English Dub Review: The Witch and the Beast “The Witch and the Demon Sword Act III”

Overview

With Helga possessed by the Executioners and the Demon Sword unsheathed, our main duo find themselves cornered. Their last hope? Stealing a kiss. 

Our Take

Feeling quite torn about the longer form approach for this arc. More breathing room to tell the stories is always appreciated, but the pacing does suffer dramatically once things slow down. About 80% of the episode suffers from this. A lot of characters standing around in one place explaining things in the most dreadfully uninteresting way possible. Even the gorier moments felt weirdly low energy and lacked any impact!

This episode’s saving grace had to be Helga’s flashback. It’s certainly not immune to the problems I just mentioned– Helga’s mother effortlessly slicing up all of her children shouldn’t have made me crack a smile– but Helga herself has grown on me so much in such a short time. Seeing where the source of her determination comes from just made me respect her even more. She’s a huge wimp who doesn’t want anything to do with this, but she continues to do her job because she’s the only one who can. She adds a lot of humanity for a show that revels in depravity. Gonna miss her when this arc wraps up.

The Demon Sword is unsheathed and surprise! It turns out to be uncontrollable. Even Ashaf points out how predictable this entire scenario is. As their last resort, Guideau has no choice but to steal a kiss from Helga. Finally, time for the climax!