Either way, we could try discuss stuff like say, why the people in this damn world doesnt realized the problem of the goblins and just being too damn lax with things.

If the newbies doesnt knew about the gobbos strength and the guild does knew and yet didnt stop them or tried hard enough to make them change quest, that's worrying.

From what I heard about the later parts of the novel you find out that the gods keep reviving demon lords to wreck havoc on the world for fun and require platinum and gold ranked adventurers to defeat who are essentially equivalent to the protagonist and his party members from RPGs. The country that the story takes place in is also in a bit of a political crisis, with two opposing kingdoms looking to invade it and the king being placed in a precarious situation because if he sends kingdom troops to subjugate goblins it will be seen as a sign of weakness.

As for the adventurer problem, it has more to do with the fact that adventurers are glory-seekers and mercenaries. They go where the money is. Goblins don't pay much because they mostly seem to attack poorly-defended self-sustaining villages in remote locations who can't afford to hire adventurers.

You are talking about a world where things like wearing a helmet or practical armor seems to be a mindblowing idea, as opposed to wearing a cool outfit.

A large number of named characters wear full plate though. Others wear hard leather jackets.

Plate armor is actually pretty difficult to procure for an average person nevermind a dirt poor mercenary just starting out with no funds or legacy to their names. Fighter in volume 1 has a breastplate, which was usually a piece of armor reserved for the upper echelons of society if we're using 13-14th century Europe as a basis. He is the second son of a farmer, so how he is able to afford a breastplate at all is nothing short of a miracle. In the LN artworks he does look to be wearing something akin to a quilted jacket of some sort as well and padded gloves for hand protection. Is that not practical armor? Almost every high ranking adventurer who is a melee fighter wears some form of full plate armor because logically they can afford to buy and maintain it.

Some adventurers can't afford helmets. Other adventurers want to be like folk heroes and run around without their helmets to sell their image. The manga also shows us adventurers that can afford and do go out of their way to wear helmets. Heck the anime has a panning shot of several dudes wearing breastplates and pauldrons.
 
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Goblin Slayer is... Well, its Game of Thrones basically. A lot of violence and rape for shock value, largely flat characters save a few exceptions.

Literally, none of the Characters have names. Now, that might actually be a part of the subversion its going for; you can literally have single look at them and get a solid read on their character, as they've been rehashed so many goddamn times, but it really does under-cut the story when they try and have serious moments when the Arch-Bishop tries to have talk with the Priestess girl about the longevity of Goblin Slayer or the lack thereof, and their names are literally Priestess and Arch-Bishop.

And well, it was a bad decision. I recall that the Sword-Maiden had a intimate moment with GS, about how she was blinded and forced upon by the Goblins, but neither of them have names and GS has the emotional range of plank. (which, to be fair, isn't regarded as one of his virtues; his stoicism and obsession are pointed out to unhealthy) so doesn't get anyware.

It's well, I suppose it has point. How often do fantasy talk about how vile and evil Goblins and Orcs are, but we never get to see it. But at the same time it just... goes too far, without enough heart to its characters to get past the horrible stuff. Like High-Elf Archer demonstrates a good deal of compassion to GS, in her own way standing up for him, but she doesn't have a name, or a really a past or much besides being a archetype, so it falls flat.

And the fights scenes are great, absolutely outstanding; GS is a viscous, cruel cunt of a man, and I love it when gets creative. But, again, the rape drags it down; in one chapter, where he uses a combination of fire, a choke point and a magical barrier to trap and burn to death an entire stronghold of Goblins to death with minimal effort, an entire team of female adventurers gets raped and murdered in ways I won't dwell on.

TLDR; too much rape, not enough characterization to redeem it. Fights are fantastic, but again, too much goddamn rape.

And could the main charcters get names, for Christ sake?
 
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There are like 2 scenes in the first volume none of which are all that graphic and one out of the two which contains men and women being murdered by goblins. And we don't get anything more afterwards. If you don't like depictions of violence against women then don't read the work, but to say they are gratuitous or everywhere in the book or that the book is about them is a misrepresentation since you're making that claim in the absence of all the other elements the story has to offer.

