English Dub Review: Helck “In Pursuit of a Map”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Helck and Vermillio defeat the Tothman King, even in his powered up state, and move on to find a map back home. This leads them to multiple ways to get the money for it, including joining a cooking competition that Helck easily clears. They use the map to continue towards their destination, but are warned they may run into a warrior of darkness.

OUR TAKE

So, faithful reader, do you remember a few weeks ago when this show began and I immediately showed a dislike for the dynamic for Helck and Vermillio, with it being pretty easy to boil down to Helck being a solid dude who could do no wrong while Vermillio just sat in the corner and seethed while waiting for him to turn out to be bad? Well, that continues to be the crux of the character work in this episode, with it continuing to be repetitive and annoying, partly due to Vermillio’s English voice actress, digging into the recesses of my soul with just how annoying her character can be. Not that I think she’s a bad voice actor, I’ve heard her do fine in other shows, it’s just this one that seems to not work for me. And heck, the simplicity of this feels so core to this show’s plot that I could probably copy this entire paragraph into every future review and it would probably fit just as well as in this one. Might as well if this is going to be an issue for me every single episode. But I would never resort to something so lazy, no sir.

Anyway, speaking of lazy, I think it’s safe to say that we have officially hit filler, as absolutely nothing about the plot of this episode does anything to further develop the matter with the awakened humans. It does technically move things forward in getting Helck and Vermillio closer to home, but it’s nothing that couldn’t have been skipped over with nothing of value lost. And I know “filler” has become a loaded term, with some deriding rather important character focused episodes as filler just because it doesn’t advance some aspect of the story, but you can’t even say this does more to help Helck and Vermillio become better friends or understand each other better. Helck is still not bothered by anything and while Vermillio is at least getting a bit less short tempered, we saw more considerable development for her when they were getting off the island. And it looks like we still have at least one more episode of them just doing unrelated misadventures before we check back in with Azudra and the other nobodies. At least HiDive got to have some fun with the dubbing by getting what I swear to god is the English voice for Soma from Shigeki no Soma to play the rival chef, so there’s that at least. But holy shit man, I am getting so tired of how mediocre this show is and continues to be. Please just get us back to the main plot!