The Guys having a night out on the town.
The third episode of Goblin Slayer Season 2 has aired. The training camp arc continues as the veterans take time to teach the rookies, and we learn they all have dreams they aspire to. But not everyone can move on to accomplish them, and the goblins are still there at the end of the day.
Let’s go over the episode in my Recap and Review.
Recap
The episode opens with us on the outskirts of the training ground where Female Knight is training Rhea Fighter, complete with trying to use murder strokes to teach her not to drop her shield. Wizard Boy, meanwhile, gets prodded by Spearman who is acting as his trainer along with Rookie Warrior since Guild Girl asked him to see about getting their stamina up to par. And since they brought up his constant streak of being rejected by her, he’s decided to do that by playing the Hunter while they play the Hunted.
Goblin Slayer is also teaching Female Druid and Apprentice Cleric how to make and use Slings since all you need is string and a rock can breach a helmet. His wording leaves much to be desired, but Guild Girl is happy to see he’s helping them. Priestess and Farm Girl have brought food as well, while Heavy Warrior chose to take some of the other rookies into caves. Spearman then asks Goblin Slayer if he’s free tonight, and once he gets permission from Farm Girl, he makes plans to go out drinking with Heavy Warrior.
We then cut back to Wizard Boy and Rhea Fighter, both lying on the grass exhausted. Meanwhile, Rookie Warrior is out cold in Apprentice Cleric’s lap. He gets an eyeful of the Rhea’s chest before promptly looking away, asking if she’s gotten everything down. She’s not sure, but she wished she had practiced with the sling as well. He talks trash about GS, but Apprentice Cleric points out he really didn’t do anything while GS saved their party, shutting him up.
Then Priestess comes over and offers them some Lemon Water and food. They’re terrified to eat since they’re afraid they’ll throw it up, but Wizard Boy decides to eat since he needs the muscles and the others follow. Priestess tries to make nice with Wizard Boy, but he’s stubborn, so she turns her attention back to Rhea Fighter whose party has broken up since their leader had to go home since his older brother collapsed and he has to take over the family.
But even as a Solo Adventurer, she dreams of making it big to prove that your size doesn’t matter, while Wizard Boy’s priority is to learn how to kill Goblins properly. Priestess, thinking about his sister, tells him that a wizard she once knew dreamed of killing a dragon. He’s skeptical, but she tells him it’s okay to dream big, which gets him contemplating it.
That night, GS heads out to spend a night out with the boys. They take him to a tavern where there’s a centaur waitress since they didn’t want word to get around they were drinking together. Heavy Warrior takes a lot of interest in the centaur waitress’ rear, which somehow spirals into a discussion about chests or butts before they drink.
After they get hammered and take to walking, Spearman basically asks what GS is going to do about Guild Girl, while bringing up he also has Farm Girl, High Elf Archer, and Priestess. But GS states nothing is going to change until all the Goblins are gone. The guys can figure out his backstory considering his title is Goblin Slayer, but think they need to aim higher. But as far as childhood dreams go, GS wanted to become an adventurer who would become a legend but doesn’t see himself as one. All of them acknowledge they haven’t become as significant as they wanted, but they’d like everyone to be able to do what they wanted.
The next day we cut back to Wizard Boy getting lessons in magic from Dwarf Shaman. He points out that because of how words of power work for arcane casters, instead of the one Fireball spell that he thinks he has, he actually has four spells: one to summon fire, one to expand something, and one to throw something. He needs to be aware of his options and bring up with the right knowledge he would have more options.
Rhea Fighter, meanwhile, is currently swallowing food as big as her head with an appetite that matches Lizard Priest. She reveals Rhea normally eats five or six times a day, but since that isn’t possible while adventuring she has to eat more per sitting. Since she’s working on her own at the moment, Priestess asks if she would like to go on an adventure with her to help with raising her rank. Rhea Fighter doesn’t have a high opinion of herself, but Lizard Priest thinks she has luck on her side so she agrees to come with them.
Meanwhile, Goblin Slayer and Farm Girl talk about the location where it’s being built since that was where their village once was. They have to accept that change is going to happen, but Goblin Slayer can’t move on as long as goblins are around, leaving her alone with her thoughts. Then we see that Goblins are indeed on the move as they kill a construction worker who discovered they dug a hole near the training camp.
Review
So there’s a lack of dead goblins (barring the very end) in this episode considering that it follows with the training camp being established and we see some of the adventurers going out of their way to teach the rookies.
The Veteran Adventurers are basically trying to give them some training in a wider area so they have better odds of survival. That means picking up where they are weakest and helping to shore that up. For the two girls who are casters, they needed some ranged option aside from their spells, for the Rhea it was to keep her shield no matter what, and for Rookie Warrior and Wizard Boy, it was their stamina.
We spend a lot of time with Rhea Fighter, who we’ve learned has had her party disbanded due to their leader being called back home since he was the second son of a noble. Even going solo, she wants to show that a Rhea can be a great fighter despite being so small. Normally, they play the role of scouts or rogues, so she’s really breaking the mold, but she herself has doubts considering what she told Priestess.
