English Dub Review: Helck “The Troubadour’s Song”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Helck and Vermillio continue on their way home but encounter a knight shrouded in darkness. He’s a formidable foe for Helck at first but is stopped by music, it later being revealed that he was a knight for a fallen kingdom that cursed their knights with greater power but destroyed the kingdom in the process. Before passing on, he gives Helck his weapon.

OUR TAKE

Well, that’s another episode that I technically can’t call filler because it did lead to some small bit of change, in this case Helck getting a new weapon, it pretty much effectively is filler. As characters, Helck and Vermillio are exactly the same from the beginning of the episode to its end. The fight against the knight is just sort of brought up and then resolved within the episode. And if it weren’t for the sword, you could simply cut this entire episode out of the whole show and nothing would be lost. Heck, you could arguably do that now and just say “well, Helck just picked up a new sword along the way and we don’t want to explain how he got it.” But here we are, seven episodes since these two characters got separated from the rest of their group and they haven’t come even close to anything somewhat related to all of the Awakened Human stuff going on back in the demon continent, and I guess Helck hasn’t really felt the need to go into his backstory that was the big mystery from the beginning of the series. Maybe we’ll get to that soon but we really should’ve gotten it at least a couple weeks ago.

That said, if I was being generous (which I don’t really feel like doing but need to extend the word count here), you could say that the battle with this shadowy knight (yes he has a name and a sister but I don’t care and just want to be done) is a thematic parallel to what happened to the Awakened Humans, as he too is the result of his kingdom needing forbidden and cursed power that led to their corruption and ultimate destruction. Putting aside that this was definitely not as powerful or useful as what the Awakened Humans are dealing with, this is definitely similar to what Helck’s people felt driven to use, so you might think that maybe, perhaps, Helck himself would have some thoughts about another civilization being so thirsty for power or desperate for survival that they resorted to such drastic measures but…no, he has no reaction to this and never makes the connection. So, yeah, another episode of the two dozen down and hey! Looks like we’ll be reaching the halfway point this time next week. Can’t get here fast enough. Another three months of this and I’m gonna Helck myself. I’ll let you determine what that means. Actually, don’t think about it, it’s not worth it, just like this episode and very likely this whole series. MAKE IT STOP!