The book and manga literally say that she spends the rest of her life huddled up in her room scared shitless. Though considering what happened it's understandable.
The book and manga literally say that she spends the rest of her life huddled up in her room scared shitless. Though considering what happened it's understandable.
Well... Seeing how she watched a bunch of people she knew get slaughtered and ripped apart and was then raped senselessly by a bunch of goblins....it's a miracle she is still even living. Or haven't commited suicide. She's one of the few lucky ones that were even saved...or should I say unlucky that she has to live with such horror.
I just saw the first episode. This Goblin Slayer dude is badass. I want him as my spirit animal.
Although TBH I know next to nothing about RPG fantasy games so I probably would have made the same mistakes as them and died on first contact.
To me, it seems more along the lines of them being stupid than anything. You don't even have to know anything about RPGs to know that going into a place of monsters is a dangerous life and death situation, especially when there isn't any repawn, rez or anything gamewise related. Although, if there was a respawn function, I'm not sure if it'll be as useful for the girls. Yikes. Overconfidence as well.
too much Text
Their party was the equivalent of a platoon of underequiped newly train soldiers jumping right into the frontline without a sense of awareness. 4funz!!
I also blame the guild for allowing such a newbie party to go on something like this without somesort of warning or test qualification, or the fact that nobody seem to have taught these adventurers what happen to parties that lose, because in the end you see countless other adventurers suffering the same exact fate as the poor girls here.
And the fact that if these monster wipeout were so common I don't know why there isn't somesort of requirement where all the female adventuers are to wear somesort of superlocked chasity anti-rape belt/undergarment as well, since if you're going to be sending these people in it's better that if they lose they just die and NOT contribute to the increase of the monster population. Although, I guess such a thing might just not exist nor is it invented yet.
Or might there be somesort of secret conspiracy by the guild or some other authority force withholding information and purposely sending in these young girls knowing what their fate will be? Afterall, what use is a monster hunting guild if there is no monsters to hunt, and since goblins are pure male races...hmmm...HMMM...?
All in all, I feel like all of this in a sense is just a lesson on not being idiots when you go fighting monsters with Goblin Slayer being the only one with common sense. That and as well as being a total badass. If this was a comedy, that would have been a good PSA.
But, then again this is just a story and most of the things that happen are more or less for shock value. I enjoy this story alot cause it reminds me so much of Re=Monster down to the whole unfortunate turn of events for the girls, only from the stupid human's point of view. It's pretty good.
Or might there be somesort of secret conspiracy by the guild or some other authority force withholding information and purposely sending in these young girls knowing what their fate will be? Afterall, what use is a monster hunting guild if there is no monsters to hunt, and since goblins are pure male races...hmmm...HMMM...?
I also blame the guild for allowing such a newbie party to go on something like this without somesort of warning or test qualification, or the fact that nobody seem to have taught these adventurers what happen to parties that lose, because in the end you see countless other adventurers suffering the same exact fate as the poor girls here.
It seems you didn't pay attention that the guild girl told them to wait for other "adventurers" but the male swordsman arrogantly says that 4 of them *rookies* is enough.
But, then again this is just a story and most of the things that happen are more or less for shock value. I enjoy this story alot cause it reminds me so much of Re=Monster down to the whole unfortunate turn of events for the girls, only from the stupid human's point of view. It's pretty good.
From a literary perspective, this is the most important thing.
The first 10 minutes of a movie or game, or the first episode of an anime or other serialized TV series is there to show the audience what they're going to get from this series going forward, even if they haven't had time to introduce the major characters.
Hence, if part of the reason viewers are going to want to watch is because there's blood and gore in this show, you need to kill off some characters, even if you haven't had the time to develop them enough to make you care what happens to them, which in turn generally means you need to make your most graphically over-the-top death come off first.
This is why Bond villains show off their needlessly elaborate death traps by killing some random lackey the first scene they're in.
Besides, if you're going to build the entire show around the idea that someone with a psychopathic fixation upon genocide of a given species is in any way justified, you'd better start off by showing why that species is Always Chaotic Evil, and even murdering the infants is justifiable.
I fear it is only a matter of time that this girl will be appearing in an Asanagi doujin.
Oh god yes yes yes YESYESYESYESYEYSYES!!!
Although, he might rather use either newer characters or just the priestess, which will suck. The funny thing is, all the rape and gore and shit from the story reminds me alot of most of Asanagi's victim girls so it'll just be right up his alley.
What I don't understand though is why goblin issue is even a thing. The story said nobody wants to take care of goblin because it's considered "noobish job"(why anyone consider a job with such fatality rate noobish is also beyond me), and the people who are affected by the goblins don't have the money to hire adventurers while the people who do have money are not affected and doesn't give a shit.
You can't say "goblins are weak individually so everyone underestimated them", mosquitoes are also weak individually but we see countries around the world dump millions into exterminating them like there's no tomorrow. All without having to force the malaria-ridden poor people hire private militias armed with electric swatters themselves.
I find it hard to believe a society where people let a race like goblins live and grow in population to still be able to function better than a Mad Max-esque everyone-for-themselves dystopia.
I mean in the real world, you have one dog kill a kid and the entire community would go aflame calling for the dog's head on a stick. A society where people let so many girls get raped and treated as babytanks for years by green little shits cannot be society with any sense resembling basic decency, nor common sense to function as an actual society.
The people doesn't even seem to be informed about the goblins themselves. How the hell do you live in a world where an entire race of serial rapists take hundreds of girls every week and not know about it?
Maybe it's a premise-breaking plothole, but I do believe there could be some justifications that could have actually been made, and maybe there already was one in the books I'm not aware of.
But if there isn't, then this series is just being edgy gory grimdark for the sake of being edgy gory grimdark.
Right, I'mma go through this misconception a bit...
You can't say "goblins are weak individually so everyone underestimated them", mosquitoes are also weak individually but we see countries around the world dump millions into exterminating them like there's no tomorrow. All without having to force the malaria-ridden poor people hire private militias armed with electric swatters themselves.
SEA and Sub-Saharan Africa says hi. People are still literally dying from Malaria and Dengue in droves every year. It's not the folks in the city. It's the folks out in the sticks, where said malaria-ridden poor people live. It's also these folks who literally have no concept of where the mosquitoes come from. They just live with it and hope they don't get sick. Hell, some don't even know it's a curable and preventable disease.
The reason goblins are dangerous is because they're tough like roaches, aggressive like wolves and smart like rats. They can also use tools, know about battle tactics and ambushes. It also takes literally five grown men (armed with pitchforks, mind you - farmers don't know how to fight like adventurers) to kill one or two stray goblins. If you have to deal with more than a dozen, I doubt even a lone adventurer can even come out alive.
This first episode is to show us how dangerous hunting goblins can be, and how naive newcomers fall into a false sense of security because they always hear about goblins are weaksauce and easy prey.
This is not a Noblebright High Fantasy story. This is a Grimdark "Are You Sure This Isn't a DC Comic" Dark Fantasy. People don't respawn in town after they die. They just stay dead.
This is a Grimdark "Are You Sure This Isn't a DC Comic" Dark Fantasy.
Eeeeh, I agree with the first, but not the second. No spoilers but while it can get darker than your average adventure story, it never actually goes full grimderp. More like the middle ground, really.
Eeeeh, I agree with the first, but not the second. No spoilers but while it can get darker than your average adventure story, it never actually goes full grimderp. More like the middle ground, really.
Hahaha. That last part may have been too much hyperbole.
I'm not sure if it's the answer you're looking for, but do consider that as far as the adventurers know or care, goblins are the "lesser evil", so to speak. In their world, things like dragons and demons and dark gods and such do exist, and potentially have the power to destroy the world (or so they say). Not only that, adventurers mostly seek fame and fortune, something that goblin slaying won't give them. Unless you're a BAMF like Goblin Slayer, but he's a special case. So all of that culminates into goblin slaying quest being perceived as nothing but "noobish job": it brings little fame and little fortune, and the scale of a horde of goblins attack is incomparable to a dragon.
