(L+CR) Goblin Slayer

[moridin84]

Originally Posted by Keila

The point of a forum is dialogue, if you don't facilitate discussion it makes it hard to have meaningful engagement with others (and all you get is reaction posts) in the forum. Individuals have their own histories which fundamentally shape who they are and their views (i.e. goblin slayer, for whom we are yet to get a fleshed out backstory for).

I presumed it was just a prelude to moralizing. "You are okay with beautiful women doing it? You shallow hypocrite!".

If that wasn't the case then I apologize. The problem is that you are representing your argument as if the two were equivalent but they aren't. So I assumed it wasn't a real argument.

Besides, it doesn't matter. Just take the raping and gender and race out of the situation. What are the goblins doing? Kidnapping and robbery. Basically, they are bandits.

If you ignore the race, gender and raping, the main character in this story is killing bandits. Bandits who he tracked down after they attacked a village, kidnapping women, stealing food and whatever else.


There is no moral dilemma here.

(Except for the baby thing but that doesn't make sense either with the bandits or the Amazon model)


I dunno, perhaps the fact that the Goblin quest came from a village they attacked wasn't clear?

[eiyuuou]

the goblins are mentioned to have raided a village, stole supplies and livestock and kidnapped some girls. the villagers send an urgent request and the noobs took them up.
there was no rear guard, only one was holding the torch, an assumption of one exit and a straight tunnel, hastily walking down a cave dungeon, etc. all factors that indicate the noobs are unclearly unprepared in any and every way.

[Marcus H.]

I personally hoped that the adventurers are more competent than that shitfest.
I'm not here to watch what amounts to be the opening scene to every monster flick ever.

Oh, and it is indeed hilarious to see those who defend and attack the rape scene.
I'll be impartial here—the rape scene is shit, not because it's morally wrong or because I like cute girls doing cute things. It's shit because it's obvious emotional manipulation. No two ways about it.

[Skaddix]

I thought genre savvy characters were the rage these days...this is dark sure but this party is just retarded.

I mean sheesh these noobs got told not go by the Guild Lady...told to wait for an expert....still go...prep terrible tactics...have no training...no potions...limited equipment....want to fight in the cave instead of smoking the goblins out. I am not going to complain about mage dying thanks to no armor cause mages, wizards, sorcerers going by DnD rules don't wear armor. Still cannot forgive the wizard for going for Magic Missile instead of any CC, cast SLEEP its OP.

Honestly, I think most of the shock factor and cries of insensitive, edgy to be edgy etc is simply because this party is just so bad. And we are use to fantasy stories at this point and its hard to remember a party so incompetent in a non comedy.

[zeando]

Originally Posted by Marcus H.

I'll be impartial here—the rape scene is shit, not because it's morally wrong or because I like cute girls doing cute things. It's shit because it's obvious emotional manipulation. No two ways about it.

Any story which doesn't want to be a national geographic documentary has to involve the spectators also emotionally.
So "emotional manipulation" can't be the issue here, all the shows do that, may it rather be that it felt too obvious or hard to digest as part of the story?

Originally Posted by Skaddix

Honestly, I think most of the shock factor and cries of insensitive, edgy to be edgy etc is simply because this party is just so bad. And we are use to fantasy stories at this point and its hard to remember a party so incompetent in a non comedy.

There could be two or three points to be said over that.
But it's all is summed in: it wasn't the characters to be too incompetent, but the average of fantasy characters to be more competent than someone with actually zero experience.

In most anime/manga fantasy stories we have in recent times, or maybe also in general:

1) the threat of starting monsters is laughable.
Slimes, rats, goblins? All easy 1hko, and they always appear in very limited numbers, if not even 1 vs 1.
The threat is usually super easymode. Here it isn't.

2) the difficulty progression is linear, it starts easy and gets more difficult later.
(= the characters start with 100 hp and 10 attack)
Like in a game of final fantasy or ragnarok, where the new characters are always stronger than any first threat they encounter, so much more hp, so much more any stat. In old tabletop rpg, characters start with not more than 10hp for the most bulky classes, mages are as tough as goblins at lv1, which is enough to be in life danger with 1 or 2 hits received. If anything, in old tabletop games, the most dangerous time for a character is when they're new. The world of goblin slayer seems to follow the second setting.

