Blair Loveday
When I checked out the first season of Goblin Slayer I was shockingly impressed.
It started as a bit of a generic adventurer anime, but quickly evolved into something more interesting as the bland armor clad Goblin Slayer became a fascinating and interesting character. Then as his party grew, the whole series became more interesting.
Well now with Season 2 I was keen to see where the show could go next.
If you haven’t seen Goblin Slayer before, it is set in a fantasy world where adventurers take on quests to level up their rank in the Adventurer’s Guild. Goblin Slayer is looked down on by most adventurers because instead of taking on more difficult quests to grow his rank, he just takes on goblins. As the show progressed, and after he saves Priestess, he built up a party and developed as a character. In this show goblins are truly awful creatures, capturing human women and torturing and raping them. Nasty stuff.
Season 2 kicks off with the party still fully intact. Nowadays people dont talk crap about Goblin Slayer anymore, in fact they want to share a drink with him. He is asked to train up a newbie who is a young wizard but Goblin Slayer isn’t keen. It turns out he is super cocky, and with Priestess wanting to get leveled up, they are paired together to take out a goblin. This quest turns out to be super dark, and despite the young wizard being super confident, he has to face the realities of these nasty creatures.
The series follows a bunch more side quests and stories.
These vary from goblin killing, to High Elf Archer taking the team to her sisters wedding, to killing goblins. The one issue this series has is that a lot of it feels like filler. It doesn’t have the super strong throughline and character development that Season 1 had. On the flip side, there are a lot less nasty sexual predator scenes from the goblins. While I get they did that to truly make the goblins the vilest creatures imaginable in Season 1, it was never a great thing to watch. There are some seriously cool fights in this series though, and the main party characters are consistently likable and fun to watch together.
While Goblin Slayer Season 2 doesn’t hit the heights of Season 1, it is still a damn fun series. The characters are fun, and the bulk of the episodes are great. It could have been a bit shorter by cutting some of the fluff down, or more engaging by sliding in more character development.
