English Dub Review: Helck “Barbarians of the Tothman Tribe”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Helck and Vermillio find their way back to their own continent, but find themselves caught up in a battle between monster races. Helck faces the leader of the enemy faction but is surprised to see him power up to a second form.

OUR TAKE

Uhhhh…I kinda thought we were gonna focus on getting these two back to stuff happening with the main plot, but…now it looks like we’re practically in a filler arc. The manga this anime is based on has been over for like six and a half years, and it’s not exactly the most popular story, so I don’t see any reason they would want to have a filler arc to stretch things out, so I guess I just have to assume this is something that came from that manga. But for the life of me, I cannot think of a single good reason for them to be dealing with some monster species dispute when they should be getting back to the other established characters and discussing what they’ve found out about the Awakened Heroes stuff. Well, okay, that’s not entirely true, I can think of ONE POSSIBLE good reason. When the monster Helck faces suddenly gains a second form, that could be an indication that he has “awakened” much like the human warriors that gained wings and immortality and stuff, but even that’s a stretch, and it still doesn’t seem all that likely. I guess we’ll just have to see if that’s the case next week.

But in the meantime, I suppose it’s somewhat of a relief that the dynamic between Helck and Vermillio has managed to finally mellow out a bit. They actually feel like they’ve become much better of a team, which is certainly easier when Vermillio isn’t sabotaging him at every step of the way. That said (wow, I sure say “that said” a lot, haha), it’s still not the most interesting back and forth, since it still comes down to Helck being totally invincible in every way while Vermillio either watches or contributes very little to the battle, but at least she’s contributing at all sometimes, I guess. There’s progress there, which will no doubt lead to Vermillio eventually accepting him as a comrade and perhaps even falling in love with him, as the lyrics to the Ending Song seem to be heavily hinting at. And yeah, giving them some alone time away from all the plot stuff does add to them bonding better (although Helck has basically been cool with her since day one anyway), but we’re getting pretty close to the halfway point of the season, possibly the series, and things really need to get back to the plot now, okay?