English Dub Review: Helck “The Mercenaries”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Helck continues his backstory story, covering the time he joined up with a group of mercenaries and his brother Cless was horrifically injured while out in battle.

OUR TAKE

Did I forget to mention the new OP and ED that we got last week? I’m honestly not a fan of them. The first OP and ED were alright but felt kinda generic and just typical action OP music, while this feels like the even more watered down version of that. So, we’ve got that to deal with for the remaining ten episodes of the show and I just have to learn to accept that, I guess. Whatever. Anyway, we’re on the second episode of the flashback arc, which I thought would only be a handful of episodes to cover just the important bits of Helck’s backstory, but looking ahead, is going to cover a little over six episodes (I say a little over because it will also go into episode nineteen). That’s a whole quarter of the season, which might be fine if we had spent the PREVIOUS quarter doing much of substance, but as you may recall from reading these reviews, that is not the case. Which also means that we’re going to spent the vast majority of this season, and possibly the series, with Helck and Vermillio trying to get back to the demon continent. AND aside from that brief check in we got with Azudra and the other demons a few weeks ago, we’re not gonna know SHIT about what’s going on or how they’re handling the awakened humans.

And, as we see from this episode, we’re not always going to be flashing back to moments that are actually that important. Like, cool, Helck learned to fight by teaming up with a mercenary group, who then gained complicated feelings about his ungodly strength, but all I care about is just seeing what happened with Cless, which we only get some of by the end. Anyone who looks closely at the new OP and ED will see that Cless is very much alive, though warped by the awakening power that has changed the other humans, so a brotherly showdown is hopefully coming. But what we’re here in this flashback to learn is how Helck gained his hatred of humans and (seemingly) killed his brother. We really shouldn’t be wasting time on other things unless they contribute to the greater themes and relevant subplots. Maybe the mercenaries will do that if they’re killed horribly and humans are cruel about their deaths or something like that, but we’ll have to wait and see if that’s where it goes. Ugh.