When something is described as "edgy" it usually means it's needlessly dark for no reason, gratuitous in either nudity, violence, profanity or anything else deemed risque'. A clear case for this would be if Batman started to kill people. Batman's character is built around NOT killing his enemies and any deviation from that would be seen as an "edgier" Batman OR if you need a clearer example would be if Darth Vader yelled "Eat a dick!" before throwing Palpatine over the railing, just needless. Or the best example of edgy is:
So now that we've established what is Edgy, let's talk about "Goblin Slayer". In the first episode, we meet a team of bright-eyed young adventurers who decide to take a quest exterminating a goblin cave, bravely the team enters the cave and falls to an ambush. This ambush turns brutal as one hero is held down and stabbed, another is brutally beaten and hacked to pieces all the while screaming, another is incapacitated and raped while another hero watches, quietly wetting herself waiting for the goblins to do the same to her.
After being told to leave (by the one who's currently getting raped), the Priestess (the hero who wet herself) takes her stabbed friend and attempts to flee but falls to prey to more goblins, but luckily Goblin Slayer arrives and dispatches of the creatures with ease. After rescuing the Priestess, Goblin Slayer proceeds to find a den of baby goblins and clubs them to death. Later we find out that Goblin Slayer's intense hatred for goblins stems from a horde of goblins raiding his village and Goblin Slayer hid but unfortunately had to watch as his sister was gang-raped and burned at a stake. This left Goblin Slayer traumatized and made him into a stoic goblin killing machine. Now, from everything I told you, that sounds as edgy as edgy can be But you'd be wrong. Why? Well, there is a solid reason for EVERYTHING that happens in the first episode of "Goblin Slayer".
For starters, we meet the adventurers and we see that they're inexperienced, Guild Girl picks up on this and urges them to wait for a more experienced adventurer to join them. But the adventurers dismiss the threat of goblins as low level and decide to take the quest anyway. This establishes that goblins are not viewed as a threat, but Guild Girl is aware of how threatening goblins can be. The spunk of the adventurers reveals that they haven't faced any real danger as of yet. When they arrive The Leader's sword is WAY too long for such a small cave and it ends up costing him his life, a long sword is flashy hence his inexperience. Now the rape scene is probably what's on most people's mind but if ANYONE was paying attention, Goblin Slayer mentions that due to the number of babies in the cave he estimates that the cave would have been overrun in a few months.
Would it shock you to know that there are NO female goblins? So where did those baby goblins come from? That's right. They're all products of rape. Hence why goblins kidnap and rape females, because there are no females and they need a population. So why rape The Fighter and not the Spell Caster? Well, The Spell Caster showed herself as a threat with her fire magic killing two goblins, but The Fighter was easily subdued and posed no real threat hence she was perfect for breeding, after all, they planned to do the same thing to Priestess. So goblins NEED to rape in order to make more goblins, therefore the rape scene although shocking, made perfect sense in the context of the world established. After goblins are done breeding with human women, what use do they have for them other than playthings?
Now on to Goblin Slayer, he effectively murderers goblins without hesitation even going so far as to bash in the brains of goblin babies. This establishes that Goblin Slayer isn't your run of the mill adventurer, his grudge against goblins is personal and his hatred sees no mercy and discrimination in size, age or threat level when it comes to goblins. His brutality is signified in this act and we understand his character as NOT just an effective goblin killer but an out and out hater of goblins. This could not have been achieved had he just arrived and killed the goblins with ease, sure it's badass but it doesn't showcase just how personal his hatred is. Furthermore, by the time Goblin Slayer murderers the goblin babies we already witnessed what those babies WILL be had they not been killed and it's hard not to agree with Goblin Slayer by the end of the episode.
The first episode of "Goblin Slayer" does EVERYTHING it needs to effectively, establishes the world, the threat, the characters and hints at their motivations through their actions. In a visual medium, we're told SHOW don't tell and in "Goblin Slayer" we SEE everything, we SEE how brutal goblins can be, we SEE how inexperience can mean life or death, we SEE that there are consequences in this world, DIRE ONES, we SEE the brutality of the enemy, we SEE the brutality of Goblin Slayer this could NOT have been done another way and I wouldn't change a single thing about it. Those who call this edgy are not paying attention and were probably expecting something else. This is not an insult, just saying if they continued to watch the series they'd see everything that happened in the first episode was justified.
Now if you wanna talk about edgy, one needs to look no further than "American Horror Story: Hotel". In this season of "American Horror Story," it featured a demon who attacked drug addicts...how you ask? It rapes them...rapes them with a drill-bit strap-on...I wish I was kidding...
This to me is prime edginess. It checks off every box, obscene, sexual in nature, needlessly extreme and the first victim was male so you have taboo (sorta) to boot. You see rape scenes don't exactly equal edginess, it's the purpose of the rape scene and how the story chooses to handle it. Let's take "The Sopranos" Season 3 Episode 4 "Employee Of The Month", Dr. Melfi is raped in a parking lot, the episode then follows her moral decision of whether or not she'll use Tony as a blunt instrument when actual justice failed her (due to a misfiled police report). The episode ends with a picture of the rapist in his employee of the month photo, thus indicating that the rapist is just a regular guy but actually we know who he really is. The episode is a commentary on the moral choices we make and the outside world is unaware of who we really are. In the end, Dr. Melfi makes the correct moral choice and chooses NOT to tell Tony about the incident thus proving that even in the face of a VERY personal wrong and even when approached by someone who CAN do something about the situation and is inclined to do so (at this point she knows Tony cares about her) she decides NOT to.
Or let's go back even further and bring "A Clockwork Orange", the beginning of the movie can be seen as edgy (of course, in it's day it was, these days not so much) but the beginning half of the movie showcased Alex's depravity and made it clear to us that Alex was a remorseless killer so that once he undergoes the treatment we can see just how massive a change he had undergone. My rule of thumb is if you can explain the edginess then it's really not edgy, just graphic. Or more recently, "Battle Royale" in which every kill is shown in brutal and graphic detail to call attention to not only the brutal reality these kids now face but the grotesque nature of those who run The Program.
So when we talk about edginess we have to take into account the kind of material we're watching and if the same result could be done without being as graphic. For example, if in "Goblin Slayer" all of the violence happened off-screen or was heavily implied we wouldn't have experienced the same trauma as Priestess, sure we would have seen her cowering in fear and wetting herself but that also wouldn't have translated into Goblin Slayer's trauma as well. Sure, maybe we could have been told how violent Alex DeLarge was but seeing him go from the remorseless killer (witnessing his acts) to go from a person who can't raise a finger to defend himself shows more of the character. Sure we could have been told Dr. Melfi was raped but we wouldn't have been as traumatized as she was and wrestling with the same questions she was. Graphic violence and graphic sex has its place in all forms of media it's just deciding when to show it and when not to show it and most importantly why. Violence and sex are a lot like hot sauce (bare in mind I love hot sauce...mostly Frank's Red Hot so this metaphor doesn't quite apply to me but there are some of you out there [you philistines] who don't enjoy hot sauce like us normal folk so I'm using this metaphor) a little bit is good but too much of it can ruin a meal. Even in "American Horror Story's" case where the first interaction could have just been rape and each interact gets increasingly more violent as the mind rape becomes more and more (pun intended) intrusive to the point where a drill bit strap-on eventually comes into play (not saying it's logical...it's still stupid). Anyways, those my thoughts on the matter, lemme know what you think and I'll catch you guys later!
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