Goblin Slayer First Impressions | Friendly Talks with Karandi

Hello everyone and welcome to our place! 😀

Here it is, the very first post of my collab with the awesome Karandi! 😀 As you already know this will be a conversation type of post, where we are talking about our Goblin Slayer First Impressions.

At her side, we talked about Dakaichi, so don’t forget to check that one out! 😀

Without further ado, here it is! The blue font is my side, while the purple one is Karandi 🙂

– Goblin Slayer First Impressions –

Hello There Karandi! 😀 How are you feeling today?

Pretty good. I’ve mostly been trying to get through first episodes of all the anime that came out during the week that I skipped. You?

I’m good too! 🙂 In fact, I’ve been doing the same as you! Let’s say this collab just wake a monster inside me I didn’t know and now I want to follow many seasonal Anime shows ahah

So, today we are going to talk about first impressions from Goblin Slayer! In this case, first episode and… Well… I have something I’ve been dying to ask you something! Is it representing the manga well? XD

Not sure about the manga, but the first episode actually did a pretty good job of capturing the start of the light novel adaptation. They made a few changes and one of those I discussed on Twitter with Jon and someone (sorry just trying to remember who it was)…

Ahaha don’t worry happens to me all the time 😀 Also, wanted to say visual novel, not manga ahah What were those changes?

It was Astral Gemini, see I knew I’d remember. But the big change is Guild Girl. In the light novel, she tried quite a bit harder to convince the newbie adventurers not to go after a horde of goblins in a cave but to just go to the sewers and fight some rats. They more or less still ignored her and the end result was the same, but as Jon pointed out it is better world building if the guild at least attempts not to let the adventurers all die on their first mission. The scene in the anime is really short and other than one minor objection Guild Girl doesn’t really do a lot to stop them.

What was your reaction going into this without knowing much about the source?

Ooooh that makes sense! Now that you speak about that, Guild Girl not really pushing her objections any further just made me think that THE goblins were the noob monsters to take which clearly aren’t.

Well, I’ve already discussed this (I’m going to be doing episodical reviews for the PT website I write for) and I would say my reaction was… WTF? xD

I mean, I knew that it was going to have gore. In fact, you were the one that said that to me, but I wasn’t ready for such a psychological Anime to start happening after those first 5 minutes.

But, in the end, I liked the gist of it. I mean, I understand what people are talking about Goblin Slayer so much. If we go to MAL and start watching the episode it does not prepare you for what is coming, right? (Let me just check…)

Part of me likes this about this particular series. A lot of the comments this week have said that they should have held off on this kind of scene until we got to know the characters or until the audience had time to get into the story, but that doesn’t make a huge amount of sense to me. Then we just get told that the world is dangerous and that adventurers have pretty short life expectancies. Basic part of storytelling is to show and not tell when you can. And so we’ve now all seen the danger faced by adventurers and it is incredibly real to every member of the audience. Far more effective than listening to a character narrating about the danger of hunting goblins which is what so many isekai stories would have done in their opening episodes.

Still, it is a bit of a shock if you don’t know it is coming.

I completely agree with you. I just checked and MAL puts Goblin Slayer under the genres of action and fantasy which is not wrong… But, I can understand why so many people entered an Anime with completely different perspectives versus what is, in fact, the Anime.

Moreover, that cute image also does not really help since it only shows the cute part of the world.

I think it wouldn’t make any sense to be presenting the characters right away. We are in a fantasy setting, which means that first of all, the first thing that needs to be present is the world itself. Since it’s fantasy and completely different from irl, it’s super important to show the world building right from the bat so we can understand the world we are experiencing.

Nevertheless… I cannot say that I wasn’t shooked with how far they were going to go… But, in the end, I enjoyed it and I can’t wait for the next episode.

I think that the antithesis they created between the cute character design, plus strong and bright lighting such inside the guild, versus the dark twist we encounter inside the cavern is great! What about you?

I really loved this first episode. I agree the contrast with the town and the cave was really well done and it all looked very much like what I had visualized while reading. I think it will take a while to get used to the no-name thing with the characters though. Even while reading that took a while to get used to and hearing characters speaking to each other without really using names is a little odd at first.

I also liked that this episode seemed to keep pushing forward. It didn’t feel like we spent too long on any one part and even the cave sequence didn’t go on for all that long. I’m kind of hoping this story can keep its pace and not get lost in a lot of fluffing about but we’ll see.

I also really enjoyed the music in this episode. I felt it really worked with the scenes. What about you?

To be honest, regarding the no-name kind of thing it did not really bother me! I’m a sucker for names and, normally, I always forget them ahah You wouldn’t imagine the times I have to go to Anime-Planet looking for the names when I’m writing reviews ahah However, I have to say that they made my job pretty hard when it comes to naming images when the title of the Anime is the same as one of the main characters xD I mean “Goblin Slayer Episode 1 Goblin Slayer being cool” doesn’t have a nice ring to it for me xD

And yes, I’m also really interested in how they are going from this. If you liked it or not, something that can’t be discussed is that the first episode really created an impression on people because of its controversial setting. So, I can’t wait to watch episode 2 today and see if they are able to maintain the bar they set in this first episode.

