people, fans, I assume, have been actively calling for all of the established girls to be viciously and violently raped.
It would be more accurate to say "rape fetishists want to see more rape". Because of the first chapter/episode of Goblin Slayer (and, well, its general theme of goblins raping women), though, it's kind of inevitable that a lot of those fetishists are going to glom onto this series.
To be fair, there seems to be an active trend in Japanese pornography with active plots that are just "IMMA RAPE YA BITCH.' I mean someone on 4chan posted the cover of an adult cosplay parody of GS over there and it's Priestess, High Elf Archer and Chosen Heroine of all characters getting gang gobbed.
If I were to be rude, I'd say it's because for most of them, it's easier to insert themselves in a rape fantasy than in a consensual fantasy, because their self-apreciation is already gone. But that's just me being rude, not actively observing rape fetishists.
What I don't understand though, is why would you imagine yourself as goblin, orc, tentacle monsters? I know otaku aren't only self-aware of their grossness, but many will even prides on it, but still.
I don't believe it's imagining themselves as a goblin, it's just enjoying the humiliation and degradation of the women. That is, sadism.
It's the same reason Priestess and High Elf have to be covered in goblin blood even though they hate it while they vaguely mention that Goblin Slayer does it as well without bothering to show it happening, and seemingly the other two males don't need to bother. It's why the girls get in trouble and need rescuing while the guys either save themselves or just get butchered. It's why the camera cuts away from Warrior's death, but shows everything that happens to Wizard, including adding in her own rape scene in the anime which wasn't in the original novel, plus all the focus on Fighter.
Unless it's happening to Goblin Slayer as backstory or to show how tough he is, the story isn't interested in what happens to men, but wants to go into the danger to and suffering of women in heavy detail. The exact opposite of Monster Girl Encyclopedia, it's a world designed by its author to have a focus on monsters that target women specifically, but none that target men. (Or say, how if you are told Quentin Tarantino has a foot fetish, you start noticing how often the camera focuses on women's bare feet in his movies...)
In fact, pretty much the only sexualization that isn't ryona in nature is basically everything about Cow Girl. (Sleeps naked, only puts on a bra before swinging her rack out the window to say good morning to GS, and the light novel explicitly talking about how much her huge breasts jiggle while pushing the cart even when it isn't bothering to describe her appearance.)
That's not to say that it's all there is in the work or that you have to enjoy that sort of thing to enjoy the story, of course, but there's an just too much that caters to that sort of mindset for it not to be a result of at least some form of Gaze. (Speaking of which, this depiction of Male/Female Gaze was just bumped, with depicts the basics of Gaze just perfectly.)
And that's kinda the issue. Goblin Slayer "the plot" wants to, no, needs to make the audience hate anyone with that mindset, ie. the goblins, but Goblin Slayer the manga and anime fetishizes the assault, especially for these rape fetishists. It's rewarding the people it's supposed to hate.
Whee! We're going to have another one of THOSE discussions, hunh?
Anyway, it's far from new that the anime sub-culture mindset regarding sex is rather self-flagellating. (And it's not like it's isolated to them by any measure, either, but it seems more strange.)
This is a show which enjoys showing sexy women, but Goblin Slayer himself is heroic for not giving a shit about anything but killing goblins, and he's only a slightly more extreme version of the staple chaste harem main character. Shows want to indulge in sexualization while also saying you should just ignore it. This goes even more extreme for the women - women in anime should be sexy all the time, but actually coming out and saying it makes them a "slut", so it always has to be forced upon them like in an accidental grope or outright rape. You know, except for the outfits, but people just ignore that stuff.
Even when they are at their most self-indulgent, sex is always portrayed as somehow evil. Demons are sexy, while gods are prudes. Even in a series like Monster Girl Encyclopedia, the gods that they want to show are wrong still have a point most of the time. Sex for women is always shown as a "corruption" that melts her brain and replaces any existing thoughts with desire for dick.
And yet, in spite of having that tradition of Shinto polytheism and generally sex-positive morality in their past, they never just come up with a religious system that says sex is fine, even in moderation. In the rare cases where they are Shinto-like gods that think sex is good, they're always despised as pervert gods by the pure, chaste womenfolk.
azurelorochi said:
That's the problem. Rape isn't a minority when it comes to explicit anime fetish, there are a vast higher number of rape ero doujins, eromangas, hentais and flash games than there are vanilla romance. There are veteran doujin artists and game creators working over 10 years whose repertoire consist almost exclusively of rape.
Well, it's not like Western culture can throw stones, either; Western porn is filled with tons of non-consensual sex of various kinds. (I think I remember seeing something say 70%, but I'm not going to bother doing searches right now...)
Beyond that, however, I think it is, again, better to think of this as an extension of sadism or domination, rather than exclusively rape. It's a matter of having a sense of control over another as a proxy for the missing sense of control over one's own life.
I mean, what you see in anime aside, otaku culture is generally made up of people who feel like losers in life, which is kind of why "otaku goes to another world where being good at video games gives him superpowers that lets him kill all the people that make fun of him and assemble a harem" is the most popular genre. People in the sort of depression that leads to hikikomori or at least NEET are going to be concerned solely with self-medicating their own depression, and not giving a shit about how the industry looks to the culture at large.