10.16
Another anime season, another light novel adaptation. Here’s to another smorgasbord season of crappy LN titles, now adapted for a visual format! We got your isekais, we got your imoutoshit, we got your fantasy harems, we got your crappy vanilla SAO in case you thought the alternative flavor was too tasty, but perhaps the one that has everyone talking is a fantasy anime based on a little novel called Goblin Slayer. Goblin Slayer, the latest “dark” fantasy light novel to get an anime follows the titular character on a quest to slay the green menace known as Goblins. A dude decked out in badass armor on a one-man war that kills his targets in increasingly violent and creative ways. Sounds like a fun, if juvenile, time right? Well, maybe a bit too juvenile. I’ve been cautiously optimistic for the anime almost all year, the metal-sounding title combined with the simple premise, badass looking protagonist, frequent comparisons to DOOM, and promise of a splatterfest of goblin gore got me somewhat interested when I saw it pop up on certain boards. Unfortunately one of the first things I heard about Goblin Slayer was the amount of rape and sexualized violence in the manga adaptation (almost all towards female characters, of course), so already my interest took a plummet, it wasn’t until I learned that most of those elements were only on-page in the manga that my interest slowly climbed back up, this combined with the staff later revealed for the anime, including writer Yosuke Kuroda, whom has worked on some of my favorite such as Gungrave, S-CRY-Ed, Jormungand, and this year’s Gun Gale Online, and had worked alongside co-writer Hideyuki Kurata on Drifters and Hellsing Ultimate. Director Takaharu Ozaki also made a name for himself with last year’s critically acclaimed Girls Last Tour, so with a solid staff combined with White Fox being in charge of animation my anticipation grew, albeit, rather cautiously. Unfortunately my caution was not unfounded.
By the time you read this, you should already be well aware that the Goblin Slayer anime kept in the infamous rape scene from the manga. Somewhat censored, but still enough was shown to make it obvious as to what was happening. As expected, the outrage was insane. Dozens upon dozens of articles twitter threads, youtube videos, and forum posts were made detailing how Goblin Slayer is a terrible anime and you should be ashamed for liking it. While not all criticism was valid (the ones saying its fascist are particularly eye-rolling) but a lot of them made valid points, especially regarding its depiction of rape. Likewise, the pushback against this was also something to behold. Fans, both of the source material and newcomers alike where telling these people that they were overreacting, that this isn’t the only anime to have rape, that manga/manga like Berserk and hundreds of others have had rape depicted in the past, that the rape in those shows were worse than the rape in Goblin Slayer, that the rape was there to show that the Goblins were “really bad guys”, etc., etc., ad nauseum.
To which I have to say to the defense force: “so what”? So what if other anime have shown this in the past? Just because some show had rape in the past, usually more graphic or extreme, does not excuse tasteless depiction in the present, especially when it ends handling the topic even worse than its predecessors did. I myself am a fan of such works like Berserk or most of Yoshiaki Kawajiri or Hideyuki Kikuchi’s early input, and they’re easily my least favorite things about those works, but I can look past them as a relic of their era and the fact that they’re ultimately better written and more engaging works in spite of those elements, not because of them. The “it’s to show how bad the goblins are!” argument is also laughable due to how overused variations of that argument are to justify why rape needs to happen in a given work. If a writer is good enough, they wouldn’t need to shove rape in the first chapter of their work to “show how evil and irredeemable” the villains are, as there are millions of other ways to prove someone’s villainy than to rape a character that will soon be discarded. Just look at DC’s Identity Crisis from last decade; do you really think people took Dr. Light seriously as a villain again after he raped Sue Dibny? No, he just became the butt of even more jokes in the fandom and future writers had no idea what to do with such a character with that on his rap sheet, they very well couldn’t have him in lighthearted stories again, yet they couldn’t successfully write him as a competent villain again without having to address such a heavy issue or ignoring it entirely, and given a choice to write a rapist, or a similarly evil character that doesn’t have such baggage attached to him yet still allowing for more flexible stories like the Joker, it’s easy to see why Dr. Light remains forgotten to this day.