You can read it, or don't. I have my own problems with it but I otherwise enjoy it because it handles the character relationships well and they carry the narrative enough for me to enjoy the story.
The complaint is not that there is violence against women, but that the story is specifically singling out young attractive women for the sole purpose of brutally raping, mutilating and otherwise torturing them to the point of death or incurable insanity.

The goblins are not shown doing the same things to children, men or the elderly. This despite them explicitly being created by an evil god to cause pain and suffering. When an evil god would considered a childish puritan by the dark eldar, the theologians of the order of the gash and the furry fandom, then the author clearly has sexual hangups.

I see this same thing time and time again in grimdark fiction. Authors of grimdark fiction, typically male authors, are generally adverse to depicting the sexual abuse of male characters but have no difficulty casually describing the rampant rape of women in droves. You have to look really hard to find stories that buck this trend.
 
I won't apologize for being drawn to Goblin Slayer because I needed my ultraviolence fix and Berserk was on hiatus again. And while I was turned off by the rape at first, it brought a lot of thoughts I've had about fantasy lately, from both the east and west into perspective.

OP is absolutely on point about the gratuitousness of the rape, even if I'd argue that it was eroticized (personally, I was horrified and repulsed beyond words despite being a purveyor of, well, bdsm pornography), but I kept seeing the words grimdark and dark fantasy being thrown around. Now this is probably giving the author too much credit, but I think a fundamental point is being missed.

Mainly, that this awful shit is nothing new or nothing special to the genre of fantasy. Not dark fantasy. Not grimdark fantasy. Regular ass fantasy. Like a historical figure who gets their awful shit looked over or whitewashed, fantasy has had a long period of sterilization that removed the more overt awfulness while enabling a festering undercurrent of misogyny that's really present everywhere if you know where to find it.

You can see it in Monster manuals and the like for Pathfinder and Dungeons and Dragons to this day. "X monster kidnaps maidens. X monster is part of a rape horde. X monster enjoys torturing captives, particularly females" it's fucking everywhere, it's gross, and it's seriously damaged my ability to like DnD and Pathfinder.

And of course, with the recent isekai boom, there's been a cornucopia of shitty SI series where female objectification and misogyny is the name of the game. SAO is a high profile target because of Fairy Dance, and it's been a reoccurring theme throughout shitty isekai ripoffs aping the RPG world aspect that I'm completely unsurprised how many people with brains have stopped giving a shit about the genre. The most egregious case to my mind, and the modern exemplar of these problems being "How Not To Summon A Demon Lord", a Heartwarming tale of a neckbeard summoned into a fantasy land and being automatically rewarded with two "sexy slaves" who fawn over his every action and act every bit like the brainless submissive ideal the author no doubt faps to every night when he's not writing more unoriginal, sexist trash.

Again, probably giving the author too much credit, but I see Goblin Slayer as a deeply subversive work, in that rather than glorify violence and fetishise sexual violence against women, instead held up a microscope on all the awful shit that's present in fantasy that we tend to overlook or whitewash as harmless. So I'm sticking with Goblin Slayer, because I think it has something important to say.
 
It's not a subversion if all it's doing is being an incredibly gross and unsubtle example of everything wrong with the genre. That's not saying anything insightful or clever, it's just being gross and awful.

It doesn't though. The source material doesn't describe any acts of rape nor does he glorify it but shows them as they are, acts of sexual violence. And that's it.

So the novel doesn't provide graphic descriptions of sexual violence, got it.

Great, I guess that means it doesn't descend to the level of literal pornography.
 
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It's not a subversion if all it's doing is being an incredibly gross and unsubtle example of everything wrong with the genre. That's not saying anything insightful or clever, it's just being gross and awful.



So the novel doesn't provide graphic descriptions of sexual violence, got it.

Great, I guess that means it doesn't descend to the level of literal pornography.
Well I think gross and unsubtle is the only way the point works. I described a seedy undercurrent in fantasy old and new that romanticizes or at the very least exploits female sexual victimhood as either a stock "look how eeeeeeeeeevil our Orcs are!" which tends to be how it's handled in western works versus eastern works which sexualize nonconsesual sexual violence to pander to a base of manchildren who think themselves entitled to all the female flesh they want because they're men, which is the dominant trend of eastern fantasy female victimhood.