Also I just want to note, the story never really goes deep into "edgy gory grimdark" territory. It reads like your usual fantasy story but with a greater emphasis on how dangerous the monsters are, and how doing things without ample preparations can and will get you killed.
Another factor is that most seasoned adventures are well and fully aware of how nasty goblin-related deaths really are, and as far as most are concerned the pay is not worth it, being as it is provided by dirt-poor farmfolk most of the time. Individually, they are easy, but fighting something in its own lair is another story entirely. And goblins are never really found in single digit numbers- once they're attacking villages outright rather than just raiding, it's in the area of around 50 goblins in a nest, at minimum, if I remember correctly. So shit pay, incredibly risky work, and little to no prestige because, as has been said, there are literal demon lords and legions running around (and even a Chosen Heroine doing battle with them). Makes those goblin jobs incredibly unattractive to almost everyone but fresh meat that doesn't know what it is really getting into. The jobs are even more unattractive if you are a woman, because the goblins likely won't kill you immediately.
Again, the issue is a society cannot be competently maintained if they let goblins run wild. Countries still plagued by malaria today are because the country themselves either doesn't have the means to counter it, or is too incompetent to do so(corruption goes into this category).
From Valentines and AdventZero's accounts, I'm not sure if goblins are supposed to be mini-gorillas or are they still just very ugly prepubescents with the lifting strength of one, but the fact stands that they are clearly a threat that can wipe out an entire village.
So any competent government would at least acknowledge that if these little shitbags doesn't go, sooner or later the labor and food supply made by these peasants supporting their infrastructure/economy is gonna go instead.
Especially when they have access to the fucking Avengers who can go toe to toe with dragons or golems the size of mountains, I can't see why they can't just ask them "hey you know these little goblins guys? They've been killing the people growing our food so we found out where they live, can you take a little break from your Cthulhu-fighting and just go and Megidolaon the entire place down? It's gonna take you only 15 min and most of it are going to be spent getting there. kthanxluv"
I mean as BAMF as Goblin Slayer is, I understand he's only supposed to be a mid-tier fighter in-universe right? So there should have been so many more fighters who can finish the job 10 times quicker than him, right?
If a society is so selfish to the point no one's gonna protect where their own food came from, that society's gonna break down quicker than a sandcastle in a hurricane.
I like how you used malaria to compare the goblins. You could see the Goblins as a sort of plague themselves since they have no redeeming qualities that make them anymore than ravagers of villages and the like. And letting a plague "fester" is a bad idea for the longevity of any civilized society. But a big part of the problem is that the people themselves regard Goblins as so little a threat despite the repercussions of allowing them to to run wild. While I doubt there will ever be a moment where the Goblins grow in size where they could threaten a large metropolitan area, letting them blindside small villages is a failure of recognition of their abilities. Just like you wouldn't let termites destroy your garage just because they aren't in the "house" you shouldn't turn a blind eye to the mediocre small villages just because Goblins aren't a threat to the cities.
azurelorochi said: If a society is so selfish to the point no one's gonna protect where their own food came from, that society's gonna break down quicker than a sandcastle in a hurricane.
It's when you compare fantasy societies to real societies of similar period and advancement that the disbelief starts to come in.
If something like bandits, mercenaries, or deserters attacked a historical medieval village, I'm pretty sure the local duke or regeant would consider it something worth sending a detachment of soldiers to deal with. Deaths of serfs would not only damage food and labor resources, but also loyalty rates. If a local lord can't protect his fief his Serfs and Slaves would inevitably flee, and he would risk being rebuked by the king if he found out.
More realistically though, bandit and mercenary companies were also probably sent bribes, but I don't think that applies with goblins.
It's when you compare fantasy societies to real societies of similar period and advancement that the disbelief starts to come in.
If something like bandits, mercenaries, or deserters attacked a historical medieval village, I'm pretty sure the local duke or regeant would consider it something worth sending a detachment of soldiers to deal with. Deaths of serfs would not only damage food and labor resources, but also loyalty rates. If a local lord can't protect his fief his Serfs and Slaves would inevitably flee, and he would risk being rebuked by the king if he found out.
More realistically though, bandit and mercenary companies were also probably sent bribes, but I don't think that applies with goblins.
It was explain in some part of the LN/manga that
other evil races/faction that can be at least negotiated whereas golins are not
Bog standard goblins have the strength, intelligence, and size of a human child. These are the majority of goblins. Depending on stimulus, wandering gobs that have lost their nest and survive can end up in the following classes:
Shamans have the same stature, but can spellcast.
Hobs are much stronger, probably ranking up there with a body builder or heavyweight champion. These are basically Goblin warriors. Or, considering their number and general role, bouncers in smaller nests.
Champions are not just massive, but also have learned how to fight on par with high-ranked adventurers. They're basically goblin hero units. Rare.
Goblin lords lack strength, but what they lack in strength or magic they more than make for in their ability to lead hordes and plan. They are goblin kings. Rare as fuck.
There also exists an "Extra" class. The Paladin. Only one is known to exist or have existed, and was basically a would-be Messiah to all Goblins.
As mentioned previously, goblins tend to be ignored in lieu of the demon lord... who is constantly resurrecting and trying to destroy the world. At least at the time of the Swordmaiden/Sewer arc, all military and political personnel are shown to be focused on said conflict, and treat goblin extermination requests with an air of "no time for it, do it yourself". Blame the gods for this one, they cause the cycle of resurrection via their games. I think Truth- or was it Illusion?- is the big offender here.
Most of the story also takes place within what is called "The Frontier" as well, which serves to amplify the issue since it's distant from the capitol areas of the "praying races" (AKA, PC races). Presumably, they don't (usually) get to build up to be a major threat because rookie adventurers, for the most part, send themselves grinder to take care of them thinking they will be easy marks. Based on the towns we see, the Frontier is also not as densely populated as the capitol areas- the main town we see seems to be equivalent to a somewhat developed, well, frontier town.
Worth noting, the big time they are not ignored by authorities is when they are collected under the banner of the demon lord, since pretty much anything that is part of the demon lord's forces and is marching under his banner gets a big fat "exterminate" tag applied to it. Any sizable nest also does attract military attention, but emphasis here is on sizable. One such nest showed up in story near the elven border, and they only reason they did not mobilize to obliterate it themselves was due to political friction with the nearby human nations being an issue due to the nest's location.
Presumably, a mass invasion of goblins from the green moon would also command attention.
What I don't understand though is why goblin issue is even a thing. The story said nobody wants to take care of goblin because it's considered "noobish job"(why anyone consider a job with such fatality rate noobish is also beyond me), and the people who are affected by the goblins don't have the money to hire adventurers while the people who do have money are not affected and doesn't give a shit.
[...]
But if there isn't, then this series is just being edgy gory grimdark for the sake of being edgy gory grimdark.
While the others are giving the reasons that exist in-universe, I tend to think more in the metatextual sense, so...
Show
A story doesn't necessarily need to have a perfectly consistent internal universe if it's trying to be more of a metaphor. Star Wars doesn't give a shit that its space combat makes no sense whatsoever and has a "Universal Up" with capital ships sailing broadside and "sinking" in space when destroyed, because it was always just World War 2 IN SPAAAAACE! Only the Wookiepedia types delude themselves into thinking there's any aspect of Star Wars "physics" that won't be overturned in a heartbeat if a director wanted to make some point or another. (I.E. Midichlorians only existed because George Lucas wanted to make Anakin into Jesus and have a virgin birth. They serve no purpose beyond that, and are never mentioned again.)