That’s how I feel about the goblins in Goblin Slayer, too vile and despicable to be in lighthearted stories, yet too one dimensionally evil to be part of a nuanced narrative, and if the story just treats them as a typical dangerous threat from now on, then what was the point of them being rapists in the first place? You can spout in-universe justifications as much as you want, but before the rape scene happened the anime honestly did a really good job building them up as a credible threat, it was a staple of a good horror scene; lots of tense build up coupled with false reassurance that things will go well, then the rug is pulled when they show up on screen, the poor cgi actually adding to their unsettling, erratic nature, which only becomes more effective when they start slaughtering the characters we’ve been following up ‘til now…and then the monk’s clothes get ripped off and it all turns into a really bad, low-budget hentai, and the anime loses me. I wasn’t terrified, disgusted sure, in the same way you’d be disgusted if your neighbor went on the street, de-pantsed themselves, and defecated in public. It was like if in the new Halloween movie, they successfully did everything to make Michael scary again with master directing work…but then suddenly he stops and rapes his victim for no real reason. It just comes off as trying too hard and ends up clashing with the tone as a result. And that’s the problem with rape scenes, not just in Goblin Slayer, but with “dark” fiction in general. Too often they resort to on-screen sexual violence (almost exclusively against women) as a means for bad writers to show how “realistic” or “mature” they are without actually saying anything meaningful about the issue, often ignoring the actual repercussions inherent in the act.
People like to argue that everyone acts like rape is a bigger deal than violence in regards to fiction, but in many ways that’s true. There’s a stark difference between seeing a guy brutally slaughter a horde of nameless minions and seeing a character get raped on-screen. The former is usually impersonal, a cathartic spectacle used to excite and entertain a usually fantastic scenario, while the latter is always incredibly personal and all too real as there are victims of the crime that are traumatized by the experience to this day. Such an argument is also disingenuous as it ignores the controversy over fictionalized violence that still happens today, with one of the most recent examples being the backlash against the Death Wish remake earlier this year.
I’ve also noticed that many people that defend Goblin Slayer’s rape scenes also criticize SAO or Akame ga Kill for their use of rape and other edgy elements despite Goblin Slayer not being any better in its use of it. To say that this reeks of hypocrisy would be an understatement. Goblin Slayer is just as guilty of using rape as a shorthand for making its antagonists irredeemable and killing off characters violently for shock value as SAO and AgK are, yet somehow this is the one that has people leap to its defense and praise it as a genuinely good story while other shows remain the butt of jokes on the internet? If anything Goblin Slayer handles its edgy elements worse than its contemporaries as it horribly clashes with what is inherently a silly, fun premise. People like to compare this to Berserk, but for all its faults Berserk has a consistent tone to it, and its unsavory elements, while not expertly handled still have actual repercussions for both the characters and the world, even in the early volumes it was apparent that it was more than just a manga about a lone badass fighting demons and would become more of character drama with the stakes of an epic fantasy novel, whereas Goblin Slayer, by the authors own admission, is a low level fantasy adventure more focused on a specific niche than anything really deep or heavy. Maybe I’ll change my mind if the monk fighter comes back and turns her traumatic experience in the goblin cave into a drive to prevent other women from suffering what she suffered and becomes a fellow goblin hunter, but that sounds a bit too smart for a show such as this.
I know by now that fans are more than sick of hearing everyone talk about the rape in Goblin Slayer, but if you are tired of hearing this discussion over and over, then the blame lies in the series itself for including it in the first place. When you introduce heavy subjects in your work, then be prepared for your portrayal of said subjects to be discussed and your work to be judged according to how you handle those subjects, especially when handled poorly and brought to a new, more visible medium. And really, the fact that so many people are still discussing the subject matter two weeks later is an indicator that there’s unfortunately not much else to Goblin Slayer for the uninitiated.
Now, I’m not saying anything like Goblin Slayer shouldn’t exist or nobody can put rape and other controversial subject matter in their work, or other such nonsense. Every work has the right to exist, everyone has the right to create, and creators have the right to put whatever concept or subject matter they so desire in their work. However, with that also comes the right for that creator, work, and use of that subject matter to be criticized whether they like it or not. Keep in mind that I have no ill will towards the author of the original Light Novel himself; Kumo Kagyu. The guy just wanted to make a cool, dark fantasy book inspired by fantasy books and anime he consumed while growing up, and I can respect and relate to that. It’s clear that his depiction of goblins as evil, depraved rapists was more of a desire to emulate other dark fiction but doing it poorly in typical amateur writer fashion and ignorance, rather than any deep-seated malice, and while he is to blame for including and (presumably) approving it in the first place, the addition of graphic rape in most of Goblin Slayer’s adaptation also lies in the hands of the ones in charge of said adaptations. Ultimately, Goblin Slayer won’t be a commentary and critique on rape culture, and the society lets those evils slip away because that’s not the story Kagyu had in mind nor is it his vision, but just yet another misstep of a young writer not understanding the topics his own work perpetuates. Unfortunately, the vision Kagyu does have leaves a lot to be desired, as Goblin Slayer is still plagued with a ton of issues that hinder its enjoyment and verisimilitude.
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To be continued.