“Goblin Slayer is a masterpiece!”. “It’s a good alternative to other dark fantasy manga like Berserk and gets too much hate for being ‘edgy’ or the rape scenes”.

I kid you not, these are the type of comments that were circling around anytime someone mentioned GS.
I have to say, as someone who’s not like the ‘snowflakes’ who write off GS because of the rape scene, once I read the manga I found it to be underwhelming, and there to be more glaring problems to focus my attention on.

Story (5/10):
Goblin Slayer is about a adventurer who witnessed Goblins kill everyone in his village as a boy and rape his dear older sister. Filled with feelings of powerlessness, rage and anger, he swore to kill all the goblins.

With a limiting premise of slaying goblins, the manga was doomed to fail from the beginning. The writer either has to recycle storylines with GS killing goblins, or will be forced to expand from his initial premise showing GS’s party take on new enemies and quests. The writer has gone with the former so far and has done a decent job in trying to make the story interesting by introducing different types of goblins like: goblin shaman, goblin lords, goblin champions etc. and has GS use different methods in order to deal with the situation. That being said, it didn’t prevent the story from becoming boring and stale.

The plot follows the same formula half the time of “x number of goblins have shown up in a village or cave. There’s a 70% chance they're raping some girls, but don’t worry Goblin slayer is here to slay them!” That’s pretty much it. Mindless entertainment filled with murder, rape and gore to make the audience hate the goblins more, which is why people label GS as edgy, shock value trash.

The world building is poor. The world is your generic fantasy setting, where everything comes across as a copy of a D&D campaign. It has your traditional Japanese guild with: quests, ranks, items and a character sheet straight out of D&D. The cities, towns and the capital aren’t given names. The locations lack depth and have nothing distinguishing themselves apart. The world feels shallow.

Characters (6/10):
The characters are poorly written and lack any depth. They’re generic, cookie cutter troupes based off their character classes. The writer was so lazy he didn’t even bother making up names for them! How can I be emotionally invested in these characters when I have to refer to them as “spear guy”, “cow girl” or “priestess”?!

Goblin Slayer is a bland, emotionless human who acts like a robot with a one track mind only focused on killing goblins. All his dialogue is about goblins. There’s not much to him besides that. He does get some development once the party joins and we see him opening up and learning there’s more to life than slaying goblins. The problem with this is they join after a couple of chapters and it comes across as forced, with them seemingly joining his crusade to kill goblins despite being representatives of their clans to thwart the Demon lord.

What I do like the is thematic representation GS stands for and how pragmatic he is. GS isn’t the most powerful or smartest fighter, but because he’s spent years learning about goblins he’s an expert in his craft. His character is influenced off Batman and it shows, with his fights revolving around him prepping before hand with items or setting up traps to win. GS is supposed to represent the ‘common man’ fighting the weakest enemy- goblins, whilst there’s supposed to be a “hero” out there fighting the Demon lord and his army.

GS is probably the only well developed character in the show. The priestess has some depth to her. The rest of the party are as one dimensional as the rest of the characters and haven’t been fleshed out well. The elf and dwarf spend way too much my time making stupid comments about each other, while all the lizard can talk about is his love for cheese.

There’s no compelling villain in this story. The overreaching enemy are goblins... one dimensional, cunning, little green shits that raid villages, slaughter adventurers and rape girls.

Art (8/10):
The art is one of the saving graces. It looks amazing and is very well detailed. The fights look dynamic and are easy to follow. I love GS’s design, despite everyone else’s armour looking like they came straight out of a generic fantasy setting. However, my criticism is I don’t think the art fits the tone of the story well.

Overall (6/10):
Goblin Slayer is a overrated, dark fantasy manga lacking in substance. I shouldn’t compare series, but it’s embarrassing when fans try compare this average manga to Berserk because Berserk is more than just gore, violence and murder. Miura uses these dark, mature themes to enrich his story and explore the ‘darker parts’ of humanity. Rape is a heavy subject topic that plays a integral part in the story of some of our main characters e.g. Guts and Casca. We see how the trauma affects them and how they deal with it. It shows how dark and unforgiving the world is in a Medieval setting. In Goblin Slayer, rape is thrown in to show us the brutality of the goblins. However, the way it’s executed is done poorly. In the first chapter, a girl is raped to demonstrate how vile and animalistic these goblins are. The reader by this point is not invested in this throwaway character. When the girl is raped, she’s sent away and never mentioned again in the story. This is where it comes off as cheap, edgy, shock value ignoring the ramifications of it.

Despite my criticisms of GS, I do think the series had potential, but it suffers from some major flaws:
1) Lack of names for characters or the towns and cities. I can’t feel emotionally connected to the characters or immersed in the world without it.
2) World building could be better: Instead of having GS travel to the same guild all the time to pick up quests, have him roam around the world slaying goblins.
3) Give more depth to the party. This may change in the future, but as of yet the characters are lacking.
4) Depicition of rape. Don’t throw it in so casually just to show “how gruesome goblins are”. Don’t fetishise it as if it’s some hentai continuously focusing on angles of beautiful girls breasts, legs or them moaning as they’re getting plowed.
5) Inherent lack of long term storytelling. The writer shot himself in the foot focusing only on goblins. He has nothing else to go on after that.

If the manga improved on some of these aspects i would have rated it higher.
At the moment it’s entertaining watching Goblin Slayer come up with new ways to kill goblins, but beyond that there’s not much to be invested in the story.