact to the viewers, cutting scenes just at the right moments to leave the bloody gore to our imaginations, yet showing enough to make it stick. The cleric and her group are hopeless against the horde of goblins and even when the Goblin Slayer shows up, he is not exactly overpowered, he is just a guy who is prepared and packed with experience about the how to deal with the little critters.

Yet…

The real deal here is showing the Goblin Slayer, a guy whose life purpose is killing goblins, eternally avenging his family. Although he could be doing quests with higher danger and rewards, his decision is only, and always, accept any quests about goblins. He is a masked guy, silent, whose skills were honed to that specific purpose.

Sadly though, this is not much to go on with a show. In fact, it doesn’t take long for Goblin Slayer to show its true colors: a generic medieval MMO-based fantasy. Yup. Character classes, elves, dwarves, cutie girls, quests, skills, etc. At times it evokes some D&D aura, such as making spellcasters having a limited amount of spells per day, but the common sensation is that of a generic MMO show as we have seen in these last half-a-dozen years. It doesn’t help when everyone is quite generic and without a decent purpose to exist such as our protagonist.

And it ends up being full of ass-pulls

Our lead is a master goblin slayer. He is a guy forged to kill the little green horrors and knows a lot about them. The adventure, however, quickly moves to throw him in the face of occasional bigger monsters, some whom he never faced before and capable of wiping away his experienced allies, yet he is always ready to ass-pull some convenient spell scroll, tactic, or just luck to save the day. It goes in a completely opposite way from the first episode, becoming a show of an immortal super-hero instead of a guy specialized in a single task.

And it also smells like a dating sim

The Goblin Slayer is a boring guy, a psycho who sleeps, eats, and piss while thinking about goblins. He doesn’t even take his helm off. A silent guy for a freak purpose. Yet, yes, you know the drill, all girls are a hundred percent horny about him from the get-go. Our cleric? Yes, she wants to bang him. The farmer girl? Sure, she is the childhood friend. The guild receptionist? Yup, want to take him to bed. What about the cutie elf? Sure, why not? She wants him to explore her. It later gets some absurdity with a big-boobs high priestess with nipples so hard their shapes are visible through her garment. Of course, she wants to bang our masked guy too.

Yes. Every girl in the show quickly starts to act shy, make some remarks about how awesome and manly he is, or downright act as horny teens wishing to see what is under that heavy armor. When this happens, it doesn’t matter how much gore is thrown at us, it will always end up looking like a glorified dating sim of dubious quality.

It’s also boring to look at

When there’s no gore and rape, Goblin Slayer seems like more of the same. The character design is great in the marketing material, but plain and boring in the animation, with most characters having armors and outfits with no detail at all. The girls look generic. The CG model of our protagonist feel out of place at most scenes. There are also many scenes with the quality of an hentai work, which means laziness in coloring and lack of proportions with people with little or no clothes at all.

When there’s despair the show gets thing right a bit, with dark rooms, expressive eyes, and a decent sound direction. A pity it happens far too rarely.

I don’t know the deal with White Fox studio. Their style is completely wrong to animate this kind of show. Since Akame Ga Kill it was obvious that they can’t maintain the sense of despair, fear, and a theme of survival for more than a few seconds. They like to make their characters generic, their works have little attention to detail, and in medieval fantasy shows the details are crucial, otherwise it ends up just looking like a half-assed job. Goblin Slayer is that and a bit more. In fact, it seems the studio gave much less effort into making dreadful scenes than in Re:Zero.