I think it's worth considering from the perspective of how you tend to play RPGs. In tons of RPGs, you'll maybe clear out a goblin's den in your first quest. Maybe even see some hobgoblins in a later quest. Beyond that, though, they're just below your level. They often don't even appear again unless you go back to the starting areas because, hey, why waste the player's time with inferior noob monsters when they're supposed to be out saving the world from the maou, or at least taking out an army of ogres or something more their level.
There was an old PvP comic about City of Heroes (My Google-fu is unfortunately too weak to find it) where one of the major characters' hero avatars is running through town, when an old lady struggling with a purse-snatcher cries out for him to help her. The hero avatar says something to the effect of, "Whoa, no can do, lady. I'm level 4. I don't get even get experience from mere level 1 crimes anymore. I've got a bank robbery to stop!" "But... but... he's robbing me RIGHT NOW!" "Don't worry, I'm sure some newbie hero will be along to collect his experience shortly, so just keep holding out for a few more hours." "... but... but... HELP!" (A different major character in a Flash-like outfit zips by) "Sorry, lady, level 5!" (Also, the same basic concept was the original point of the infamous Penny Arcade dickwolves comic.)
It's one of those major Ludonarrative Dissonance issues common in games - you're told you're a champion of the land, but you're directly encouraged to behave as selfishly as possible. The game "You Are Not The Hero" is about a villager who's trying to retrieve her stolen accessory from the heroes who looted it from her house because the eventual YANTH developers were playing Final Fantasy IX, and took 100 gil from a box, then talked to an old man who said he was going to use that money to buy his lunch. The eventual developers then realized they were stealing an old man's lunch money for no reason other than because kleptomania was an ingrained habit of RPGs, and had no way to actually give it back.
Even in a game like inFamous, if you try to just grind down a power line, you'll face an infinite number of civilians who are dying on the street, or monstrous enemies attacking civilians. You can pop down to help even when there is no benefit to you, but it doesn't actually impact anything when you do. It's just free infinite fights and heroic karma, but if you're actually trying to get somewhere when you don't feel like fighting and your karma's already at max, it's just a waste of time. Worse - they always spawn in the same areas, and if fighting an enemy takes you a certain distance away from the spawn point, you'll just spawn more enemies when you resume walking in the direction you were going, making zero progress. It's sort of like trying to play Grand Theft Auto without ever taking damage to your vehicles and obeying every traffic law - it's just a massive burden you're placing on yourself that the game won't even acknowledge. Eventually, you just learn you HAVE to ignore the fights or dying civvies if you want to get anything done.
So then, goblins are a real and present danger in Goblin Slayer's world, but at the same time, anyone who's capable of actually doing anything about it has every reason not to bother doing anything about it. Anyone who can easily wipe out goblins is someone expected to take out things more powerful and with more valuable rewards than just mere goblins. Anyone who would take out goblins anyway is someone who is behaving like a pathological lunatic who is dead-set on genocide of just one specific relatively less dangerous species of monster in spite of there being no good reward for doing so and there being plenty of good rewards for going after much more dangerous and famous problems.
There are generally two types of satire: The Simpsons/Futurama-style "funny" satire type, where they'd make fun of this by showing the heroes laughing off any notion of work without reward, and demanding that they be praised and paid for their services in slaying the big, shiny dragon even as the world is being eaten alive by the lowly goblin plagues, or else the darker, not-funny, "A Modest Proposal" or Watchmen style parody, where you actually play how crazy someone would have to be to be a dedicated goblin-only monster hunter to the hilt, making someone a total psycho because that's the only way to make the hero they need.
Actually being the hero that the narrative tries to tell you that you should be, and that the people need, requires being self-destructively obsessive over something that doesn't make sense in an RPG.
Keep in mind, the problem of goblins is also framed for the audience by the author for the express purpose of justifying what Goblin Slayer does, as I previously said, and that the story therefore doesn't also show, say, all the orc invasions or the times that a basilisk destroyed a whole village, or a dragon brought a whole kingdom to ruin, because that's not the point of the story, but that doesn't mean those things don't happen. Heart attacks and traffic accidents kill more people than airplane crashes or shark attacks, and that's exactly why airplane crashes or shark attacks make the news while traffic accidents don't. People get freaked out about shark attacks and demand action against sharks while doing nothing about unsafe driving conditions or demanding that cars be designed to be less likely to kill pedestrians, nor do they demand sodium removed from their foods en masse. Likewise, people in Goblin Slayer's world will be freaked out by Demon Lords or dragons, and demand action about that, but how many people care about a single isolated village being wiped out by some goblins? How often do you decide to volunteer to some nonprofit for a town wiped out by a natural disaster or famine or disease outbreak in real life? Shit just happens all the time, and people learn to ignore it.
I love it when a series can generate such serious and indepth discussion. I mean it, cause it tells me people actually enjoy and is engaged by the story.
Although with all the comments, if the original artist of this picture were to come and see I wonder what he will think about all these column of text having not much to do with said picture. It must be hilarious.
I love it when a series can generate such serious and indepth discussion. I mean it, cause it tells me people actually enjoy and is engaged by the story.
Although with all the comments, if the original artist of this picture were to come and see I wonder what he will think about all these column of text having not much to do with said picture. It must be hilarious.
The artist's pixiv page is basically just a bunch of no-background solo character images like this with different characters that apparently caught the artist's attention, like Bowsette. The only comments on this image on Pixiv are two emoji comments, amusingly enough.
Danbooru can sometimes just be the place that people talk about a series in a comments section to a random fanart of a series because those people don't go to any forums dedicated to the fandoms of that particular series. I.E. I griped about Overlord a while back here because I don't go to any other website that's an Overlord-specific forum.
While the others are giving the reasons that exist in-universe, I tend to think more in the metatextual sense, so...
I understand that it's supposed to be one of those Undertale-esque "hey these things you do in normal RPGs would be terrible in real life don'tcha think?" but I dunno, I just feel those points doesn't translate well to non-game medias.
Especially when that point is being used for some purposes unrelated to the point itself. Such as how most Isekais have protags who abuses RPG rule loopholes, not for the sake of showing the ramifications of the loopholes itself but just for the sake of wish fulfillment. Goblin Slayer seems to abuse this logical loophole just for the sake of playing up its edginess.
Star Wars space battles, or even space battles from "smarter" series like GinEi are very unrealistic from how real space battles would be(why would you wait for the enemy to approach into your line of sight before shooting your projectile that would otherwise already have indefinite range), but that's because if you show a "realistic" space battle, the scene might be either so damn boring or the audiences may not even recognize it's a fight scene at all.
It's the same why anime gun battles are almost always Equilibrium style gun-kata rather than both side spending the majority of the fight ducking behind a cover. Sometimes realism kills the fun.
I understand the car VS shark analogy, but if every drunk drivers also rape and torture their victims, I believe people would take car accidents much, much more seriously. Also you can encounter a million cars before you find one that kill you, you'd be lucky to encounter 10 sharks(Great white, bull, tiger and whitetip in particular) and not have one attempt to at least bite you out of curiosity.
But when you're trying to build an in-depth, believable world, especially when trying to sell it as serious, gritty and dark, I think a tighter worldbuilding consistency is needed. I mean isn't taking gore and edginess way too seriously while having a plot littered with holes that made the seriousness falls apart what made grimderp grimderp?
NWSiaCB said:
Danbooru can sometimes just be the place that people talk about a series in a comments section to a random fanart of a series because those people don't go to any forums dedicated to the fandoms of that particular series. I.E. I griped about Overlord a while back here because I don't go to any other website that's an Overlord-specific forum.
Personally for me it's because surprisingly here I can find more people willing to read my long texts despite this supposedly being a place people came for images.
On anime forums, where people actually came to read discussions about animes, I almost always get "tl;dr" so often I just give up trying to hold an in-depth discussions with them.
Bog standard goblins have the strength, intelligence, and size of a human child. These are the majority of goblins. Depending on stimulus, wandering gobs that have lost their nest and survive can end up in the following classes:
Shamans have the same stature, but can spellcast.
