Goblin Slayer Season 2: Episode 4 Review

/ kvasir369

And so a new adventuring duo sets out. Where their story will take them is anyone’s guess.

The fourth episode of Goblin Slayer Season 2 has aired. Goblins have invaded the training camp and that means it’s time for GS to get to work. Will the camp remain standing by the time he’s done?

Let’s go over the episode in my Recap and Review.

Recap

The episode opens where it left off with the scream coming from a man being murdered and the cheers of Goblins, which has Goblin Slayer directing them to form a half-circle around the spellcasters and to draw their weapons. He tells them to hold the formation for fifteen minutes, whereupon either he’ll be back or dead. Then he heads out to start killing some Goblins as the Wizard Boy looks on.

He kills one with a sword tossed straight through the eye before coming across dead workers and adventurers, reminding him of his village. Priestess comes across him and witnesses the death, taking a moment to pray over one of the fallen before confirming she managed to get all her spell slots back after a short rest. They then meet up with Witch and Spearman, along with their usual party and Heavy Warrior (Female Knight is indisposed due to it being that time of the month and the rookies are watching over her).

Since the Goblins are on the move, they decide to send High Elf Archer to the kids GS was in charge of while they figure out they need to track the hideout by the tunnels. Since they were all likely connected from a single hole and then branched out, they could enter the nearest one and then clean them out. The only problem was they needed to ensure the safety of the rest of the kids in the half-finished building they were inside.

Heavy Warrior decides to take the kids who are with them since his weapon needs room to swing in, but then Priestess questions if that’s really all of the kids. She’s worried that Goblins are going after the newbies that are going home, since they are cowardly and would never want to attack a place filled with strong adventurers but fleeing rookies are prime targets. She suggests going after them with the rookies whom GS was teaching, which the others agree to as being fine for her rank assessment.

With the kids heading home, we see that the Goblins are indeed targeting them. They immediately swarmed a new girl, and while one fighter managed to push them away to drag her corpse out of the pile the rest started emerging from the shadows. Their odds of survival are naturally low.

The Veterans underground have begun their own battle as High Elf Archer hears them coming from both walls in an ambush. Dwarf Shaman puts half to sleep while Witch uses Deflect Missile for the archers and then Counter Magic to stop the caster, allowing High Elf Archer to snipe the Shaman. GS then comes up with an idea to deal with the rest of them while Heavy Warrior, up above, cuts a Hobgoblin in half.

As for the fleeing rookies, they’re basically on the run and one of them removes their helmet only to immediately get brained with a large rock as the Goblins catch up in huge numbers from the trees. They know the Goblins are mocking them, but that’s when Priestess pulls off her blinding trick so that Rookie Warrior and Rhea Fighter can get in two quick kills. They need to get into an open space where Priestess can protect them rather than a cramped space, but the numbers are starting to wear on their fighters.

This is when Wizard Boy starts to apply the lessons he’s learned. He can’t just use Fireball to hit multiple ones because they’ve split up, but he doesn’t have time to hesitate. So he opts to apply Dwarf Shaman’s lesson and orders them to cover their ears and get behind him before enhancing his voice to let out a scream loud enough to echo throughout the entirety of the forest. Goblins are cowards and it’s enough to scare them. That gives the kids the opportunity to run to safety and, since that’s their mission, he decides to shelve his goblin-murdering boner and leave that to Goblin Slayer.

Speaking of GS, he has Dwarf Shaman create holes in the ceiling and Lizard Priest uses a roar to drive them further into the tunnels. They’ll be back, but Goblin Slayer plans to drain the lake into the tunnels to flood them. Then once that’s done, he asks Witch to freeze all the water with an ice spell since it’ll expand and eventually collapse the tunnel. Then all that’s left is for them to crush the nest.

Sometime later, we see that Priestess is getting her promotion to Steel-Rank. High Elf Archer congratulates her, but she feels letting some of the Goblins escape was a problem. The elf tells her that she’s not GS and that her focus should be elsewhere since what she was appreciated for was saving the other kids.

As for Wizard Boy, he opts to start traveling to refine his techniques rather than going back to the Sorcerer’s Academy. Since his classmates are going to mock him no matter what, he’s just going to earn his accomplishments and decide to become a Dragon Slayer like. Rhea Fighter chooses to come with him even though he tries to say otherwise.

Something about the scene causes what has the be the most out of character thing yet: Goblin Slayer laughing.

He tells them to mention his name if he comes across a Rhea named Burglar, as he might look after them. The two then set off while he watches them leave with Farm Girl. She brings up that he drained the lake and he apologizes, but since he looked happy that’s good enough for her since it means something good happened.

Review

So ends the training camp arc, with Priestess achieving her promotion to Steel-Rank, Goblin Slayer laughing, and Wizard Boy deciding to leave behind his obsession for killing Goblins to become a Dragon Slayer like his sister once wanted to do.

Starting with Priestess, as soon as she was appraised of the situation, she took the knowledge she had about Goblins that GS taught her and figured that the rookies heading home were going to be targeted. Since the Veterans couldn’t split from the main task to deal with them, she organized a rescue party and successfully saved the survivors. For this, she proved herself worthy of her promotion since she didn’t have the Silver-Rankers holding her hands.

Though, she’s becoming a little too much like GS considering that she was worried about the goblins escaping. Like High Elf Archer said, she’s not him and shouldn’t try to be. Learning from him is fine, but she doesn’t need to become him since she contributes in other ways.

