Goblin Slayer II

Episode 12

In my often derisive assessments of Goblin Slayer, I've seen the show as something of an "edgy gateway" series. It's the sort of thing to draw in 14-year-old anime fans who know there's something more complex than battle shonen adaptations. Still rather shallow on its own, despite its pretensions, but at least pointed in a direction with some potential. Goblin Slayer II has been trying to further explore avenues besides sex, violence, and sexual violence in this second season. This finish thus continues to poke at more thoughtful explorations, while also delivering a big, go-home finale.

The immediate action aspect of the episode continues to confirm that Goblin Slayer is most dynamic when it's focusing on anything but slaying goblins. The sacrifice ritual failing would just be anticlimactic so it at least partially goes off and delivers only the hand of a dark god for the party to fight. Giant disembodied hand enemies are cool, it's an inviolable rule of fantasy action. This one even starts spewing ice magic all over the place, snowing over the dungeon for an impromptu Christmas special!

The battle provides brief moments to communicate the danger that's supposed to be inherent to Goblin Slayer's setting. I have to presume that the story will eventually shockingly kill off one or two of the party, but for now, the likes of Lizard Priest and High Elf Archer just get partially incapacitated to drive up the tension. It's setting them up to make the roll-critical last-chance gambits so engaging for a long-playing D&D crew. Much of the intensity, however, is centered on selling Priestess's reactions to this high-pressure situation. She had to hang back out of necessity last week, so now in this episode, she's the one coming up with creative strategies and making the snap decisions to enact them.

That's for delivering on Priestess's arc which has been the primary thematic thrust all season. She's learned and grown as an adventurer, and the Slayer's status as a teacher and mentor for her to that end is reinforced as she acknowledges him as the source of her "hammer and anvil" idea. More than that, it turns out the story used the kidnapped princess less as her own character, and more as a wholesale reflection of how far Priestess has come. It's not enough that the princess is wearing Priestess's clothes and repeating her sorrowful mantra from the very first episode. The show has Priestess look at her, then say directly to the camera "She is me."

It's blunt by the standards of storytelling I've acclimated to but it's also not meant for me—what depth is here is for those learning to look for it. There's an argument that Goblin Slayer's insistence on not naming its characters emphasizes their utility as ideas for this kind of storytelling. Sometimes those are stupid ideas, as in the case of Wizard Boy. But other times they work well enough in articulating positive growth in someone like Priestess. It's embodied in other approaches to nuance as well. Sword Maiden overcomes her inhibitions to lead a charge that winds up saving the Slayer's party at the last minute. There are subtleties in the presentation here, the Maiden still shaking with trauma upon confronting the goblins, or the Priestess pulling away from the Slayer in the moment as she questions what her relationship is, or can ever be, with him.

Even with all this drama and/or introspection, Goblin Slayer II still finds some other moments to be askew. It continues to flex its unexpected comedy chops, including the gallows humor of the Priestess initially passing over the princess to ensure that her precious chain mail is okay. And I laughed out loud when her elevator-based smashing of the demon hand was punctuated with the little "ding" of the car arriving. On the other hand, there's the extended stretch of the conspirators who orchestrated this kidnapping plot being foiled by a boisterous masked hero, who may or may not be someone the audience has already met before. It's meant to be another instance of this season's particular idea about other, more glamorous adventures happening just out of the frame of all the goblin slaying. But in the end, with little context or indication of continuation, comes off as a non-sequitur more than anything else.

Where Goblin Slayer II resolves and kind of resonates at the end is, naturally, with the Slayer himself. He's become not conflicted, but at least a little confused in his mission in all he's been through thus far. He argues to himself that he can't change, even as he has enough to even consider such a question. He has had an impact on that wider world, inspiring people like the Priestess just as she affected the princess. And he still has a home to return to from the vengeance-driven crusade which he also regards as a banal nine-to-five. All the ponderings glimpsed through this season codify Goblin Slayer as a Baby's First Dark Fantasy, but unlike several of my other criticisms, I don't mean that derisively. An audience's assessment of these sorts of settings has to start somewhere, and good or bad, a series like Goblin Slayer is enough to get one thinking a bit more critically. Like the wider world of adventuring outside of goblin slaying, there are whole extra dimensions of fantasy and anime storytelling out there to be experienced.

Rating:

Goblin Slayer II is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

You can just call Chris the Goblin Slayer Slayer. You can check out his other adventures over on his blog, or brave the grungy goblin cave that is Twitter.