Hobs are much stronger, probably ranking up there with a body builder or heavyweight champion. These are basically Goblin warriors. Or, considering their number and general role, bouncers in smaller nests.
Champions are not just massive, but also have learned how to fight on par with high-ranked adventurers. They're basically goblin hero units. Rare.
Goblin lords lack strength, but what they lack in strength or magic they more than make for in their ability to lead hordes and plan. They are goblin kings. Rare as fuck.
There also exists an "Extra" class. The Paladin. Only one is known to exist or have existed, and was basically a would-be Messiah to all Goblins.
As mentioned previously, goblins tend to be ignored in lieu of the demon lord... who is constantly resurrecting and trying to destroy the world. At least at the time of the Swordmaiden/Sewer arc, all military and political personnel are shown to be focused on said conflict, and treat goblin extermination requests with an air of "no time for it, do it yourself". Blame the gods for this one, they cause the cycle of resurrection via their games. I think Truth- or was it Illusion?- is the big offender here.
Most of the story also takes place within what is called "The Frontier" as well, which serves to amplify the issue since it's distant from the capitol areas of the "praying races" (AKA, PC races). Presumably, they don't (usually) get to build up to be a major threat because rookie adventurers, for the most part, send themselves grinder to take care of them thinking they will be easy marks. Based on the towns we see, the Frontier is also not as densely populated as the capitol areas- the main town we see seems to be equivalent to a somewhat developed, well, frontier town.
Worth noting, the big time they are not ignored by authorities is when they are collected under the banner of the demon lord, since pretty much anything that is part of the demon lord's forces and is marching under his banner gets a big fat "exterminate" tag applied to it. Any sizable nest also does attract military attention, but emphasis here is on sizable. One such nest showed up in story near the elven border, and they only reason they did not mobilize to obliterate it themselves was due to political friction with the nearby human nations being an issue due to the nest's location.
Presumably, a mass invasion of goblins from the green moon would also command attention.
So, basically they are Skaven while the Powers That Be are too busy trying to deal with Chaos the Maou?
Star Wars space battles, or even space battles from "smarter" series like GinEi are very unrealistic from how real space battles would be(why would you wait for the enemy to approach into your line of sight before shooting your projectile that would otherwise already have indefinite range), but that's because if you show a "realistic" space battle, the scene might be either so damn boring or the audiences may not even recognize it's a fight scene at all.
You might want to watch Starship Operators...
But anyway, restricting the ranges to "exciting" ones is a far lesser sin on Star Wars's part. The problem with Star Wars is that they do things that make no sense in space.
Take The Last Jedi, where they had to destroy the Dreadnaught with "Bombers" whose giant glass cockpits and ball turrets are OBVIOUSLY modeled on American WW2-era bombers like the B-29. These bombers then, after destroying the AA defenses of the Dreadnaught (which are ONLY on the TOP of the ship, because of course nothing can fly UNDER a spaceship IN SPACE) have to fly OVER the Dreadnaught to drop it's obviously WW-2-inspired gravity-powered carpet bombing payload "downwards" upon the Dreadnaught's upper decks. You know, as opposed to doing something sane, like pulling back on the stick so that they "dropped" their bombs on the bow of the dreadnaught from outside the dreadnaught's range, which is clearly too slow to dodge these things, anyway.
Nothing about that entire scene or the ships they made up just to put into it makes any sense AT ALL except as a way of making the whole series' World War 2 in space metaphor more obvious.
It's not like they had to make battles like that to make the battles exciting, either. None of the previous movies had battles like that, and in fact, they generally wound up having some variation of a Death Star Trench Run, where a single shot against a ludicrous "weak point" that can only be made by someone important enough in the plot/Using The Force, which only are like WW2 if you count things like Kaga, Taihou, or Hood, so the change is absolutely deliberately done to make it more like a WW2 battle.
azurelorochi said:
I understand the car VS shark analogy, but if every drunk drivers also rape and torture their victims, I believe people would take car accidents much, much more seriously. Also you can encounter a million cars before you find one that kill you, you'd be lucky to encounter 10 sharks(Great white, bull, tiger and whitetip in particular) and not have one attempt to at least bite you out of curiosity.
But when you're trying to build an in-depth, believable world, especially when trying to sell it as serious, gritty and dark, I think a tighter worldbuilding consistency is needed. I mean isn't taking gore and edginess way too seriously while having a plot littered with holes that made the seriousness falls apart what made grimderp grimderp?
But is there really a plot hole, here?
Again, I think you underestimate how much people look the other way about horrible things happening in the real world. I mean, human trafficking claims millions of victims in functional slavery that are being constantly raped, and it's largely ignored, because as soon as a woman is forced into sexual slavery, she's now a prostitute, and therefore "deserves it."
YOU notice how terrible goblins are because the author specifically made you watch something framed explicitly to make goblins look like the worst plague to ever hit a fantasy world... because that's exactly what the author needed to do to justify the whole premise of the story. That doesn't mean every other character in the story has seen such a thing, however. YOU don't see how terrifying the Demon Lord or any random dragon or mind flayer or wahtever other monsters are because the author hasn't specifically framed how awful those other monsters are, since there isn't a real point to doing so in the story, and if the author just went through a list of monsters killing humans, then it really WOULD just be grimderp. The people of this world, however, can reasonably look at the threat of humanity being completely extinguished by a Demon Lord as something justifiably terrifying, as would huge, horrific mind flayer-style monsters that do far worse things than merely kill and rape. To them, goblins are a smaller threat that can be contained or ignored, the same way that bad drivers can be ignored while dying in a plane crash haunt people's nightmares.
As others have said, this isn't really that much of a grimdark story, but if this story's premise is going to work at all, it had to start by showing that goblins actually are unrepentantly evil because it's necessary to justify the whole underlying premise of the story.
It's basically a problem of falling into Protagonist Centered Morality to say that ONLY goblins are a real threat just because a story focused upon goblins, which only looks at what goblins are doing and ignores other threats, and plays up someone who only kills goblins as a hero makes it a plot flaw that anyone else finds anything else a problem in life. Essentially, Goblin Slayer is in-universe anti-goblin propaganda that ignores all other threats in favor of the one thing it wants to whip up viewers into a frenzy over.
So, basically they are Skaven while the Powers That Be are too busy trying to deal with Chaos the Maou?
That's... almost exactly it, come to think of it. Except the story seems to be running in the direction of the two threats merging, if the constant B-Plot of Chosen Heroine (shows up about once per novel) is anything to go by.
What I don't understand though is why goblin issue is even a thing. The story said nobody wants to take care of goblin because it's considered "noobish job"(why anyone consider a job with such fatality rate noobish is also beyond me), and the people who are affected by the goblins don't have the money to hire adventurers while the people who do have money are not affected and doesn't give a shit.
You can't say "goblins are weak individually so everyone underestimated them", mosquitoes are also weak individually but we see countries around the world dump millions into exterminating them like there's no tomorrow. All without having to force the malaria-ridden poor people hire private militias armed with electric swatters themselves.
I find it hard to believe a society where people let a race like goblins live and grow in population to still be able to function better than a Mad Max-esque everyone-for-themselves dystopia.
I mean in the real world, you have one dog kill a kid and the entire community would go aflame calling for the dog's head on a stick. A society where people let so many girls get raped and treated as babytanks for years by green little shits cannot be society with any sense resembling basic decency, nor common sense to function as an actual society.
The people doesn't even seem to be informed about the goblins themselves. How the hell do you live in a world where an entire race of serial rapists take hundreds of girls every week and not know about it?
Maybe it's a premise-breaking plothole, but I do believe there could be some justifications that could have actually been made, and maybe there already was one in the books I'm not aware of.
But if there isn't, then this series is just being edgy gory grimdark for the sake of being edgy gory grimdark.
