English Dub Review: Goblin Slayer “Goblin Slayer in the Water Town”

Man, these Pokemon town names are starting to get really boring.

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

In a dark cave, a woman is held captive by several evil demons, only to be saved by an all female adventuring team!

But enough about that, Goblin Slayer has gotten his next goblin slaying quest and he’s passively asking his new friends to come along. The quest takes them to Water Town, a town known for its…very coarse wheat, apparently. They meet their client, the Archbishop of the Supreme God, who is also the legendary Sword Maiden. She tells them of a murdered girl and the retrieved corpse of a goblin, leading them to believe that they were the cause of the murder and several thefts across the city, likely living underneath the city in old ruins. She tried mobilizing the army, but it was deemed too insignificant for them, hence why GS and the rest were called in.

The group first heads down a well into the sewers, soon coming across the first of several waves of goblins. As they trek further in, they encounter a ship of goblin pirates that they manage to take down with teamwork. Their fight attracts a giant white alligator, but they manage to use Priestess’ magic to lure the other goblins towards it to be eaten. Something isn’t adding up, though. Goblins are quick to learn skills, but are cowardly by nature, so they wouldn’t have been making boats if they’d been here long enough to know about the alligator. Someone is controlling them.

OUR TAKE

Back into the fray we go. Our party is officially on their second quest together and it looks like they’ve worked out a lot of the kinks from last time. Everyone functions well together both as a team and in terms of chemistry, so scenes of them in down time are fun to watch while scenes of them in battle together show they’re a well oiled machine. Priestess and HEA (High Elf Archer) even seem to have figured out how to rein in Goblin Slayer’s more brash battle choices, which is definitely a sign of progress. With everything bad we’ve seen he’s been through, it’s nice seeing GS really begin to form sturdy friendships with his team.

The major addition to the voice cast this week is Meg McClain as Sword Maiden. Like a lot of the actors in these recent simuldub shows, she’s basically a newbie with not a whole lot of credits to her name, but I think she’s handling herself pretty well with a role like this. Of course, her real test is going to come later with Sword Maiden’s more important scenes, so there’s not a whole lot I can assess about how she’s handling this character right now. Guess we’ll see how that goes when we get there.

The town of Water Town is not a BAD location, but it does seem just a bit underdeveloped. It’s got the obvious Venice influences to it with the boats and water travel, as well being the home of a legendary Gold Rank warrior, so it’s not like it’s completely devoid of personality or interest. We just haven’t gotten a chance to see that much of it aside from the sewers. Having an albino alligator would certainly be good tourist trap once all those goblins are out of there though.

As for where the story is headed next in this arc, I’m hoping it isn’t too much of a redo of the fight with the Ogre. We already know GS doesn’t have another scroll on him, so the ending will at least be different, and the location is already set apart from the fortress well enough. One aspect I would like to carry over is how threatening the boss fight will be, since I wouldn’t want the battles to become too easy and lose any sense of stakes that I’ve come to expect here. Either way, we’re off to a fine start.