And for Wizard Boy, it’s subtle, but he has also changed a bit. If you hadn’t noticed, he’s been remarkably docile and has been taking the advice that he’s been given compared to before. He doesn’t dismiss it outright anymore, which is still an improvement.
The reveal from last week about Wizard Boy being the younger brother of Priestess’ first party wizard has changed some things, as both Goblin Slayer and Priestess are looking after him in their own way. Goblin Slayer inquiring into his training and Priestess trying to pass the dream his sister had so he doesn’t stay stuck on thinking only of how to kill goblins is a prime example.
We also get some insight into what Heavy Warrior, Spearman, and Goblin Slayer wanted as children and how as they got older they realized they couldn’t be that significant. It’s a hard realization that they’ve had to grasp, especially when you see that while the other two are at least not bored with their roles as Silver-ranked Adventurers, GS doesn’t even see himself as one.
He’s doing what needs to be done so others aren’t like him. He’s no champion or someone who will go down as a legend… even though he has bards singing his praise throughout the frontier.
There’s also the fact that the training camp is being built where GS and Farm Girl’s village once was. It’s been about ten years since it was attacked and razed, and they’re pretty much the only people who remember that it was once a place not too different than any other. Just ten years and the world moved on like nothing happened.
That’s just how it goes, a sad and depressing fact that they have to grapple with.
Anyway, Goblins show up at the end so GS has something he can take his anger out on. I expect there to be a mountain of dead goblins by the end of the next episode.
Differences in Adaptation
This episode starts at Volume 6, Chapter 4, and goes through the start of Chapter 6:
- There’s an interlude where we see Noble Fencer and Sword Maiden discussing things, as they are unable to completely remove the scar left behind by the curse the Goblin Paladin inflicted on her. She wants to do something with her own hands to make up for what happened to her dead party and all those who are just becoming adventurers. She also sees the Priestess as an older sister figure.
- Sword Maiden uses Sense Lie as she asks what Noble Fencer thinks of Goblin Slayer, for obvious reasons, but she states she owes him her life with no signs of being attracted to him.
- Roughly a week after the tomb was cleared, they started using the training camp with Female Knight using a dulled practice blade and the narration cracking a joke about no wonder no one wanted to marry her.
- Spearman was chasing the boys, but he wasn’t completely serious. He was maintaining a speed that would catch them if they wavered even slightly, but otherwise was looking out for them.
- It’s noted that the mentors for the training camp would be handled by retired, high-ranking adventurers. But the active ones were doing it just to help out.
- Female Druid and Apprentice Cleric wanted to learn how to use the sling because they saw GS throw stones during the festival (skipped in the anime), with GS himself being surprised at how quickly he agreed to teach them. He also brings up his own teacher was a Rhea to Female Druid.
- While the rookies are talking, it gets mentioned that while Rookie Warrior and Apprentice Cleric have only killed Giant Rats for the last year, they’ve learned how to attack and defend against them. But they know to run if there are three or more and when she gains a level as a cleric, Apprentice Cleric hopes to ask her deity for a Cure Miracle.
- To clarify what happened to Rhea Fighter’s party, the oldest son of the noble family got killed and so they needed the second son back since they didn’t have a heir. Second and third sons often found themselves in a bad position because they existed as a standby for the oldest, so unless their parents gave them a bit of land they had to make something of themselves on their own. Because of that, a good number of Adventurers came from noble houses and they had a higher survival rate due to having equipment and education.
- The reason Wizard Boy wants to kill some goblins is to show the people who laughed at his older sister, which is why it’s his priority.
- Goblin Slayer, Spearman, and Heavy Warrior actually have a reputation. GS is actually known as the Frontier’s Kindest (for responding to the Goblin Quests), Spearman as the Frontier’s Baddest (he’s considered the strongest combatant), and Heavy Warrior as the leader of the Frontier’s Coolest Party.
- The reason Dwarf Shaman went to help Wizard Boy with his magic was because Goblin Slayer asked since he’s the most capable spell slinger he knows,
- We miss Goblin Slayer and High Elf Archer killing Goblins to rescue a girl kidnapped while getting herbs. She had to get her scent covered since the sachet of herbs she used to cover her scent ran out and she spent all her money. She notes that if there’s a chance of rescuing someone, GS never uses fire, poison, or water.
- Lizard Priest and Priestess were together since they were to heal the people in the training camp, with it being mentioned that if they swapped religions the blessings they could cast would change as well. Priestess was eating so little because she was afraid she was starting to put on weight, though Lizard Priest suggests it’s just muscle.
- It was three days after GS had dinner with Farm Girl when the construction site was attacked again. The laborer found the dirt being dug up randomly weird because it was a resource that was supposed to be deposited in a specific location. Since he spotted it, it was his responsibility to fix it. He was killed by a poisoned dagger, surrounded by twenty of them, and it was noted he wouldn’t be the first to die that night.
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