This is something that caught my attention when watching the first episode. There is a strong contrast between the seriousness of the Goblin Slayer focused scenes and the other parts we see of the world.
The world we see through the protagonist is a grim one where peasants are slaughtered and newbie aventurers are raped and die horribly if they aren't prepared. But when we flip back to the rest of the world, everyone treats it like a video game. The guild lady is amazingly chipper and unconcerned when sending young adventurers out to their doom. There are no senior members to train them to be prepared to fight goblins, it's just "You kids have fun out there" without so much as a warning "and try not to get raped and murdered!" The rest of the adventurers are similarly excited to take on what we assume are deadly tasks, and scoff at goblin slaying like it's beneath them to handle "noobie tasks".
So which is it? The world can't simultaneously be a fun world of adventure and also a grim, realistic world where going in without knowing what you're doing will get you killed or worse. I find it hard to believe that being an adventurer is even a highly desired profession when the risks are enormous, and that's just for the "low level" threats.
This is something that caught my attention when watching the first episode. There is a strong contrast between the seriousness of the Goblin Slayer focused scenes and the other parts we see of the world.
The world we see through the protagonist is a grim one where peasants are slaughtered and newbie aventurers are raped and die horribly if they aren't prepared. But when we flip back to the rest of the world, everyone treats it like a video game. The guild lady is amazingly chipper and unconcerned when sending young adventurers out to their doom. There are no senior members to train them to be prepared to fight goblins, it's just "You kids have fun out there" without so much as a warning "and try not to get raped and murdered!" The rest of the adventurers are similarly excited to take on what we assume are deadly tasks, and scoff at goblin slaying like it's beneath them to handle "noobie tasks".
So which is it? The world can't simultaneously be a fun world of adventure and also a grim, realistic world where going in without knowing what you're doing will get you killed or worse. I find it hard to believe that being an adventurer is even a highly desired profession when the risks are enormous, and that's just for the "low level" threats.
Because it sounds like from a "RPG" game. Most adventurers are focus on the grand scale of things but in the background a looming threat is making typical villagers suffer from the most typical of enemy that is consider "weak". Heckle there was that chapter where high-level adventurers got overpowered by gobbos from a "bad roll" of the dice.
So which is it? The world can't simultaneously be a fun world of adventure and also a grim, realistic world where going in without knowing what you're doing will get you killed or worse. I find it hard to believe that being an adventurer is even a highly desired profession when the risks are enormous, and that's just for the "low level" threats.
But that's kind of the point of that ludonarrative dissonance "dickwolves" theme from before - it's an RPG, but only Goblin Slayer is taking the story seriously. In your typical Dragon Quest game, you form a group of rebellious teenagers armed with sticks, go out and face monsters with giant googly-eyed happy faces, and just drag your buddies back to the priest and drop some cash or reload a save to recover from any "whoopsies!" that result in deaths. You steal and loot and leave a town behind as soon as you've cleared the board of quests, never to bother with low-level stuff again.
So what if those goblins are a raping, murdering horde? They're low-leveled, so they don't give good EXP or GP, so why bother? Games laud your selfishly-motivated actions as always heroic, while staying behind to deal with low-level monsters just because they're an actual threat to people is acting crazy.
Similar to Undertale, that extreme dischord between being a happy, cheerful job for kids to go off and start a life of adventure, and the ceaseless blood and death that awaits them is kind of the point.
I mean isn't taking gore and edginess way too seriously while having a plot littered with holes that made the seriousness falls apart what made grimderp grimderp?
No, grimderp is when the setting is GRIM and DARK 24/7, without a moment of reprieve or levity. Goblin Slayer has its dark moments, but also have lighthearted breathers, cheerful and caring companions to balance the shell-shocked main character, and genuine victories. Like, I can't say much without spoilers, but most of the story is actually more "D&D adventure with some slight undertones" and less "IN THE GRIM DARKNESS OF FANTASY LAND THERE IS ONLY GRIMDARK!"
NekoKnight36 said:
The guild lady is amazingly chipper and unconcerned when sending young adventurers out to their doom.
No, she didn't. In fact, she actually suggested them to wait for some veterans to join them because they're still noobs but the team leader refused.
There are no senior members to train them to be prepared to fight goblins
Yes, there are. They're not shown yet, but they do exist.
This is something that caught my attention when watching the first episode. There is a strong contrast between the seriousness of the Goblin Slayer focused scenes and the other parts we see of the world.
The world we see through the protagonist is a grim one where peasants are slaughtered and newbie aventurers are raped and die horribly if they aren't prepared. But when we flip back to the rest of the world, everyone treats it like a video game. The guild lady is amazingly chipper and unconcerned when sending young adventurers out to their doom. There are no senior members to train them to be prepared to fight goblins, it's just "You kids have fun out there" without so much as a warning "and try not to get raped and murdered!" The rest of the adventurers are similarly excited to take on what we assume are deadly tasks, and scoff at goblin slaying like it's beneath them to handle "noobie tasks".
So which is it? The world can't simultaneously be a fun world of adventure and also a grim, realistic world where going in without knowing what you're doing will get you killed or worse. I find it hard to believe that being an adventurer is even a highly desired profession when the risks are enormous, and that's just for the "low level" threats.
There is stuff like giant rats or even ditch work that lower level adventurers can do as well. Goblins are arguably the most dangerous quests for lowbies- which is why said rats and ditch work is the sort of work recommended to them if they try to take a goblin quest instead.
Later in the story, the frontier town Guild does start to set up a training ground for low-ranked adventurers. wGuild Girl not very subtly hints that she would like Goblin Slayer to help with it if/when he retires, since she wants to raise the odds of new kids getting back safely
. Fame and fortune is the motivator for most people to become adventurers, and if you get up there in the ranks the job offers plenty of both, especially if adventurers are able to get to the capitol and take on quests related to the demon lord and his army. Even doing his low-paying jobs, Goblin Slayer makes quite a lot of money- enough that he could stay in a really nice hotel for what he pays to Cow Girl and her uncle. Presumably, it's better money than farming. It would also appear most people become adventurers when they're in their teens. In other words, when they think they're invincible and are too stupid to know better.
For the record, it is indeed both types of world, thanks to the fact the gods are literally playing dice with people's lives. Chosen Heroine's chapters make it abundantly clear that she is having a very much standard, high adventure life on her inevitable path to slay the demon lord. Her chapters would not be out of place in Dragon Quest or another JRPG/ highly successful tabletop game. Most people's experiences fall somewhere between that, Goblin Slayers party, and the rookie party which got iced.
No, grimderp is when the setting is GRIM and DARK 24/7, without a moment of reprieve or levity. Goblin Slayer has its dark moments, but also have lighthearted breathers, cheerful and caring companions to balance the shell-shocked main character, and genuine victories. Like, I can't say much without spoilers, but most of the story is actually more "D&D adventure with some slight undertones" and less "IN THE GRIM DARKNESS OF FANTASY LAND THERE IS ONLY GRIMDARK!"
I think that's just a difference of our definitions, because a core of GRIMDARK(even ones that doesn't go into grimderp) is "Look at these laughing group of friends, aren't they nice? Look at this flowery couple, aren't they happy? Look at this puppy, isn't it cute? TOO BAD THEY ALL DIED HORRIBLY", meaning before the GRIM and the DARK can happen, there could have been levity to get the audiences attached to the characters first.
Akame ga Kill had plenty of levity, Mahou Shoujo Site had quite some levity, yet many would still argue they're both the closest, if not textbook definition of a grimderp anime just trying to capitalize on Madoka and/or GRRR Martin formula without having a clue why it worked.
To me it doesn't matter what the ratio of levity VS darkness is(black comedy is levity WITHIN darkness, for example), it's how prominently and seriously the dark part was shown and how well it was able to be held up accordingly. You can have 3 pages of ultra rapefest gore in a whole book of happy go lucky story, but if that dark, gritty, serious part is dumb, then it's grimderp.
