He only slays goblins
Creative Staff
Story: Kumo Kagyu
Art: Noboru Kannatsuki
What they say
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…
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Goblin Slayer starts off with an interesting premise about how the world of this series came to be. It speaks of the gods, how the gods of light and order and destiny vied with the gods of darkness and chaos and chance to see who would control the world. This struggle, the fight for dominance, was not done through battle, but with the roll of a dice.
What I found most interesting about this series wasn’t just the dark fantasy aspect, but the fact that the entire series is inspired by tabletop RPGs, or RPGs played with pen and paper. Basically, the writing was inspired by Dungeons and Dragons. The roll of the dice in which the gods vie for supremacy is almost symbolic of how D&D games are played through rolling dice. In fact, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the gods in this series are actually players, and the characters are merely avatars created by the players. It can’t be proven. But I still found this interesting to think about.
Our first chapter introduces two characters. The first is Priestess, a beautiful young woman who becomes an adventurer and joins a party of other newly minted adventurers. They go on their first mission. Goblin slaying. It is often said that goblin slaying is done by rookie adventurers because goblins are so weak. One could say that slaying goblins is something that new adventurers use to get their feet wet.
Of course, the overconfident team ends up being killed because they were so overconfident. The only survivor is Priestess, who, through stint of sheer luck, managed to live long enough for the second main character to enter.
Goblin Slayer is a man who’s only purpose for living is slaying goblins, and he’s damn good at what he does, as he demonstrated during the first chapter, where he killed off the entire group of goblins that the rookie adventurers died fighting. After he rescues her, Priestess joins Goblin Slayer’s party, and together, the two of them begin taking on more goblin slaying quests.
I find it interesting that characters have no names. All of them are named after their class or a title. Priestess. Witch. Spearman. Goblin Slayer. High Elf Archer. Lizard Priest. I believe this was done so readers could put themselves into their favorite character’s shoes, similar to how a first person story is written in a first person perspective specifically to let readers imagine the story happening to themselves. It also further enhances the D&D aspects of the story.
The writing is not necessarily linear, nor does it seem to follow the grammatical standards of writing. There are numerous cases of head hopping during the middle of a scene, chapters can leap back through time before coming back to the present, and some chapters are literally written like a person who’s being interviewed. Despite this, the writing did not detract from the story. Again, I think it’s because of how the characters aren’t named. Since characters are never named, it doesn’t matter who’s head your hopping into, giving this a sort of third-person omniscient feel, while also making it seem like the story itself is being told from the perspective of a grand orator—perhaps one of those gods. Likewise, any time jump to the past is clearly defined by a scene break, so we’re not left scratching our heads, wondering what happened.
The artwork in Goblin Slayer is outstanding. I love how strong a dichotomy it presents to the story. The line work is strong, and there’s a good deal of shadows and shading present within the scenes. What’s more, all of the female characters are extraordinarily beautiful. All of the artwork is very cute and cheerful, which contrasts with the darkness found in the writing. This strong juxtaposition lends itself well to the darkness of the story.
As expected from a dark fantasy, the series is quite violent, with a lot of people dying and some people even being raped before they are brutally killed by goblins. I think it’s because this is still a YA novel meant for teenagers, but none of the more graphic scenes are shown in great detail. There’s a lot of gore and mentions of excrement. However, any time rape is mentioned, it skirts delicately around the issue, leaving it clear what happened but not outright showing what happened.
The story is told through several different perspectives. Most of the perspectives are from Priestess or Cow Girl, who are the closest characters to Goblin Slayer. It feels almost like the author wanted to avoid writing from Goblin Slayer’s perspective until the very end so as to make him seem mysterious and enigmatic. I think this was an interesting method of story telling. Even so, I do hope that the next volume will give us a deeper glimpse into his head.
In Summary
As a first volume to a new series, this was fairly well-done. It was very different from what I am used to. This doesn’t mean bad, however, as I quite enjoyed the unique writing techniques used to tell this story. The fact that it doesn’t follow standard writing conventions is a point in its favor. I hope the next volume has the same style but explores the two main characters more. Also, and this probably seems weird, but I totally ship Priestess and Goblin Slayer!
Content Grade: A
Art Grade: A+
Packaging Grade: B
Text/Translation Grade: C
Age Rating: 16+
Released By: Yen Press
Release Date: December 20, 2016
MSRP: $14.00
