The day begins like any other; people wake up and go to school or work, some people are born and some die. Scratch that; they don't die, they become the living dead. The protagonists of this piece are high school students that quickly find they must work together if they are to survive in this apocalyptic world. The teens battle the undead in the school, bludgeoning zombie heads with baseball bats, makeshift lances, wooden swords, and a nail gun. The small team has one immediate goal: survival. They then to go on to try to find their parents and sanctuary when the land of the rising sun becomes the land of the rising dead.

You might look at High School of the Dead and think that it's simply an avenue to get your ecchi kicks on. You are partially right. The story is filled with ecchi moments from panty flashing to amazing moments of boob physics. However, HOTD is, at its heart, a horror story when you look past the aforementioned flashing panties. The high school where we find our heroes at the beginning is basically the cave in the first episode of Goblin Slayer. We have an inexperienced group of teens with minimal combat experience in HOTD and, just like in Goblin Slayer, they’re faced with an enemy that is easy to take on one at a time. Yet the zombies or goblins are extremely dangerous when they have larger numbers and can overwhelm their prey. We even have a moment when all hope seems to be lost and a true badass appears on the scene. The wooden-sword-wielding Saeko Busujima in HOTD and the titular Goblin Slayer both save the day and give everyone a chance at escape. We think both characters also have a bit of a sadistic side; Saeko admits that it is a thrill when she crushes a zombie’s skull and Goblin Slayer kills with no mercy. The two stories also become a series of dungeon crawls where the HOTD cast fights its way across town looking for sanctuary, and the Goblin Slayer and his party take on slaying mission after mission. The two shows may look very different on the surface, but at heart they occupy the same kind of dangerous horror universe.

The rise of the Titan decimated humanity. The towering giants and their craving for human flesh forced the remaining population behind massive stone walls in order to survive, but not prosper. Society simply stagnates. The one-hundred-year peace behind the wall is shattered one day by the appearance of a Titan, larger than any recorded, who pulls down one of the outer walls of the multi-walled sanctuary allowing Titans to flood into one of humanity’s enclaves. The defenders of humanity are the skilled members of the Guard and Survey Corps who use a grappling system to maneuver around giants and slice out the napes of their necks, the only way to kill a Titan. A larger plot filled with political intrigue and the struggle of our heroes to solve the origin of the Titans fills episodes. The base of the story follows the journey of Eren, his adopted sister Mikasa, and their childhood friend Armin as they join the Survey Corps and look for a way to rid the world of the Titan menace.

Attack on Titan has some surface similarities to Goblin Slayer. The first and foremost being the first episode is extremely disturbing. The violence and gore are hard to take in if you are not prepared. The settings are also similar, both taking place in a medieval world were monsters attack, kill, and eat humans. You can even say the anxiety of the characters is similar; they live in constant fear that they could be attacked by the Titans. The conditions seem to be the opposite. In Attack on Titan, humanity feels safe behind its walls which could represent a cave; the danger is when they are in open and exposed spaces beyond the walls. Compare that to Goblin Slayer where the danger is in the dark, confined places like caves. The root story is basically the same, the dark cave is the unknown, the place beyond the walls is unknown, and in both places there be monsters there.

The Empire has grown old rotten and corrupt and as a result, the people suffer. The gap between rich and poor is great and the nobles and elites get away with anything, including murder. A change is needed and the Revolutionary Army bides its time waiting to sweep away the old guard, the prime minister, and the young child emperor for a new world and government. While the Revolutionary Army waits in the wings, Night Raid, their covert assassination branch, prowls the streets of the capital dispensing justice and disrupting order, watering the ground with dissatisfaction, dissent against the crown, and blood.