Not becoming GS is also a lesson that Wizard Boy learned, as he was forced to take a good look at his situation and respond with logic instead of emotion. He hated the Goblins for what they did to his sister, but he learned about rushing in and needed to consider what he could do with the spells he had available. The lessons from Dwarf Shaman came into play here as using a single word of power three times allowed him to enhance his vocal cords and thus let out a screech loud enough that the Goblins opted to flee, which gave them enough time to get to safety.

He learned the role he was supposed to play and, because of that, everyone survived. He also realizes he has a lot he still needs to learn from experience, so he has chosen to wander as an Adventurer and become a Dragon Slayer, honoring his sister even if he didn’t know it. And Rhea Fighter, who was devoid of a party, has decided to accompany him as his first partner since someone needs to watch the squishy mage. I wonder if they’ll develop a reverse situation of Spearman and Witch?

The biggest surprise, however, was that Goblin Slayer laughed. It was so abrupt that it caught me by surprise, but something about the situation seemed to tug at him. But considering the kind of training his master put him through I question the logic of sending them toward the man.

On another note, this episode was probably the first where I sincerely felt the shift in the animation quality. Not the reduction in chest size, but in general. That’s not something I normally notice unless it’s something major and it kind of bothered me.

It might just be nostalgia goggles from Season One though, and it’s not unwatchable by any stretch. I’m just concerned the quality will drop when I hope it’ll get higher during the big encounters. We’ll just have to wait and see, I suppose.

Now, onto Volume 7…

Differences in Adaptation

This episode starts at Volume 6, Chapter 6, and goes through the rest of the Volume:

  • Goblin Slayer found himself concerned about leaving the newbies, which was conflicting because he knew logically he should go gather information. After coming to the conclusion he was wasting time thinking about it, he told them that returning to town would be the best course of action but if it was impossible then to stay until morning and then run as the screams got louder and weapons clashed.
  • The first dead adventurer GS came across had no face, as the Goblin had torn through their head from crown down. The build suggested it was a woman and the limbs were still twitching, so it was a recent kill. 
  • He then kills two more Goblins, noting they had stolen tools and one had tried to use a Pickaxe to his face. Priestess arrived then, having been resting in her room since she was worn out from healing duty. 
  • The reason Witch was using her version of a Light Spell was that no one wanted to use fire due to the wind being strong enough that if anything caught on fire it would be a catastrophe.
  • Goblin Slayer’s reasoning for it being just a clever Shaman was because if someone else was leading the Goblins they would be treated as foot soldiers rather than the main force, as no one but a Goblin would use other Goblins to dig a tunnel to attack training grounds.
  • Priestess wasn’t sure what triggered her anxiety, other than the fact that it might have been some sort of hint from the gods similar to when she entered the cave on her first adventure. She didn’t want to ignore it like she did before and felt that she had to do something. She was also reminded of how the large army could be used as a diversion by the Goblin Lord to accomplish a task, which GS had told her previously.
  • Everyone told Priestess they believed she could do it, but she wanted to hear it from Goblin Slayer. If he said that she couldn’t then she would have accepted that it was better if she didn’t, so hearing him ask if she could do it left her wanting to rise to his expectations.
  • The tunnels were tighter in the Light Novel, but Spearman could still use his long polearm without any problems due to his experience. He then complains about GS throwing his weapons away, to which he states they’re meant to be consumables, and while magic knives that come back when thrown exist he didn’t want Goblins to get one.
  • Since their party was mixed from normal, the formation was Goblin Slayer and Spearman in the front row, with High Elf Archer behind them and the spellcasters in the back. Normally Lizard Priest would be in the front instead and he wasn’t fond of being held back and passive.
  • The reason GS used the coin pouch as an impromptu weapon was because none of the Goblins they killed had decent weapons he could borrow. The pouch was more than enough to break their skulls and was poetic justice since that money was earned from villagers to help with Goblin Quests. 
  • There were also a lot of Goblins who broke through the walls, more than the anime showed by far. The Deflect Missiles spell went up first before they even started swarming them (making it so they didn’t need to worry about archers), and Spearman basically killed any that got within his reach while GS made sure his back was protected and dealt with any in front of him or that Spearman missed by chance. The Shaman was casting Magic Arrow, the most basic of all magic spells.
  • Goblin Slayer still got some light injuries where his armor had been pierced through, hence why he drank the Potion (he knew it was that because of the knot on the bottle while fighting) before throwing the bottle and stabbing the Goblin he was fighting.
  • The rookies heading home had run into the woodlands since they thought it would give them an advantage instead of being surrounded by the open fields. Their numbers had been reduced from about fifteen to five by the time that Priestess’ group arrived.
  • Rookie Warrior had emulated the advice he got from Goblin Slayer, where when one weapon wasn’t useful he stole theirs to use. He hadn’t reached the level of Spearman, who would target vitals and move on, or Heavy Warrior, who would cut through them all in a single swing.
  • Amplifying his voice had the effect of outright knocking out any Goblin close to him, while others were frozen stiff out of fear, and the rest ran off. 
  • The reason that the water didn’t sweep Goblin Slayer’s group up was because the nest was on a downward slope and they got uphill enough that it was enough to keep them safe. He was already doing the math that since they were stealing construction equipment and no food, their base was somewhere close. They had been fighting throughout the night.
  • There’s an interlude following the Heroine as she was fighting some evil spirits before leaving the Plane of Annihilation to head back to their world. This was after the events of Volume 3 (which was skipped), and the place they landed was the Adventurer’s Training Ground sometime after the whole mess above.
  • Draining that lake had consequences, namely that the ground was soft and it would be difficult to build around it. Like GS causes immense property damage whenever he does stuff like this.

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