Neither are good. Nothing good comes from letting this shit continue to fester and be profitable, and frankly while I can understand the accusations levied against the manga, I'll defend the light novel and anime for tackling, intentionally or unintentionally, a deeply rooted blight on fantasy that needs to be addressed. At the very least I hope a world post Goblin Slayer won't have monster manuals and fantasy media willing to toy with rape as a go to "super evil" act without consequences.
 
So I've been thinking for a few days on this and trying to come up with what it would take to get me on board with Goblin Slayer...and well...it wasn't saying SJW Rape Culture.

Ok seriously.

It frustrates me extremely that Monk isn't around because I realized something. The rape aspect didn't change how anyone reacted to the situation. Her being killed or tortured or crippled wouldn't have changed how Priestess reacted to it. Hell, Priestess didn't even remember her after the credits rolled. If Monk HAD stayed around there would be some actual chance for character development and growth and a dynamic of two people leaning on each other to go forward. God, I would love to see a story where at least by the halfway the protagonists bow out and the rest is them dealing with the aftermath of their adventuring and the scars it inflicts.

Instead, we get Goblin Slayer. Who is emotionally dead and I think maybe there's some implication he doesn't notice the whole 'accidentally attracting women' thing because...the goblins raped his sister. But...I feel I don't have the proper words or experience to voice this but here I go anyways. The fact she got raped didn't change anything. If she had been simply killed the reaction from GS would have been the exact same story wise and he'd still be this semi-emotionless goblin-terminator thing we already have.

Rape happens to way too many people with way too much impact on the people who survive it for it to be so casually used as a dramatic device without addressing the consequences directly. Even then I don't think it could be done well in a setting like this but at least we could have one person who deals with it without it being an excuse to attach them to the protagonist's harem (please tell me this doesn't happen)

That's not even getting into how apparently so many newbs go out and get slaughtered yet Quest-Giver-Chan over there didn't tell them they'd fucking die or that they need chastity belts and cyanide pills at the very least, and Goblins are considered a joke in spite of the fact way too many people should be going 'No fuck you, I lost a friend to them when-I-started/Growing-up'.

If you REALLY want to keep the 'kidnap and torture angle' along with what I think is supposed to be Goblins as a metaphor for various societal ills I'd recommend them requiring blood and torture and fear to fuel some of their magics including the creation of new goblins so even with the potential sweeps they become an endemic issue that reoccurs due to the fact that the adventurers are fundamentally missing the problems that create them (rural serfdom, banditry, general suckiness of anyone not on the right side of the oligarch's wealth divide) rather than just the symptoms whenever it becomes inconvenient to the wealthier areas of society(aka the usual monster uprising).
 
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Even then I don't think it could be done well in a setting like this but at least we could have one person who deals with it without it being an excuse to attach them to the protagonist's harem (please tell me this doesn't happen)
Yes it does. Although the only rape survivor with lines in the series so far is not turned into a harem girl to Slayer, her trauma is used solely to advance his arc about dealing with his PTSD from witnessing his family get brutalized. EDIT: Oh wait, she loves him too... so yes to everything.

Contrast this with Berserk, where the male protagonist Guts is a rape survivor who occasionally bonds with over survivors over their shared trauma.

If a story is less progressive than Berserk... do I need say more?
 
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This has been a recurring tangent recently in the "what are you watching" thread so I decided to make a thread for it.

Goblin Slayer is a light novel followed by manga and anime adaptations. Upon initial examination it appears to be a grimdark satire of the recent Dungeons & Dragons-inspired fantasy trend, or at least that was the intention stated by the author in interviews. It is notable for its extensive and detailed violence, particularly the sexual violence and mutilation directed exclusively toward young attractive women.

