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GOBLIN
June 08, 2018
September 21, 2018
The immense popularity of "Goblin":
This does not bode well for logic and consistency,
where it would be hard to rate the Goblin much
higher than a "B" or "C".
"With the kiss of a reaper, a persons memories are restored--"
With a wave of the writer's hand, new elements can be introduced.
Particularly bad: Sunny's *feigned* amnesia seems undermotivated.
Perhaps: A self-sacrifice move to save the Reaper from punishment,
but how does she even know anything about that?
First it's: "Now that the Goblin is dead, all memories of him are erased--"
Really? You never said anything about that before--
"Yes! All memories are erased! Everyone will forget-- oh, except for
this guy-- "
Oh so *he* gets to remember--
"Yes, just that one guy gets to remember-- Oh, except for this
other one over here, she remembers too--"
She does? But she hasn't been acting like that--
"Yes, yes, she's just been *pretending* ha, ha fooled you!"
Oh. But why would she take the trouble to pretend? She doesn't
know anything about the Reaper being in trouble, does she?
"Ah, the ways of the deity are mysterious!"
Yeah, okay.
But then this series-- like a lot of the newer ones-- does a
better job of keeping the pacing up, in part because of the
complicated premises (goblin and reaper and dieties and ghosts
and ...), and in part because the writer just changes the deal
part way through-- at least this keeps it from being boring.
It's pretty clear one of the elements people love here is the
fujoshi-bait-- excuse me, the "bromance"-- and we can look
forward to that being exploited to death in future series.
You can expect endless parades of boy-toy frenemies dressed
like department store mannequins.
(July 16, 2020)
Perhaps weirdly, that doesn't
seem to have happened.
An awful lot of the appeal of Goblin is working
with *extremely* traditional-- if not
aggressively retro-- elements: this is very
much in the Cinderella-style-- the girl meets
her prince.
The men in the story have extreme supernatural
powers, the female lead at least has some
smaller ones... but they decline as the story
progresses, once she pulls the Goblin's sword One of the things I like
(or rather, once she *gets used* to pull the about modern Asian
Goblin's sword) she loses even the ability to stories is their looser
see ghosts-- and yet the Goblin, even after his compliance with feminist
time in limbo remains the Goblin, with full "political
range of powers. correctness"--
Creative elements: But what I would
like to see from
She can summon the goblin by them is an evolution
blowing out a flame, any flame-- of a completely
a match, a candle. different take on
feminism, rather
The main character has a sword-- than a complete
invisible to most-- embedded in his rejection.
chest, which only his foreordained
"wife" has the ability to remove.
There's a mysterious woman on stage
who sometimes seems old, sometimes
young, who no one bothers to name There's a good bit where
for us-- she's referred to as a the female lead-- now a
"deity" at one point though. This high school senior-- has
is "Sam Shin", a kind of mother her last "parent's day" at
goddess. The audience is expected school and being an
to just know this... orphan, she expects to be
alone again-- but "Sam
Shin" arrives for her.
The heroine is attended on
by the Universal Mother...
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