He only slays goblins
Creative Staff
Story: Kumo Kagyu
Art: Noboru Kannatuki
Translation: Kevin Steinbach
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):
This is a review for the Goblin Slayer manga series—an adaptation of the original light novel series. If you’ve read my review of the light novel, you’ll know a bit of what to expect from this.
The manga starts off the same way the light novel does. Priestess, a new adventurer, joins a party of other new and young adventurers as they go on their first quest. Yes, it is a goblin slaying quest. According to what we learn, goblins are some of the weakest monsters around, which makes quests to slay them good for beginners who are looking to get their feet wet. Sadly, this quest ends in tragedy. It seems slaying goblins is not as easy as it looks. All of Priestess’ companions die. Just when it looks like she’s about to die, Goblin Slayer comes along and saves her.
What immediately stood out about the manga is that it is a lot more graphic than the light novel. The light novel uses very bare bones description to depict scenes within the story. Whether this is thanks to the limitations of the author, the style he uses, or something else, the writing never allows readers to get a clear image of exactly what is happening within the story in their heads. It’s basically all left up to your imagination. Not so in the manga. From the moment Priestess and her party are attacked, we are given a very graphic, very violent, and very brutal showing of what happens to adventurers—and more specifically, what goblins do to female adventurers.
I am going to warn everyone right now that if you cannot stand the thought of women being brutally tortured, raped, and murdered, you should avoid this series at all costs. What happens to the women who are captured by goblins is enough to churn my stomach. I had to put this volume down several times simply because it made me so sick.
While I abhor the violence and brutality that happens within this volume, I cannot say it didn’t do a good job of depicting the horrors that awaited people who are captured by goblins. It reminded me of shows like Game of Thrones—exceedingly brutal series that shows mindless violence for the sake of violence and the shock factor.
After Priestess is rescued, the series follows her and Goblin Slayer as he teaches her how to properly kill goblins. We’re introduced to characters like Guild Girl and Cow Girl. Both of them are present in the light novels, too. Guild Girl is the person who mans the front desk at the Adventurer’s Guild, while Cow Girl is an old acquaintance and friend of Goblin Slayer. They, along with Priestess, add a very harem feel to the series. While it doesn’t feel as prevalent in the light novels, the adorable artwork of the manga gives the series a very moe aesthetic, which not only contrasts the overly graphic depictions of violence, but makes the harem aspect a lot stronger.
In Summary
Because this is a manga, it only covers the first half of volume 1 of the light novels, and it remains fairly faithful to the light novel content. I think the one thing I noticed that was different is how much more violent the manga seems to be compared to the LNs. Ultimately, whether or not someone enjoys this will depend largely upon how much graphic violence they are able to stomach. This is not a series for the faint-hearted. That said, despite the rated M content, I do feel like this was a good beginning to the start of a violent dark fantasy manga.
Content Grade: A+
Art Grade: A+
Packaging Grade: A
Text/Translation Grade: B+
Age Rating: 17+
Released By: Yen Press
Release Date: December 19th, 2017
MSRP: $13.00
