English Dub Review: Helck “Back to the Continent”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

With help from The Great Witch on the island, Helck and Vermillio finally start making their way back to the continent.

OUR TAKE

With last episode being about Azudra and friends investigating the big mystery behind the Awakened humans, we’re back to checking in with our two leads as they try to get back to civilization. We meet the Great Witch that was built up so much a couple episodes ago when we last saw them, though it turns out it’s someone who probably used to live there and shares an odd resemblance with Vermillio herself. Apparently she’s some sort of ancestor, possibly a great aunt or something, but I doubt that’s going to really come into play all that much. The main takeaway here is that she gives Vermillio the advice to continue to be wary of Helck, as he seems to contain some truly strong negative emotions within him. This might seem like a bit of a backtrack in her and Helck’s relationship progress, especially since this episode started with her reconsidering a lot of what she had felt about him at the start of the series, but the Great Witch does have a point that his attitude towards humans does come from a bit of a dark place already. So, hopefully this cautiousness is a way for us to see a bit more depth and dimension to Helck’s character instead of merely backsliding Vermillio into paranoia.

However, with this episode, we are now a third of the way through the series, and I can’t help but notice that we’ve spent a good chunk of it with our leads, or at least the title character and the seeming real protagonist, off on a whole different island away from the main plot occurring back on the main continent. As mentioned last week, I’m glad that they’re giving characters other than Helck and Vermillio something to do and take significant part in investigating and uncovering what the heck is going on with the Awakened Humans, but I guess I was also hoping these two would be involved in SOME capacity by the third of the way point. I’m sure they will be more involved by the time they get back, which shouldn’t be more than a couple more episodes, but…yeah, still, this is weird pacing to me. Not terrible or so much that it’s a problem necessarily, but still a bit of an eyebrow raiser, I gotta admit. Anyway, next week is them fighting a big sea monster with their new green friend they got from the island, so maybe that’ll end with them finally getting home!