English Dub Review: Helck “The Human King”
OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)
Azudra and a handful of demons from the tournament continue to investigate the ongoing waves of awakened humans, finding out the source as The Human King. They manage to capture the soldiers they fought last episode, but those soldiers are then seemingly killed by other humans, with one even killing himself, only for them all to revive in front of their king, presumably stronger than before. Azudra begins fortifying defenses for their eventual return and tries sending supplies to Vermillio and Helck.
OUR TAKE
It’s a Helck episode with no Helck and almost no Vermillio, which honestly seems like a big win in my book! Instead it’s basically an episode entirely about Azudra and the demon randos from the tournament looking into this whole “awakened human” business as I mentioned in the Overview, though that actually ends up being pretty interesting. As hinted at before, this amount of humans being able to unlock this much power is a pretty unusual thing, but apparently not without explanation within the strange power mechanics in this fantasy world. “Awakening” a hero seems to be something that happens ever so often, with a single human rising to the occasion under fealty to the human king and gaining things like greater strength and the ability to revive, which sound like relatively standard stuff that a hero would get in a video game where they go to face a great demonic foe. So now comes the subversion of that, as it seems that the Human King (proper noun) has learned to cheat the system and get a legion of forcibly awakened heroes who instantly teleport back once killed and gain a slight boost each time, incentivising humans to kill themselves and each other if an invasion goes south instead of allow capture.
Since this story is already starting from the demon perspective, it tracks then to have humans be seen in the antagonist role, but they still decided to put humans at a bit of disadvantage and having to resort to drastic measures in order to match demonic strength. And even with this surprising move, they’re still not quite that big of a threat YET, but are very much on their way to being one, especially if them dying actually helps them, so it’s only a matter of time before a revival powers them up enough to finally overtake Azudra and the other stronger demons. Azudra himself finally gets to actually show off and show the audience why he’s one of their four strongest demons along with Vermillio and two others (who, again, very likely follow the Four Cardinal Beasts motif), but it’s clear that they’re also going to need Helck’s support in this too, which should be easy to get considering he hates humans with a passion, which hopefully we’ll learn more about as we continue through the story. Next week will bring us a whole third through the season so perhaps we’ll find some more exploration of that as we continue through hell with Helck.
I hope this turns out to be another Gravity Falls-type show with an overarching storyline.