Remember, J-List is continuing our Moe Day celebration through October 17th, with a huge 10x J-List points sale on artbooks and figures, plus a super giveaway you can enter to win a $100 figure of your choice. See our blog post for details and to enter!
How to make a popular anime? Make a splash with the first episode, like Goblin Slayer!
I still have fond memories of the first AD&D-influenced fantasy anime that came out back in 1988. It was called Record of Lodoss War, and it told the story of a party of adventures including Parn the young fighter, Ghim the grim dwarf and Deedlit, the first moe elf, who take on a dragon and do a bunch of other cool stuff. Suddenly, two of my great loves from high school, playing paper-and-dice tabletop RPG games* with my nerdy friends and watching anime, could actually come together. I remember being fascinated with the way they converted the elements of characters, ability levels, weapons, spells and monsters into a flowing animated story.
Thanks to the popularity of isekai (“life in another world”), we’ve got dozens of anime series that deconstruct classic AD&D style fantasy worlds, including Overlord, Konosuba, Sword Art Online, DanMachi, and How Not to Summon a Demon Lord. We even have multiple entries in the current season, including That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, Conception and the topic of today’s post…Goblin Slayer.
Goblin Slayer exploded after its first episode because of the extreme darkness and violence of the story, which starts out with a group of inexperienced adventurers convinced they can handle the local goblins easily…until the party is overwhelmed and very bad things happen. It follows a low-level female cleric who joins forces with the Goblin Slayer, a powerful fighter who hates the creatures, after her party is killed. While the dark approach to the story might not be for everyone, I was thrilled with it. Not only is it an outstanding classic adventure story that looks like it’ll be interesting in the future, the fact that everything is on the line for the characters makes the drama very entertaining.
I’m of a certain vintage as a lover of animation, and back in my day the coolest thing on TV was Hanna-Barbara’s Jonny Quest, about a wealthy scientist who brought his son with him around the world, solving mysteries and breaking up international spy rings. In the 80s, when parental groups started insisting that all animation be bland and child-friendly, Jonny Quest was targeted as representing everything that was wrong with animation, with its guns and lasers and explosions and child endangerment. Happily, my generation won that battle, and now we have lots of interesting animation to enjoy, including (if we want) stories with violence. Including dark stories like Goblin Slayer.
*In Japanese, a dice-and-paper table-top game was mistranslated as “table-talk game”
What’s the most violent or dramatic anime series you’ve watched? Tell us on Twitter!
Ever since we started our long relationship with Nitroplus, the company responsible for making so many of the best games and anime stories, from Saya no Uta to Madoka Magica to Gakkou Gurashi ~ School Live, we knew we wanted to work with them on their Nitroplus x CHiRAL games, which are loved by thousands of fans. That day is now here, I’m happy to report. Read our post on sweet pool, which is now up for preorder in two different editions!