For Goblin Slayer, eh, hadn't read the books, so I'm no authority on whether it is grimderp or not.
NWSiaCB said:
Take The Last Jedi,
I wouldn't use that as an example of good writing in a million years, buddy.
But point stands, it's only using WW2 strategy only because it's the shortest visual cue to communicate to the audience what's happening.
Is it justified because it's aimed at the lowest common denominator, of which included kids? Is it justified a multimillion movie made by a multimillion company didn't hire some scientists to come up with tactics that are both "believable" and "cool looking"? Maybe not.
As others have said, this isn't really that much of a grimdark story, but if this story's premise is going to work at all, it had to start by showing that goblins actually are unrepentantly evil because it's necessary to justify the whole underlying premise of the story.
Again, not saying problems other than goblins doesn't exist. And again like Malaria, countries suffering from human trafficking and sex slavery has that problem because they either don't have the means to stop it, or is too incompetent. It's because they already live in a dystopia.
It doesn't translate well when the setting you're looking at is now a fantasy one where you have people who can level mountains walking around who could have taken care of the problem before breakfast.
It's like having a pile of shit in the middle of a room. It might not actively be harmful to you, and not everyone wants to be the one to have to scrub it, but it is a problem for everyone in the room. So maybe the guy with the mop and hazmat suit should do something exactly because he'll get the job cleared the fastest while sustaining the least drawbacks than everyone in having to scrub that pile of shit away.
The problem is as I say, if you look at Goblin Slayer's society from a viewpoint as anything else apart from an RPG, where the economy, governing system, and infrastructures always miraculously survive apocalypse unscathed, the suspension of disbelief for the premise is going to collapse.
And again, I think better justifications could have been made, like if goblin babies gestate really quickly, like a single raped victim could spawn 10 goblins in a day, then yes in that case I'm willing to believe just how nigh-impossible it would be to exterminate these little shits. It's the same issue with mosquitoes and cane toads, they spawn too much too quickly. But alas I didn't see the anime making any such explanation.
I think that's just a difference of our definitions, because a core of GRIMDARK(even ones that doesn't go into grimderp) is "Look at these laughing group of friends, aren't they nice? Look at this flowery couple, aren't they happy? Look at this puppy, isn't it cute? TOO BAD THEY ALL DIED HORRIBLY", meaning before the GRIM and the DARK can happen, there could have been levity to get the audiences attached to the characters first.
I wouldn't use that as an example of good writing in a million years, buddy.
But point stands, it's only using WW2 strategy only because it's the shortest visual cue to communicate to the audience what's happening.
Is it justified because it's aimed at the lowest common denominator, of which included kids? Is it justified a multimillion movie made by a multimillion company didn't hire some scientists to come up with tactics that are both "believable" and "cool looking"? Maybe not.
I'm not using that particular scene as an example of good writing per se, but as the most undeniable evidence of how much Star Wars doesn't care about making its sci fi make sense.
It's also far from the case that this was the way that Lucas had to make his movies. Star Trek doesn't do this, and they have battles that involve shooting energy beams from lightseconds away while flying at FTL speeds. Lucas clearly went out of his way to make the story one about Magic Samurai with Laser Katanas and Cowboys fighting the evil space Nazis on purpose. He then loaded it up with obvious allegorical content, like the Rebellion being a colorful ragtag coalition of crazy alien creatures, while the Empire is all human, uses (Eugenics) clone troopers for their "genetic superiority", and are utterly monochrome and devoid of any individuality outside those at the top.
The question shouldn't be whether that's the best way to be a visual cue that communicates that a battle is happening, but what that battle is supposed to mean.
Plot holes are only important if they take away from the ability of the story to deliver its message. Sometimes, making a glaring plot hole that makes the audience stop and think why something is the way it is is the message. The Stanley Parable is filled with such obvious plotholes (like the only way to attain "freedom" being to surrender all freedom and do whatever the narrator tells you, or the narrator just giving up and telling you that "You Win!" because he can't figure out how to return the story to its proper track, thus deflating any meaning from "winning" in the game) because stopping and making you question things is the whole point.
The purpose of showing a really dark scene early on in Goblin Slayer was, again, because if the audience isn't shown that goblins can be a legitimate threat, and also that they cannot be negotiated with, then Slayer being a genocidal maniac would paint him as the villain when he clearly has to be the hero of the story for it to work. That Always Chaotic Evil thing, and the mention of it being functionally propaganda is no coincidence, however. As noted in the TV Tropes page on the trope, Always Chaotic Evil doesn't just justify genocide, it's the only thing that justifies genocide. The Nazis portrayed Jews as Always Chaotic Evil killer rape machines that existed just to assault the purity of their race with interbreeding. If you don't buy into the propaganda that goblins are Always Chaotic Evil, then Goblin Slayer is a Nazi, so it's kind of fucking critical the author gets you onboard the goblin-slaying train. Once that goal is achieved, the story can be relatively lighter (just so long as you find it enjoyable to watch goblins ripped to shreds).
The thing is, nobody else in the world sees things the way that Goblin Slayer does. They haven't seen the propaganda. They're still living in the happy kid-friendly (just ignore the blood everywhere and the monster guts you're wading hip-deep within) fantasy adventure world right up until they lose a fight and suddenly realize that the murder party isn't so fun when they're the ones being murdered.
They don't recognize a goblin as a threat until after they've already lost the fight, and when that happens, they're not going to be reporting back, anyway.
azurelorochi said:
Again, not saying problems other than goblins doesn't exist. And again like Malaria, countries suffering from human trafficking and sex slavery has that problem because they either don't have the means to stop it, or is too incompetent. It's because they already live in a dystopia.
OK, then, name ONE country in the real world that has no sex trafficking.
Your argument seems to be based on the idea that just because you don't hear about it (since you are trying not to), it must be because it doesn't exist, so therefore, it's an unbelievable "plot flaw" if a fictional world isn't a total utopia unless it's a third-world country "just like the real world is".
azurelorochi said:
It doesn't translate well when the setting you're looking at is now a fantasy one where you have people who can level mountains walking around who could have taken care of the problem before breakfast.
They could take out ONE goblin den before breakfast.
That's like feeding one homeless person one meal. To go back to malaria, you can spray a swamp with pesticide to wipe out the mosquitoes in that one swamp for a little while, but that's not wiping out all mosquitoes in all the world by any stretch, and they'll be back soon.
azurelorochi said:
It's like having a pile of shit in the middle of a room.
No, it's like having a pile of shit in the room of someone who lives a couple houses down from you. It's something of a problem when you need to walk by, but for the most part, you can just make derisive comments about how awful the people who live there must be to have to deal with shit in their house and be glad it's not you. THAT'S how people treat malaria. That's how people treat human trafficked sex-slaves. That's how fantasy people treat the poor chumps that got raided by such weak-sauce monsters as mere GOBLINS.
But that's kind of the point of that ludonarrative dissonance "dickwolves" theme from before - it's an RPG, but only Goblin Slayer is taking the story seriously. In your typical Dragon Quest game, you form a group of rebellious teenagers armed with sticks, go out and face monsters with giant googly-eyed happy faces, and just drag your buddies back to the priest and drop some cash or reload a save to recover from any "whoopsies!" that result in deaths. You steal and loot and leave a town behind as soon as you've cleared the board of quests, never to bother with low-level stuff again.
That's what I mean though. It's not a video game but characters still treat it like it is one. You can make a deconstruction of the genre like Grimgar, but when only some of the characters are treating it as such, it breaks its own storytelling. I'm lead to believe that none of the other adventurers fear death or danger, even though the first episode tells us that death is a very common element of the setting.