Now… Regarding the music… You got me there ahah I don’t really remember much about it to be honest… Give me just a sec to quickly pass through the episode to see if I can remember…. Because there is some sort of music inside my head that I remember liking it a lot, but I think it’s from another Anime of this season ahah

I really liked the music used for Goblin Slayer’s entrance. I know some people found it a little over the top but really the entire scene is over the top so the music just fit perfectly with that moment.

Yeah, I completely agree with you! I think that the music is more or less what you would listen from an RPG game. You have the tavern-ish music then you have the more exploring a dungeon kind of feeling and, of course, you have the more strong music when the time is right for it.

However, I think what it amazed the most (finally remember while passing forward really quickly) is the lack of it. There are many parts in Goblin Slayer where there is no music at all. Something, that can be seen as really risky. However, in this case, it looks like a charm since it makes you 100% attentive to what is happening.

I agree. There are a lot of shows and movies now that are really afraid of silence and they just hit you with music and background noise and dialogue more or less continuously and things just get lost in the noise and the only way to make something really dramatic is to get louder. Goblin Slayer uses music when it is appropriate to do so and it worked.

Is there anything else you want to discuss before we start wrapping this up?

Yes, in fact, there is! Before we wrap this up, I would like to ask you your opinion in what do you think it’s going to happen to the popularity of the Anime. Of course, this is something that will have to do with how the episodes go. However, I’ve read some people say that next month nobody will speak about Goblin Slayer.

So, what do you think? Are the discussions going to slow down right away, or do you think Goblin Slayer will stay in the mouths of the Anime World throughout the season?

Honestly, no. Much like all the other anime controversies we have seen this year (Devilman Crybaby is too violent, the whole Darling in the Franxx Ichigo/Zero-Two drama) they kind of hit and everyone says their piece and they usually shout insults at each other on twitter for a week or two and then people are looking for the next big thing to blow up about (which is a little sad but probably true).

More importantly, a lot of people who were shocked by episode one, won’t go back for episode two meaning the majority of people who watch on are fine with the content so don’t have much to say about it that would be controversial. That and, now that we’ve done our world building, audience shocking and attention-grabbing moment, while Goblin Slayer is a violent story, we’re not going to be seeing that level of violence every other week so realistically next week we’ll get the episode reviews from people who have decided to stick with it, one or two opinion pieces of people who held off on writing in the middle of the storm, and then we’ll all just get on with our lives.

Yeah! It’s a bummer, but I think you are right! However, I do still feel that Goblin Slayer is going to be popular among the people who liked the first episode. But, I think the attention will start to point towards Fairy Tail, which because of Goblin Slayer seemed to be a little quieter than I was expecting. Here we will have all those fans who have been grabbed for so long and finally are getting the final season (myself included xD)

Very well, I think that’s all for the first impressions 😀 So, do you want to make a small wrap-up about your thoughts from this first episode?

This was everything I wanted from an adaptation of the light novel. It really delivered because I was kind of worried they would sanitize it down to the point where it was indistinguishable from so many other stories. As it is, this was my third favorite premiere episode last week and I’m kind of hopeful though knowing where the story is going and not having much of a surprise waiting for me I’m not sure if I’ll have the same fun each week with it. Still, it was great getting to discuss this with you and I can’t wait until we come back in a few weeks time (four weeks?) to discuss how the show has progressed.

Well, I can’t say anything about the visual novel. But, I’m with you. I’m happy that they brought a setting we already have seen many times and gave them a darker twist. To be honest, on my episodical review at PTAnime I compared the Guild Setting and conversation with a setting similar to Log Horizon or Fairy Tail. However, making the twist of dark, gory, psychological events changes everything. In fact, if we think hard about it, that’s what would happen in real life, right?

I’m also looking forward to discuss the evolutions of Goblin Slayer in the near future. Regarding the number exact of weeks, well, we’ll see 😀 I think it’s going to depend a lot on what actually happens during the season right? xD But, for now, I think we are the same page when it comes to the story. It’s a good one and we are both looking forward to watching the next episodes, right? 🙂

Catch you next time then and hopefully, neither one of us will be disappointed.

See Ya! Also hope so! 🙂 However, if we ended up having different opinions that will just add even more conversation ahah 😀

And, this it folks! Hope you enjoyed and had fun reading this one! 😀 Don’t forget to check Karandi’s post where we talked about Dakaichi! 😉

Also, let down in the comments your first impressions of Goblin Slayer! Karandi and I would love to know your thoughts about it 😀