To put it bluntly, Goblin Slayer promulgates harmful myths about rape (aka the original sociological definition of "rape culture" before that term was co-opted by SJWs into incoherence) and is generally insensitive toward rape survivors (who, as everyone should know, make up to a third of the global population of men and women alike). Specifically:
  • Gratuitous rape: The series uses rape (and mutilation, cannibalism, etc) for shock value, to disgust the audience and motivate the main characters before discarding the rapees themselves like dirty laundry.
  • Women in refrigerators: The series focuses solely on the trauma of characters were not and never will be subjected to any degree of sexual violence but at best only witnessed it. The protagonist's backstory is a textbook case of women stuffed in refrigerators.
  • Objectification: Only young attractive women are ever raped, but never the old, ugly or men. Any such woman who is raped immediately turns into a traumatized, voiceless object before vanishing from the plot forever.
  • Rape monsters: All rapists (in this case the entire goblin race) are depicted as more or less literal demons who must be exterminated, and never anyone who was known and trusted by the rapee. In fact, goblins reproduce solely by raping women of any sapient race because magic.
  • Male gaze: While men are shown dying screaming, the most sadistic violence and mutilation shown is directed toward women. There is copious amounts of female nudity (censored in the anime), but men are always depicted fully clothed even after death.

Due to incompetence at Crunchyroll, the anime was mistakenly labeled as family-friendly so a firestorm of controversy ensued on Twitter before it was fixed. Many rape survivors complained that they were triggered (remember that they make up to a third of the global population, men and women alike, so obviously they will be consuming media). Many SJWs complained that the anime promoted misogyny, rape culture and racism with variable degrees of logical support. Since no publicity is bad publicity, this resulted in the show exploding in popularity among the anti-SJWs. Surprisingly, no mention of this has appeared in the popular media yet.

Most tellingly, if you try to have a rational argument with fans about how the series really does promote harmful myths about rape then the fans will deflect or ignore your argument no matter how reasonable. The most reasonable defenders will tell you that it gets better or that the light novel or manga are good, which is qualitatively wrong because the light novel and manga still promulgate those myths without any self-awareness. The idiots will shut you down as an SJW or feminist or whatever the popular term is these days.

Aside from the misogyny and gratuitous rape, the plot is the same painfully generic byronic redemption story we have seen a bazillion times before.

Have fun!
I was coined to hate it tge moment I saw the title, since I freaking love Goblins. See that's it's another shittyattempt at being Berserk down do as crappy misunderstanding that series used rape as more than to be edgy doesn't surprise me. Have they gone Ubel Blatt and stone rape horse as well?
 
In regards to Crunchyroll, would it be possible it was more 'Holy shit! We fucked up here! We really apologie for this." and less incompetence?
 
Is there a difference? The former is just incompetence with the proper amount of apology.
An actual mistake where the episode was not watched before putting up? I don't know how Crunchyroll operates,(anyone?) so I don't know if watching at least one episode for Whammies is standard practice. Or reading online reviews,questioning the department they received it from and so on. If getting more QA done comes out of this, then that is a good thing("No Ralph, we are not going to put Tasmin Agi up on stream")
 
An actual mistake where the episode was not watched before putting up? I don't know how Crunchyroll operates,(anyone?) so I don't know if watching at least one episode for Whammies is standard practice. Or reading online reviews,questioning the department they received it from and so on. If getting more QA done comes out of this, then that is a good thing("No Ralph, we are not going to put Tasmin Agi up on stream")
I'm not really hating on a Crunchyroll here, just pointing out that any mistake that puts Goblin Slayer under "family friendly" by definition involves at least some incompetence.

Hopefully, they get better from this but holy shit that it almost literally the worst thing they could've done.
 
From what I heard about the later parts of the novel you find out that the gods keep reviving demon lords to wreck havoc on the world for fun and require platinum and gold ranked adventurers to defeat who are essentially equivalent to the protagonist and his party members from RPGs. The country that the story takes place in is also in a bit of a political crisis, with two opposing kingdoms looking to invade it and the king being placed in a precarious situation because if he sends kingdom troops to subjugate goblins it will be seen as a sign of weakness.

It's worse than that, the gods actively work to hinder the progress of civilization for their games. Consider why goblins are so monotone.
 
*looks at tags* GS is many things, but it's not an isekai. If you want a fun time isekai with a likable protag, go watch Tensei Slime. It needs way more views.

And why is this a problem? If anything the original WN had names and those were too distracting from the story.

Really? Who had what names?
 
