#danmemo

I’ve finally gotten through all of the story content, other than the Hermes character missions. And, wow, there was a lot to go through. Most of it was really silly and lighthearted and fun. Which, you know, isn’t a bad place to be for side stories in a mobile game. But there is an absolute ton of character development poured in.

Case in point:

Tiona there on the left is an absolute, shameless, hero geek. Which isn’t to say that she’s obsessed with strength.

And that’s a good thing for her, because there’s maybe a dozen or so adventurers in the setting who are as strong as Tiona is.

And Chigusa, who is on the right, definitely isn’t one of them.

Exactly Tiona, exactly.

But the collab.

So, the basic idea seems to be that a handful of adventurers from Danmachi, and a handful from Goblin Slayer both seem to be trapped in something like a famous dungeon of the Goblin Slayer setting. They’re currently scattered into several groups, but they seem like they’re about to reunite and then they’re sure to dive deeper into the dungeon, face terrible enemies, prevail, and return home triumphant but without any impact on the status quo. This is a non-canon story for both settings, after all.

It’s an interesting choice of shows to mix together. Danmachi is a fairly traditional shonen manga adventure setting, with its massive power scaling, relentless obsession with the suicidal determination of its main characters, and the general moral that the trick to life is to just give it your all and everything will work out. Goblin Slayer is, infamously, not.

I used to pay a fair bit of attention to D&D in the 3.whatever era. So, in D&D terms, Danmachi is a conventional campaign that’s always moving on to bigger and more epic threats. Goblin Slayer is E6, a variant that stops leveling at level 6. And in that kind of setting, even the most minor enemies never stop being a truly lethal threat. Sounds good? Interesting maybe? There’s one problem.

Goblin Slayer is a little lazy as a story. For example, the main character’s name is Goblin Slayer, and the priestess who travels with him is named Priestess. And, here’s the part that makes the story infamous: the way we know that goblins are evil is that in the Goblin Slayer world they’re obligate rapists.

As I said the last time this came up in a story: It’s lazy. It’s grotesque. It’s pointless.

I get why the author wanted the goblins to cross a line. Goblin Slayer himself is supposed to be pragmatic and ruthless, and the things he does in fighting off goblins could easily make it difficult for the readers to sympathize with him. I just don’t like the way the author did it, or the line he chose.

And it’s a shame, because otherwise I really enjoyed the anime.

So yeah, that’s the series and the goblins that your Danmemo waifus are now stuck dealing with...

So far on the Danmachi side, we’ve gotten an Ouka adventurer and a Chigusa assist. And on the Goblin Slayer side we have Goblin Slayer, Priestess, Cow Girl, High Elf Archer, and Noble Fencer. So who’s left?

Well art seems to have spoiled that Ryu from Danmachi is probably getting a unit, almost certainly an adventurer. And Sword Maiden from Goblin Slayer already has enough art and voice work that it would be surprising if she didn’t get a unit, probably an assist. So if there are two banners coming, that probably leaves 3 or 4 other characters that could slot in. We’re likely to have at least one danmachi character on each banner, two adventurers on each banner, and either an assist on each banner or one assist shared between the two. We could also see an adventurer and an assist on each with a shared adventurer.

The other danmachi characters seen and heard so far without units in the event are Bell, Amid, and Freya. Freya is spectating and gambling on the outcome, so she isn’t too likely. Bell has far too many units, so he’s most likely. And a new Amid would be really nice, particularly since her last unit was fairly awesome but had the bad luck of being released at more or less the same time as Haruhime, so it’s probably not her.

For Goblin Slayer, other than Sword Maiden, all the characters we’ve seen already have units. Stand out characters we haven’t seen are Dwarf Shaman, Lizard Priest, Spearman, and Witch. My hope is that it’s Spearman and Witch. Who, as it turns out, share VAs with Bell and Freya and are definitely working in the event already.

So what I’d like to see for the new banners is this: adventurer units for Ryu, Amid, Spearman, and Witch with Sword Maiden as an assist on both banners. And if Bell absolutely needs a unit he can take the assist slot on one of the banners. But I’d rather he got kidnapped by goblins and we had to spend the event trying to rescue him with Ryu as the main Danmachi viewpoint character.