The anime Goblin Slayer and Akame ga Kill have one big thing in common: blood. The body count in both stories is high and gruesome. We have a similar feel with the beginning of each series, too. A trio of friends from a remote village heads to the capital for adventure and to earn money to send back to their families; instead they meet with a cruel fate. Tatsumi, one of the trio of naïve villagers, finds himself a member of Night Raid and fights the corrupt system. The two stories also give us a cynical look at a world that can look quite pleasant, filled with cafes and castles, but when you pull back the curtain you find sadistic monsters and sometimes those monsters are human.

Chaos is a magical force that twists the laws of nature causing demons, monsters, and spirits to appear. The nobility of Atlatan was given the power of crests to quell the chaos. You become a lord through gaining a crest by defeating a lord and taking theirs or killing a Chaos Demon and seizing its core. The lords in many cases decide to abandon the purpose of the crests, defeating the chaos, and begin waging war upon each other, trying to steal each other’s crests to gain dominion over one another.

Grancrest War focuses on Theo, a young self-made lord who meets a prodigy mage, Siluca Meletes, and the two begin to change the course of governance for an entire continent. We now have boy-meets-girl, the classic setup for romance. The story becomes far more than a romance, though. The story is similar to Goblin Slayer in its mature subject matter. You have a serious story that feels like a “Game of Thrones: the Anime” story as it involves battles, politics, sex, and changing alliances. Characters you love are killed in cruel ways and sex is used as a political tool, something you don’t typically see in anime. The story may be about a long, drawn-out war, which is similar to the war between humans and demons in Goblin Slayer, but Grancrest is human-versus-human instead of human-versus-monster. If you are looking for a story that has more of an adult take on a fantasy world, Grancrest War is one you should put near the top of your list.

Guts is a young mercenary who survives only by going into battle to make ends meet. He is one day recruited by Band of the Hawk, a powerful group of mercenaries led by Griffith. The young Guts proves he has just what his name advertises and quickly climbs the ranks to a position of leadership. But the constant life of battle starts to wear on the warrior as he realizes that not all battles are just and not all knights are honorable.

Berserk has a tone and feel in common with Goblin Slayer. The two shows don’t attempt to gloss over the horrors and lasting traumas of war. You get a visceral feel for the world we are watching during the first episode. The animator also must have used a barrel of red ink on the blood in both of the series. The Goblin Slayer and Guts are very similar in the way they fight: they are ruthless and give no quarter. You will also find they have great tragedies in their pasts and are both motivated, or perhaps obsessed, by revenge. If you are looking for a series that contains more adult themes and you liked Goblin Slayer, take a look at the late 90s classic Berserk.

The world of Grimgar Fantasy and Ash is about young people who find themselves in a foreign land with no memory of who they are except for their names. When people arrive in this land they are given a choice: join the Reserve Army or die, not by the army’s hands, but from starvation and exposure. The only job available for any foreigner is to fight in the slow slog of a war against the Goblins and other beasts threatening the peace. Manato, Haruhio, Yume, Shihoru, Mogzo and Ranta, complete strangers, become a team and fight for survival. The story also focuses on the often-emotional struggle of these young soldiers as they face the bleak reality of war.

The two anime both present the realistic cruelty of battle. In Goblin Slayer it’s in the fates of the goblins’ victims and in the fates of the goblins killed by the Slayer. The battles they face in Grimgar are often hand-to-hand. The kids in Grimgar feel the blood and see the eyes of the enemy as they hold them close and plunge a dagger into their hearts. You also have a bounty system in which the soldiers or adventurers are paid according to the number of goblins they kill. So the only way the soldiers of Grimgar can earn money is to kill, and kill again. The same goes for Goblin Slayer, yet he takes a flat fee negotiated by the guild for his extermination talents. The two series don’t necessary celebrate the adventurer; they take realistic approaches in looking at them as part-time killers who do what they have to in order to survive. If you want a realistic look at the slog of life at war in a fantasy realm without some of the more controversial elements present in Goblin Slayer, Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash is truly the best.

A small side note about Grimgar: You will seldom see more beautiful backgrounds in animation. The scenes are each like a watercolor painting, soothing the mind and almost making you forget what the story is truly about.