The anime is like they combined Berserk with Log Horizon, where the protagonist is well aware of the horrors of their world but other characters run out, guns blazing, like they'll just respawn if something goes wrong. That's not deconstruction, it's a Frankenstein monster of genres.
oracle135 said:
No, she didn't. In fact, she actually suggested them to wait for some veterans to join them because they're still noobs but the team leader refused.
It was an extremely passive warning that did not at all convey the actual danger of the situation. It's the kind of thing you would tell people tackling game content they're under leveled for, not some kids who will likely die for real if they don't heed your advice. If it were my job to send kiddos off on dangerous tasks, I'd probably be more proactive in keeping them alive (unless I were a sociopath and really couldn't give a shit.)
The question shouldn't be whether that's the best way to be a visual cue that communicates that a battle is happening, but what that battle is supposed to mean.
Plot holes are only important if they take away from the ability of the story to deliver its message. Sometimes, making a glaring plot hole that makes the audience stop and think why something is the way it is is the message. The Stanley Parable is filled with such obvious plotholes (like the only way to attain "freedom" being to surrender all freedom and do whatever the narrator tells you, or the narrator just giving up and telling you that "You Win!" because he can't figure out how to return the story to its proper track, thus deflating any meaning from "winning" in the game) because stopping and making you question things is the whole point.
The purpose of showing a really dark scene early on in Goblin Slayer was, again, because if the audience isn't shown that goblins can be a legitimate threat, and also that they cannot be negotiated with, then Slayer being a genocidal maniac would paint him as the villain when he clearly has to be the hero of the story for it to work.
I know that. I'm not questioning that you can have to dehumanize the antagonists so much if you want the hero look heroic in comparison even when he's ripping out the otherwise defenseless creature's intestines through its eye sockets, you didn't have to tell that to me.
My point isn't "does this thing help portray the author's message enough that plot hole doesn't matter", note that I never told you the author shouldn't have made goblins a serial rapist race or anything.
I'm saying that the envelope carrying the message can and has been known to either kill the message itself or made it harder to understand. Take how Shokugeki no Soma is supposed to be about the freedom and innovation of the little guy winning over the rigid, uncompromising way of the elite, yet all antagonists are one dimensional and often end up humiliated by being depicted naked in a pathetic posture when they are either defeated or otherwise proven wrong, robbing the antagonists' defeat of any meaningful change and reduces it either to a one-trick pony gag or fanservice shots that has fuck-all to do with its message. The elites are just strawmen for Soma and co to beat down.
I'm saying Goblin Slayer's liberal use of "this premise can only work if both you and the in-universe character sees life as an RPG" is contradictory to its message of "real life has no retries, you die once, you die forever, probably horribly".
right up until they lose a fight and suddenly realize that the murder party isn't so fun when they're the ones being murdered.
They don't recognize a goblin as a threat until after they've already lost the fight, and when that happens, they're not going to be reporting back, anyway.
That bit should have otherwise applied all the same with orcs or dragons or Monty Python killer rabbit. Being party wiped is never fun, regardless of what it is that's killing you.
Yet why are the guilds still approving of goblin quests as being low-ranked? It still is a quest with very, very high fatality rate. Again people doesn't come back to report doesn't mean the guild is dumb and pretend they don't know what happened to those poor chumps. Goblin nest raid quests should have been reserved for higher leveled teams who can stamped the entire nest easier than going to McDonalds, if the guild has common sense and actually wants to see its member return alive or you know, not give the goblins baby factories that only make the problem worse.
Goblin quests are treated as low ranked because the employers are poor? Well if the village was instead wrecked by a Behemoth and those same poor farmers came to request a Behemoth killing quest, would it still be treated as low ranked then?
As said, this bit of the story makes absolutely no sense unless both you and the in-universe character treat this as an RPG, and I'm saying it has nothing to do with whether or not goblin genocide is justifiable.
OK, then, name ONE country in the real world that has no sex trafficking.
OK, Antarctica, Vatican City, Pitcairn Islands doesn't have sex trafficking.
What, you're saying I'm just being a petty pedantic? That's cause you also were returning a petty pedantic question to me. I'm talking about malaria and sex trafficking on a large scale. A 1 sex trafficking case per 5 million population doesn't mean sex trafficking is an "issue that needs urgent attention" in that country.
That is when the issue of sex trafficking is called negligible, yet ironically it is going to also be many of those advanced countries with low sex trafficking cases that's going to be the most serious in tackling that problem. Because that's what sensible societies do, even if not for the goodness of their heart, they don't want to have some idiot scumbag waste their human resources or don't want to be seen as incompetent for not being able to win against a single petty criminal.
They could take out ONE goblin den before breakfast.
That's like feeding one homeless person one meal. To go back to malaria, you can spray a swamp with pesticide to wipe out the mosquitoes in that one swamp for a little while, but that's not wiping out all mosquitoes in all the world by any stretch, and they'll be back soon.
Except in this fantasy world everyone is carrying insecticide nukes around everywhere with them that could easily wipe out all mosquito nests they came across.
The goblin nest problem could have been treated like how Australians treat cane toads, "if you come across one and has the means to safely do it, please kill the motherfuckers, it's a service for your country".
Just ask "if you are sufficiently leveled and come across a goblin nest, please drop a Firaga on it, kthnx". It's not one team to eliminate one den, it's any team eliminating any den they come across. It's not "eh this is such a hassle noobish job, I don't wanna do it", it's "well I like the apples this village is growing, so why not give them a little hand, it's gonna take me only 1 spell to do the job anyway".
Except in this fantasy world everyone is carrying insecticide nukes around everywhere with them that could easily wipe out all mosquito nests they came across.
The goblin nest problem could have been treated like how Australians treat cane toads, "if you come across one and has the means to safely do it, please kill the motherfuckers, it's a service for your country".
That argument falls flat on its face when you remember that even the Priestess can cast, oh... THREE SPELLS A DAY. Max.
We're at DnD level of spellcasting here, not your "Tactical Nuke in a Pocket" level of fantasy. A spellcaster has to remember the spell beforehand, has to have clarity of mind to cast the spell as well as know the correct incantation for that spell. That's kinda hard to do when you've got a horde of goblins in your face all thinking about rape and murder with their main target being you.
By the way, did you know how the Cane Toad problem is nowadays? Nobody gives a damn. Sure, you see them getting flattened on the road everywhere, but nobody goes out of their way to shoot them with a gun. If you see one on the roadway (emphasis here), you swerve a little to align it with your wheel, then keep on driving. They're nothing more than a speed bump. But nobody goes out of their way to actively hunt them down even if there's a spawn of eggs two feet away in a shallow pond.
Ain't nobody got time for that.
Just ask "if you are sufficiently leveled and come across a goblin nest, please drop a Firaga on it, kthnx". It's not one team to eliminate one den, it's any team eliminating any den they come across. It's not "eh this is such a hassle noobish job, I don't wanna do it", it's "well I like the apples this village is growing, so why not give them a little hand, it's gonna take me only 1 spell to do the job anyway".
And not everyone with that level of spellcasting has the time to cast a Firaga at a problem to go away. You keep forgetting this isn't Final Fantasy style unlimited casting. It's DnD. Even if you have a million MP, you only get to cast 3-4 spells a day. Why are you wasting your Tactical Nuke on a den of mangy goblins when you need to save it to decapitate that Black Undead Dragon of Ungodly Horror two towns away?
Simply put, Goblins are a waste of time and effort for the high level adventurers who have better things to do. That's why it's been delegated to low-level adventurers who come dime a dozen and essentially expendable.
I'm saying Goblin Slayer's liberal use of "this premise can only work if both you and the in-universe character sees life as an RPG" is contradictory to its message of "real life has no retries, you die once, you die forever, probably horribly".