Here there is one possible intended contrast, the new party was made up of characters with a mindset from "videogame fantasy", they were expecting the threat to be laughable and them to be as strong as having 100hp and 10 attack. When their reality turned out to not be so easy, they were utterly unprepared.

3) competence wise, the characters are always above average in experience even when being fresh new
They often know about useful tricks or tactics which normally go above newbie experience(=0), which also give them an edge over other characters, and maybe they also have some secret power only they have which further helps them overcome any mistake they may make.
This falls again into (2), the progression has to go from easy to hard, so the new characters are always powered up to have an easy start.
The party which ended badly was truly inexperienced, no buff for new characters, no extra knowledge.
(there is also a concept of fair fight in tabletop games, a fair fight is one with an expected 50% chance of victory, that means the enemy also has 50% of winning)

4) the focus is always on the protagonist most of the time, or made it clear when it isn't.
Here there was a little intention of fooling the audience in thinking the noobs had any actual importance (save the priestess)

Overall there were a good number of very common cliches (from videogame background) which were subverted (toward tabletop settings).

I thought genre savvy characters were the rage these days...this is dark sure but this party is just retarded.

Precisely, you were expecting genre savvy characters, who have already read the whole manual and watched some youtube videos before even starting.
The party which ended badly was an example of inexperience and misguided expectations.

Though with all the references to games, goblin slayer still isn't an isekai. There was no high school student to be transported anywhere. All the characters were born and lived in that world.

[Sixth]

Originally Posted by Kuroageha

First, I think there's a need to explain how Goblin Slayer climbed up all the way to Silver rank by just genocide of goblin, what were the requirements?
Is it based on number of quests cleared? Number of kills? Knowledge? Loot obtained from quest?

Most likely of unusual high kill counts.

Hero kills: 406 (various monsters)
GS kills: 83406 (goblins)

Guild community: Hmm...why don't we give that guy a raise for his dedication?

[Keila]

Originally Posted by Anh_Minh

What does that even mean?

Spoiler for Off topic:

Relations was a generic word to encompass sex/nudity/intimacy. In hindsight probably not the best word, but for people aware of the stereotype it should have been enough

The US (for the most part) is seemingly totally with violence and gore whereas the hint of anything potentially sexual must be censored, where-as the opposite seems to hold true for the EU. Intimacy/nakedness (i.e. topless) has more artistic value and is treated much less harshless than brutal violence (e.g. blowing people to bits with a shotgun).

Originally Posted by moridin84

I presumed it was just a prelude to moralizing. "You are okay with beautiful women doing it? You shallow hypocrite!".

If that wasn't the case then I apologize. The problem is that you are representing your argument as if the two were equivalent but they aren't. So I assumed it wasn't a real argument.

Besides, it doesn't matter. Just take the raping and gender and race out of the situation. What are the goblins doing? Kidnapping and robbery. Basically, they are bandits.

If you ignore the race, gender and raping, the main character in this story is killing bandits. Bandits who he tracked down after they attacked a village, kidnapping women, stealing food and whatever else.


There is no moral dilemma here.

(Except for the baby thing but that doesn't make sense either with the bandits or the Amazon model)


I dunno, perhaps the fact that the Goblin quest came from a village they attacked wasn't clear?

You can't objectively view something if race/gender play a role in judgement. You either have to eliminate both entirely, or discuss the actions as if gender/race were a factor and see if you would had treated them the same way (at which point, assuming you treated them the same way then the actions would have been judged solely on the merit of the actions).


