Goblin Slayer Episode 1 Review

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Our protagonist.

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Most of you may not know this, but I’m actually fond of Goblin Slayer. I heard about the manga series by chance and took a quick glance at how the first chapter would turn out, fell in love with how it ended, and decided to stick around. So naturally I would review the anime as it comes out.

Now, fair warning, this is not a happy series per se. It’s very graphic in terms of violence and let there be no illusion about what happens when a Goblin gets its hand on a young woman. That being said, I find there’s merit in it considering this age of overpowered Isekai characters and will be reviewing this dark fantasy series.

That being said, here’s my Recap and Review of Goblin Slayer Episode 1.

Recap

So the first episode opens with striking contrasts of bright red blood on dark backgrounds as a young woman is sitting in fear while an ominous figure approaches with flame in hand and a burning red eye. We see how things led up to that point as the young woman introduced, Priestess, registered to be an adventurer. Not even five seconds after she finishes, a group of newbies pull her in for a quest to rescue some women kidnapped by Goblins.

They find the cave with no plan, no potions, and pretty much rush into an ambush with the two casters in the back being right where they’re most vulnerable. As such, Wizard gets taken down first with a solid stab to gut after a few of them pin her down. Priestess manages to close the wound, but she’s not recovering.

Then Swordsman gets killed because he brought a sword that was too long into the cave so his friend couldn’t support him. He then got stabbed in the leg because he wore no armor there, and his sword got caught on the rocks mid-swing. The sheer number of goblins that descended on him afterwards meant they took him to pieces in very short order.

Last was Fighter, who tried to hold the line while the other two escaped. Unfortunately, a goblin that was twice her height popped up and broke her leg before slamming her against the wall headfirst. Then when she was helpless they stripped her down and… well, you know what happens then.

So Priestess tries to take the Wizard and run, but she gets caught by a few others after they nail her with an arrow in the shoulder. Knowing what’s going to happen, she ends up wetting herself and they laugh at her when we go back to the scene from the opening. The figure dressed in armor comes in and promptly starts killing the goblins very violently. while counting off the kills.

He introduces himself as Goblin Slayer, a silver-ranked adventurer and does some immediate first-aid on Priestess after mercy killing Wizard since she was poisoned and it had too much time to work. He then explains where they screwed up and comes up with a plan for getting rid of the Goblins with her help.

This involves shooting the spellcaster first, tripping the Hobgoblin and stabbing him in the back, setting his corpse on fire with gasoline and then killing the others who come for him. Once that’s done, he sure to finish off the Shaman and then murders the goblin babies because he’s not screwing around or willing to let them learn from this.

The next day, we see that Fighter is basically being escorted to the temple along with the rescued women and she’s… well, mentally broken. Priestess decides to keep being an adventurer despite everything because she wants to make a difference and joins Goblin Slayer after getting some chain-mail. Thus our first episode concludes.

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Review

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So this episode pretty much serves as our introduction into the series. We see that there are monsters, hear mentions of demon lords, and gain a bit of an understand of how the guild system works and how old you need to be to enter as an adult, the rankings and so on. Then you get a taste of how dangerous even the so-called weakest of monsters are as they slaughter a couple of rookies.

Guild Girl’s expression after they take on the job despite her saying to leave it to someone else pretty spelled out that she saw it coming, and Priestess’ misgivings also go ignored, based on the fact that Goblins are supposed to be dumb and weak as children. The difference is that more than a dozen of them armed with knives can still kill you. Which is basically the crux of it: even the weakest monsters are a threat and if you underestimate them you’re dead.

The animation was on point for it too, with lots of little things like the dripping water and vivid colors to contrast the dark scenes. It did slip up at times, but they make it clear when the murdering happens. Lots of imagery that will stick.

Now there were some differences in the manga: The three other party members had their backstories slightly expanded on as they died so you felt bad for them even more. The poison was explained as being made of the toxic herbs, feces, and other delightfully bad things. And its explained that they have really sensitive noses for women, especially due to her her wetting herself.

However, these were added into the manga to an extent and differentiated it from the LNs because it’s far more graphic. I mean seriously, don’t read this manga around other people. Horrible things happen.

All in all, this series starts dark to establish a tone early on. This world is not a nice place and this show isn’t for the faint of heart, so bow out now if you can’t handle it.

As for me, I’ll continue to review it because I love Goblin Slayers and I’m hoping they end at a really good point soon.