To my mind the goblins are goblins. Where you see terrible little creature and think they might be a minority I don’t think the anology holds. For most the text they are like chimpanzees. Which would be a legitimate threat to smalls towns in even our modern era. Just like the bourgeois in the setting we aren’t willing to consider the difficulties the peasants have unless it is through a lens we care about. That creature feature aspect would be intresting enough. I see the sexual violence aspect as not being a fully considered theme. The author put it in to raise the stakes. They had some intresting things to say in terms of the anime industry. The author is right that in modern society that is a real problem that the government doesn’t work to fix and leaves huge scars across society. Every story arc is based on people handling their trauma and that is way more intresting than the generally pro sexual violence stance of most anime. If we look at it’s contemporary SAO we can see what scenes of sexual violence composed to be enjoyed look like. They don’t look like that. It doesn’t handle it perfectly. It is the author trying to make things grimdark. However it is closer to a good point than lots of works and that is intresting. Tot he rest about it being a power fantasy about killing that is a genre staple. Almost any work in the fantasy setting is about killing the evil races. Every DnD inspired work has that aspect. Look at the demons of friren. Violence and power fantasy are why male centered fantasy exists. Capitalism requires it. It seems to me like the author is coming from a place where they are trying to figure out how to critique that. If they actually succeeded the work would not have been made. So in that it got made, it is closed to being right on things than normal and that is good.
To my mind the goblins are goblins. Where you see terrible little creature and think they might be a minority I don’t think the anology holds. For most the text they are like chimpanzees. Which would be a legitimate threat to smalls towns in even our modern era. Just like the bourgeois in the setting we aren’t willing to consider the difficulties the peasants have unless it is through a lens we care about. That creature feature aspect would be intresting enough. I see the sexual violence aspect as not being a fully considered theme. The author put it in to raise the stakes. They had some intresting things to say in terms of the anime industry. The author is right that in modern society that is a real problem that the government doesn’t work to fix and leaves huge scars across society. Every story arc is based on people handling their trauma and that is way more intresting than the generally pro sexual violence stance of most anime. If we look at it’s contemporary SAO we can see what scenes of sexual violence composed to be enjoyed look like. They don’t look like that. It doesn’t handle it perfectly. It is the author trying to make things grimdark. However it is closer to a good point than lots of works and that is intresting. Tot he rest about it being a power fantasy about killing that is a genre staple. Almost any work in the fantasy setting is about killing the evil races. Every DnD inspired work has that aspect. Look at the demons of friren. Violence and power fantasy are why male centered fantasy exists. Capitalism requires it. It seems to me like the author is coming from a place where they are trying to figure out how to critique that. If they actually succeeded the work would not have been made. So in that it got made, it is closed to being right on things than normal and that is good.