The 'moral dilemma' fundamentally stems from how you view the 'life of a goblin' and the associated value of that life. Priestess herself asks about 'good goblins' (and we get a response from Goblin Slayer). The unknowns (and questions to be asked) subsequently are

+ If Goblins/Amazons (assuming single gender only) can only reproduce via assistance from another species (females/males) is extinction of the race perfectly fine if they cannot obtain 'consent' (for whatever value consent has in the world)?
+ Does the ability to stockpile resources first give you an immutable claim to those resources? In the real-world (granted this applies to wildlife) many species do not have any other options except to pillage and take from another. You wouldn't demand that army ants be wiped out just because they essentially scour and pillage a forest of all resources, slaughtering everything in their path.


We've had one episode (in where stuff happens) involving humans and goblins yet we don't know the backstory of the world, of the characters nor the ecosystems. In the 'Avatar' movie (with the blue aliens) the humans are fundamentally invaders trying to strip resources from another planet that was not their own (at the very least it wasn't Earth, if you can accept that Earth belongs to humans). Goblins can at the very least be treated as equivalent to human children (granted they're not exactly 'ideal' children).



The story is ultimately going to get fleshed out in subsequent episodes (and the gaps filled in) but that still brings us back to (viewers) judging the value of episode 1 as a mechanism to tell a story

+ was it necessary (whatever was, was not included)
+ could it have been done any other way.


Objectively (for everything we know thus far) there doesn't seem to be any unnecessary information/detail. It may/may not suit the 'tastes' of certain viewers but everything seemingly has value in establishing the story to be told.

[XFire]

Originally Posted by Applehell

Please don't lecture me about social issues and minority representation in Japan just becasue you watch anime or that late-night shows like this exist that only a niche group watches at that hour it airs in. Do some actual research about social movements in Japan and not just hearsay from /a/ or whatever.

Here is an example some strong activism and reaction to something a politician said about LGBTQ+ community which happened just last month. Plenty of western nation overall conservative like Japan, but people in the country care about these issues just as much the west do.

That said I don't get too OT by going more into this.

Japan is an exceedingly nationalistic country that's more than 95% homogeneous. That article you just posted has a politician call being gay unproductive behavior and the only response was a letter. There hasn't been any kind of societal uprising of a lower or marginalized class in modern Japan, and there isnt something concrete for such a movement to rally behind.

There are literally thousands of articles on how resistant Japan is to social justice, their view of "gaijin" as complete outsiders, and how virulently the general populace reacts to typical SJW stuff.

So in turn, please dont try and lecture people on how there's a "significant number" of SJW's in a society where nationalized citizens who've lived there for over a decade are still considered foreigners, idol culture exists, and where the government has been trying a failing to get women into the workforce for years now.

All your article tells me is that Japan has just barely reached the point where it is acceptable for gay couples to react negatively to public disapproval of them.

[Liddo-kun]

Originally Posted by Kuroageha

First, I think there's a need to explain how Goblin Slayer climbed up all the way to Silver rank by just genocide of goblin, what were the requirements?
Is it based on number of quests cleared? Number of kills? Knowledge? Loot obtained from quest?

I'm interested to know that too. Hopefully, we would know more about Goblin Slayer's backstory as the episodes come along.

Originally Posted by Sixth

I even saw a post or discussion about "Goblin's right" and "Self Defense Rape from Goblin because those people intruded their home"

Internet never cease to amaze me.

Some comments in youtube and MAL are highly toxic.
This thread we have here in Animesuki is one of the more civilized discussion area I've seen. And I hope it stays that way.

[Keila]

Originally Posted by Liddo-kun

I'm interested to know that too. Hopefully, we would know more about Goblin Slayers backstory as the episodes come along.

I'd like to believe he earned it through blood, sweat and tears, having such a high kill-count that they had no choice but to give him that rank because you can't really be a newbie anymore when you've left behind a mountain of corpses.

[human6861]

Originally Posted by Liddo-kun

I'm interested to know that too. Hopefully, we would know more about Goblin Slayer's backstory as the episodes come along.



Some comments in youtube and MAL are highly toxic.
This thread we have here in Animesuki is one of the more civilized discussion area I've seen. And I hope it stays that way.