Yes, because there's never been any time in real world history that people have seen incredibly dangerous things like, say, war as some sort of grand adventure where men can prove themselves and they'll get rich and famous and OH MY GOD, PEOPLE ARE DYING! And sitting in muddy trenches trying not to die of poisonous gasses really sucks. Who ever knew that having a World War would be so much less fun than the propaganda made it out to be?!
You're calling something a "plot hole" not because it actually is a plot hole, but just because you don't want to believe something.
Just as it's not a plot hole that Makise Kurisu is shown dead in the first episode of Stein's Gate then is alive later on, that is the plot, it's not a plot hole that nobody besides Goblin Slayer (and then Priestess) see the world the way that Goblin Slayer does, that is the plot.
azurelorochi said:
Yet why are the guilds still approving of goblin quests as being low-ranked? It still is a quest with very, very high fatality rate. Again people doesn't come back to report doesn't mean the guild is dumb and pretend they don't know what happened to those poor chumps. Goblin nest raid quests should have been reserved for higher leveled teams who can stamped the entire nest easier than going to McDonalds, if the guild has common sense and actually wants to see its member return alive or you know, not give the goblins baby factories that only make the problem worse.
Goblin quests are treated as low ranked because the employers are poor? Well if the village was instead wrecked by a Behemoth and those same poor farmers came to request a Behemoth killing quest, would it still be treated as low ranked then?
As said, this bit of the story makes absolutely no sense unless both you and the in-universe character treat this as an RPG, and I'm saying it has nothing to do with whether or not goblin genocide is justifiable.
First off, goblin-slaying isn't treated as low-ranked by the guild, it was treated as low-ranked by adventurers who clearly didn't know what they were doing. One or two of them had fought goblins before under wildly different circumstances and had a totally inappropriate idea of what they were in for.
The Guild Girl did try to warn them. She absolutely should have tried more than a single interjection, but it's far from a story-breaking plot hole for a character to be too soft-spoken to feel she has any chance of breaking into some boastful guy's assertions that he's totally capable of handling something. People trying to offer good advice get shouted down all the time in real life.
azurelorochi said:
OK, Antarctica, Vatican City, Pitcairn Islands doesn't have sex trafficking.
What, you're saying I'm just being a petty pedantic? That's cause you also were returning a petty pedantic question to me. I'm talking about malaria and sex trafficking on a large scale. A 1 sex trafficking case per 5 million population doesn't mean sex trafficking is an "issue that needs urgent attention" in that country.
That is when the issue of sex trafficking is called negligible, yet ironically it is going to also be many of those advanced countries with low sex trafficking cases that's going to be the most serious in tackling that problem. Because that's what sensible societies do, even if not for the goodness of their heart, they don't want to have some idiot scumbag waste their human resources or don't want to be seen as incompetent for not being able to win against a single petty criminal.
Pedantry nothing, you're just proving my point. (Although if I were being pedantic, Antarctica isn't a country, you better believe that Vatican City has sex workers, and I don't know about the Pitcairn islands, but it wouldn't be unreasonable at all for such a small population to have people who 'tend to the loneliness' of the other residents.)
If you believe that most of the world has "1 sex trafficking case per 5 million population", then you're saying that, just as an example, you believe that the United States has less than 70 sex trafficking cases (or that it "doesn't have the resources to deal with it" or is "incompetent".) A super-quick, low-effort Googling hitting the top search response turns up an estimate of 20.9 million. That's not 1 in every 5 million, that's 1 in every 20. (But hey, I'm sure 6 orders of magnitude is just pedantics, amirite?)
And yes, this absolutely applies to every major country in the world, so no pedantic scoffing at dumb Americans. Just go Google sex trafficking in whatever country you live in or want to hold up as being the "only not-incompetent country".
And that is EXACTLY MY POINT - you don't know this because you are able to live comfortably ignorant of the omnipresent suffering of those who you aren't forced to see.
You dismiss malaria's existence by dismissing all the countries that have it as being functionally inferior countries, without really looking into their situations. You dismiss human trafficking and sex workers as something that only applies to 0.00002% of the population of what is presumably at least SOME part of the world, and that anyplace with more sex workers than that is just some inferior country that is totally unrealistically a part of the real world.
Because this thing you're doing right here? This thing where you're saying it's not a "REAL" problem (I am awaiting your new pedantic definition of "real problem"...) because it "only happens in inferior countries"? That is the EXACT THING you're saying is a "plot hole" when villagers who don't think they're under threat from goblins dismiss the threat of goblins in other lands. It's malaria to them - a problem for some inferior country somewhere else. Sure, they'll say that maybe someone should do something, but they're not about to make any actual sacrifices for it.
Again, you see the threat of goblins as a "Real Problem" because the show forces you to see it as a real problem, and that puts your point of view (and Goblin Slayer's) at odds with the rest of the world, because they haven't been forced to see it, just as you haven't been forced to see the problems of sex trafficking where you live, or how close victims of human trafficking actually live to you. If this show had been about a quest to kill the Demon Lord, and someone had just mentioned in passing that there have been a bunch of noobs getting TPKed by goblins recently, you would be saying that the Demon Lord is all that matters and that it's totally unrealistic and a plot hole that people are worrying about goblins when there's this big, scary Demon Lord threatening existence. (Because you're talking about the Demon Lord's threat as though the Avengers could totally just call a "Time Out" with Thanos so they can go stop a bank robbery.)
EDIT: Oh, and by the way, when I was trying to Google up some references to sex trafficking in Vatican City, it was really hard to find what I wanted because there were so many hits about how the Pope is trying to bang every gong and ring every alarm he can screaming "SEX TRAFFICKINGIS A REAL PROBLEMWORLDWIDE! OH, WHY DOESN'T ANYONE REALIZE GOBLINS ARE SUCH A PROBLEM?!"
Because, you know, all "real" problems are immediately recognized as "real" problems right away, and it's not like it took over a decade of activism to convince people that AIDS was a "real" problem, and not just "God's wrath against the gays" or something.
azurelorochi said:
Except in this fantasy world everyone is carrying insecticide nukes around everywhere with them that could easily wipe out all mosquito nests they came across.
The goblin nest problem could have been treated like how Australians treat cane toads, "if you come across one and has the means to safely do it, please kill the motherfuckers, it's a service for your country".
Just ask "if you are sufficiently leveled and come across a goblin nest, please drop a Firaga on it, kthnx". It's not one team to eliminate one den, it's any team eliminating any den they come across. It's not "eh this is such a hassle noobish job, I don't wanna do it", it's "well I like the apples this village is growing, so why not give them a little hand, it's gonna take me only 1 spell to do the job anyway".
Aside from the fact that the reason Australians tell motorists to please squash all the cane toads they come across is because the government absolutely IS helpless against them, that "if you're strong enough pls kill gobs kthxbi" is exactly what they are doing with the guild system. That's exactly what Goblin Slayer was doing. For all that is revealed in the show, Guild Girl contacted Goblin Slayer right away and sent him in after the noobie party as backup, and that's why he happened to show up at all. The people who are powerful enough that aren't going to all the goblin dens are the people that are so powerful that their presence is absolutely required for saving the world by fighting even worse things basically all the time. They don't have time to go out of their way to drop some of their limited nukes on goblins, there's a swarm of dragons eating the capital city RIGHT NOW!
Also, you said this earlier, but Goblin Slayer isn't "mid-ranked", he's silver-class, which is 8th tier out of 10. Guild Girl even says that you'd never see anyone in the top two tiers around because they're all doing more important things than random mob quests. Goblin Slayer is the most powerful person around who has time to waste on goblins. And he's using his time killing every goblin he's possibly able to kill with a pathological fervor.
The book and manga literally say that she spends the rest of her life huddled up in her room scared shitless. Though considering what happened it's understandable.
Not to nitpick, but that's wrong. The book and manga run through the typical scenario, but don't outright say "and then Fighter stayed in her room until she died, the end." That's an important difference; it leave's Fighter's book open for more events, however unlikely.