English Dub Review: Helck “Towards a Hopeful Future”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Helck and Vermilio confront Rafaed and the awakened Alicia, but when it looks like Helck may truly go berserk, Vermilio gives him a shred of hope.

OUR TAKE

And we are DOOOOOOOOOONE with Helck FINALLY. As expected, nothing is resolved and the entire conflict is left dangling in the air, with the war between demons and humans having an inexplicable stopping point to give an illusion of things being settled in some way, but in reality, NOPE, they just needed force everything to a screeching halt and apparently didn’t give a shit about how it got done. Perhaps, just maybe, they could have avoided this somewhat by pacing out the story better, not spending a considerably large section on unimportant self-contained misadventures and then an EVEN LONGER section on a backstory that really only needed half of that time? MAYBE? No, my mistake, this is the only way things could have gone. There was no avoiding it! We were always headed towards this result! So, why am I giving this last episode a slightly higher score than normal if it’s just the culmination of a majorly disappointing series? Well, there is something I did like, and that’s the shift by Vermilio towards wanting to save the humans. The way things were getting built up, I was getting REAL worried that she was about to give a love confession, which would’ve truly been the final nail for me for its sheer predictability.

Thankfully, it’s a far more farther reaching turn for her. As a demon, she has only ever had reason to distrust and dislike humans, including Helck, even when he was all about killing every other human. But through her travels with him, and what they went through together, she has come to understand that he wants nothing more than to save the humans he is forced to fight, and because he has become her friend, that’s what she wants too. That feels a lot more rewarding a character development than simply having her be in love with him, which is what I dreaded. Then again, I’m probably the only one who expected things to go in that direction either way, so maybe that’s on me for thinking that would happen at all. Of course, all of this is undercut with how little ends up resolved, including with Alicia being the knight with the helmet that I bet NO ONE saw coming except me! Anyway, all that’s left is covering the season review for this, but I am sure as shit not going back and watching this whole crapfest, I just want to be DOOOOOOOOOOONE.