Well , he did kill other monsters than just goblin , for example the hobgoblin level in episode 1 . Goblins never go alone , and mostly get lead by higher level monster of same kind .
Ready make me wonder why they rate them as weak fff , wolf never hunt alone . And if i was the guild , i had forbidden any party with female in it doing goblin quest to stop give them reproduction tools .
It make me wonder why human in this anime's world still around , cause with monster like goblin who take all the female to use as reproduction tools and food and birth rate like rats and able to use tools and traps .

Dark and deep ? i only see pink and H . Only dark if it like planet of Ape where human's slave for the gob overlord and main character have to fight again the gob .

[Tactics]

Originally Posted by human6861

Ready make me wonder why they rate them as weak fff , wolf never hunt alone . And if i was the guild , i had forbidden any party with female in it doing goblin quest to stop give them reproduction tools

I can understand why they considered weak.
Like, if I have to pick which one more dangerous between an ant and a rhino, I would pick rhino for an answer as a human can easily beat an ant.
However if its a million of ants with me jumping straight to their nest, my answer easily invalidated given a million of ants can be looked like a behemoth compare to rhino.

Just because goblin is good threat when at pack, it doesn't mean the threat level by default is comparable to dragons or some other monsters.

As for the guild, to be fair, they can't decided who have important role.
For example, if there is an goblin extermination program raised by noble and there's need for 10 expert healers for support role while 7 of 10 expert healers currently available are female. Would the guild gave, "Sorry sir, better move the schedule to days when we can have 10 expert male healers".

Aside that, what happened on first episode is when beginners relying on common knowledge that goblin is among low-rank hunt (their attitude not even showing good deal of experience, they might looking at said quest as opportunity for quick rank up method). Pretty sure such case won't happened on more experienced, stronger adventurers.

[Kuroageha]

Originally Posted by Marcus H.

I'll be impartial here—the rape scene is shit, not because it's morally wrong or because I like cute girls doing cute things. It's shit because it's obvious emotional manipulation. No two ways about it.

That's not how EM works .

[Liddo-kun]

Originally Posted by Keila

I'd like to believe he earned it through blood, sweat and tears, having such a high kill-count that they had no choice but to give him that rank because you can't really be a newbie anymore when you've left behind a mountain of corpses.

He did tell the priestess that he "practiced a lot".

Anyway, we're both just speculating at this point. Need some more episodes. And I don't intend to spoil myself by reading the manga.

[The Green One]

You know I read all these posts about "Hurr durr! Dez Adventuerers waz retarded!" I just want to facepalm.

Seriously? They're not dumb, they're just greener than the grass experience wise. Can any of you tell me you haven't played an adventure game and wiped in early game from making a bad decision? If your answer is yes, you're a god damn liar. This group didn't realize what they were getting into and dealing with and were overconfident because of it. Didn't have the research or the proper gear and wiped because of it. Not because they're mentally deficient.

Guild Girl's job isn't to baby adventurers either. By nature you're taking your life into your hands with this job. She did her best to try to warn them and as soon as she found someone qualified she sent him after the group to see if they were ok and Priestess was saved because of it. Guild Girl did the best she could in this situation. She can't refuse the job as the newbie group qualified for it rankwise so she's obligated by the rules of her job to provide the quest. Besides, SOMEBODY has to go after the Goblins and cull their numbers, especially with how fast they appear to reproduce before the humans have an army of Gobbos on their hands. They can't just ignore the Goblins and hope they go away.

Also weird watching people overanaylzing the rape scene and the goblins. They're a predatory race that sees humans as prey and livestock. What more to it is there? I mean honestly what do you want the characters to do? "Excuse me sir, are you a good Goblin or a bad Goblin?" *sigh* Be realistic people.

[Obelisk ze Tormentor]

Originally Posted by zeando

Though with all the references to games, goblin slayer still isn't an isekai. There was no high school student to be transported anywhere. All the characters were born and lived in that world.