I was coined to hate it tge moment I saw the title, since I freaking love Goblins. See that's it's another shittyattempt at being Berserk down do as crappy misunderstanding that series used rape as more than to be edgy doesn't surprise me. Have they gone Ubel Blatt and stone rape horse as well?
Goblin Slayer goes out of its way to be as misogynistic and grimderp as possible.

It treats rape survivors as damaged goods at worst and harem girls for Slayer at best.

It depicts goblins using flayed women as literal meat shields.

/tg/ constantly complains about the terrible world building.

I have seen some fans on tumblr throwing death threats at the haters.

I cannot wait until the inevitable GoblinGate shitstorm explodes across social media once the flayed women meat shields and sword maiden show up.
 
Really? Who had what names?

Oops, sorry, I was thinking of something else.

But, when GS was an AA, it basically used parodies/homeges for characters.

Goblin Slayer: Restless Armour (Dragon Quest)
Priestess: Cleric (Dragon Quest)
High Elf Archer: Sinon (SAO)
Cow Girl: Mikage Aki (Silver Spoon)
Guild Girl: Senkawa Chihiro (Idolmasters Cinderella Girls)
Dwarf Shaman: Issac Netero (Hunter x Hunter)
Lizard Priest: Kiyonari Urukiaga (Kyoukaisenjou no Horizon)

And so forth.
 
I was kinda curious about GS, but the first post pretty much convinced me that this thread wouldn't be a fair source of info.

Off to look at TV Tropes....
 
I was kinda curious about GS, but the first post pretty much convinced me that this thread wouldn't be a fair source of info.

Off to look at TV Tropes....
This is an interesting assumption, why do you assume that negativity automatically means unfairness? Do you not think that grotesquely poor quality works exist?

Furthermore, why do you assume that TV Tropes is a reasonable alternative? I enjoy it but it's supremely unreliable in determining the quality of a particular work.
 
I was kinda curious about GS, but the first post pretty much convinced me that this thread wouldn't be a fair source of info.

Off to look at TV Tropes....
My advice- don't. I just did, and a thousand chapters of Komi-san can't cure how fucked-up this show is even when just looking at the tropes.
 
This is an interesting assumption, why do you assume that negativity automatically means unfairness? Do you not think that grotesquely poor quality works exist?

The level of obvious bias against the show pretty clearly indicates you're not going to get a even discussion on the series.

"I think this is the WORST THING EVER.

FITE ME"

Yeah, going to have a productive conversation there. *lol*
 
Well I think gross and unsubtle is the only way the point works. I described a seedy undercurrent in fantasy old and new that romanticizes or at the very least exploits female sexual victimhood as either a stock "look how eeeeeeeeeevil our Orcs are!" which tends to be how it's handled in western works versus eastern works which sexualize nonconsesual sexual violence to pander to a base of manchildren who think themselves entitled to all the female flesh they want because they're men, which is the dominant trend of eastern fantasy female victimhood.

Neither are good. Nothing good comes from letting this shit continue to fester and be profitable, and frankly while I can understand the accusations levied against the manga, I'll defend the light novel and anime for tackling, intentionally or unintentionally, a deeply rooted blight on fantasy that needs to be addressed. At the very least I hope a world post Goblin Slayer won't have monster manuals and fantasy media willing to toy with rape as a go to "super evil" act without consequences.

Wouldn't a better way to attack the trope be to have the victims & survivors be the protagonists of the story and show them dealing with the personal consequences? Rape and torture aren't irreducible evils, they're evil because of the violence inflicted on another person or people. Exploring why the logical conclusion of the "using rape to make fantasy races evil" trope is a terrible world doesn't work without exploring the fundamental reason rape is evil, the victims.

Disclaimer: I haven't actually watched or read Goblin Slayer, I'm basing this off others' posts. Gigguk's incredibly sarcastic video about why the anime is terrible almost made me watch it until I skimmed this thread. Now I don't like that video and don't want to watch the anime.
 
I was kinda curious about GS, but the first post pretty much convinced me that this thread wouldn't be a fair source of info.

Off to look at TV Tropes....

Honestly I have a pretty high tolerance for shlock and I couldn't stand Goblin Slayer. It stands above stuff like Re:monster but that is damning with faint praise. I was really surprised it even got turned into an anime since it always felt like /a/ style marginal manga.
 
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