Honestly, I can turn that argument around by saying: the noob party should've known more about goblins if they actually live in that world. I mean, as people who grew up in the setting, there's no way you can tell me that they've never heard about goblins and how they behave and work. It's not like those kids were distracted by smartphones and other kinds of modern entertainment, right? Especially kids who aimed to be adventurers, and once they became adventurers, they need to be privy to that kind of info & intel before going on a mission. That should be common sense for every adventurer or would-be adventurer. Like, no matter how desperate their lives were, that's no excuse for executing bad decisions that made them throw away their lives. We're not talking about bad decisions that made you lose money here, these bad decisions can cost you your lives. They really should've thought it over before going with gung-ho attitude. From the impression that I got outta this episode, I don't think the swingin'-boy did much thinking before going into that cave, and the rest of them were kinda foolish too for following him (correct me if I'm wrong, but that's what the first episode gave me).

As you can see in my first post in this thread, the rape and all the brutality in this episode didn't really hit me. What hit me was the unbelievably stupid and rash decisions the noob party made. Like seriously, I think their decisions were really bad even for noob party standard . With those kinds of decisions, they more or less deserve what was coming to them. In my first post, I asked whether the noob party in this episode mirrors most of the noob parties in this universe. If the answer is "yes", I'll probably be annoyed whenever the show decides to follow noob parties in the story (hopefully not). And hopefully, future episodes will be able to answer all the nagging questions in my mind after this first episode.

[Tactics]

Originally Posted by Obelisk ze Tormentor

In my first post, I asked whether the noob party in this episode mirrors most of the noob parties in this universe. If the answer is "yes", I'll probably be annoyed whenever the show decides to follow noob parties in the story (hopefully not).

If the answer is "Yes", I'm more worried about humanity survival in this universe.

[Klashikari]

I think you have to give the benefit of doubt considering that being 15 years old is considered as "coming to an age", which is pretty standard in medieval/heroic fantasy. Considering the setup here, the Priestess party members were hardly any older than her, and definitely as clueless as her too.
As such, it isn't far fetched to have kids to underestimate the threat of "low ranked" monsters like goblins or blob because of their lack of experience, but especially because of other adventurers always saying they are small fries.

To make things worse, the swordsman was way too overconfident exactly because he encountered goblins and thought it would be the same shenanigans he had back when he fended them off from his village.

So really, it all comes to experience, be it combat experience or the actual foe they were attending to slay. Suffice to say, seeing people parroting "goblins are just small fries" pretty much numbed their sense of danger.
That's the very reason why the guild attendant wasn't really sure about their decision and also why the prietess monologue mention how it is some "usual stuff". You can't really reason that much with kids thinking they are the top of the game. I would liken that to a kid who claim he will be fine in crossing the streets but also get ran over because they didn't look both ways before crossing: overconfidence and mimetism are common with brats.


And I'm pretty certain they would have still go with their little adventure even if the guild attendant insisted on the fact goblins pose an actual threat. It is the usual flippant behaviour kids will give you when they feel patronized while they believe they got it right. They just won't listen and do whatever they want. The only solution to that situation would have been another adventurer accompanying them, but again, they aren't volonteers, so it is unlikely someone would be fine to tag along for mere copper coins.
That's very likely thanks to her that Goblin Slayer arrived, even though too late. So at the very least, her action indirectly saved the priestess.

[Obelisk ze Tormentor]

Originally Posted by Tactics

If the answer is "Yes", I'm more worried about humanity survival in this universe.

^ That too, but at least we got Goblin Slayer who actually knows what he's doing, and we haven't seen other experienced parties. So there's hope, I hope .

Originally Posted by Klashikari

I think you have to give the benefit of doubt considering that being 15 years old is considered as "coming to an age", which is pretty standard in medieval/heroic fantasy.
As such, it isn't far fetched to have kids to underestimate the threat of "low ranked" monsters like goblins or blob because of their lack of experience, but especially because of other adventurers always saying they are small fries.

Oh, believe me, I already gave them the benefit of the doubt before I even posted in this thread. But even with that, some of their bad decisions really annoyed me.

[eisai_haramasukoi]

I did a grave mistake watching this and Slime episode 2 on the same hour.