(Hi) Helck

[frubam]

Its nice to see how, once Anne had started to trust Helck, she NATURALLY progressed in asking him a few questions. What's more, to me, when she asked if he could fight against people he knew once as friends, it didn't feel like she asked in the same line as "can I really trust you?", but more like "isn't it difficult to fight against those you care about?". I think that nuance is very important to signify Anne having a real sense of care for Helck.

It was also great(but sad) to see Helck actually having a deep sense of sadness about his situation. I kinda thought Edil was just some random person Helck knew, but no, Edil was actually pretty important to him, so I can see why his death weighed on Helck in that moment.

The fights was cool, but I am kinda sad that the animation during the fight scenes is on the lower end of the spectrum. I mean, they do a solid job if they dont' have a great budget, so I'm not complaining really, but I wish it was a little bit better, at least for the bigger moments in the story.

Seing Isuta and Hon actually fight was pretty surprising. It was easy to think that Hon was just comic relief, and Isuta to just be some kind of housekeeper/maid for Vermilio or Azudora, but to see that even they surpassed the current group(Hyura/Dorshe/Kenros) was something else.

Azudora mentioned he was hardly the big boss. Makes you really think about how strong his superiors are. I said it before, but in the manga, they had an image revealing the hiearchy of the demon realm(this was show in an earlier chp, during the tournament, so its not a spoiler per se). No idea why they omitted this, as the term "Demon Lord" has a pretty standard meaning, so the diagram was helpful in understanding exactly where on the pecking order they were

Spoiler for demon hiearchy:

So Vermilio and Azudora are basically mid-high in the pecking order. It does make you wonder about how powerful the upper echelon are.

[FlareKnight]

I feel for Helck. Such an awful situation. Humanity has basically already been eradicated. If lucky maybe some avoided getting recruited into this horrible situation by the King, but no evidence of that outside of Helck himself. And now Helck has no choice but to face down his former friends and allies. Because there's no talking them out of it. Some may be chatty, but they likely don't have any real will of their own. At the very least none are likely to have the ability to refuse the King's orders.

Makes you wonder what kind of moron this King is. The best case scenario here is literally a phyrric victory. What's the point of wiping out the demons if there are no humans left? All that's left are a bunch of winged puppets. I guess the King if scummy enough may prefer that. A Kingdom of powerful slaves with a handful of Royals still living as actual humans.

Glad there was some progression here. Finally Vermilio started to gain some trust and started to ask the important questions. There are obviously a good amount of secrets left. And I'm sure the core of this has to do with his brother. But in the end, at least we're getting some idea of what's happened and what pushed Helck to this point. If not for the growing faith in the demons he would be utterly alone. Better to take a chance and find some sense of belonging than be left alone. In that sense I'm sure the warm welcome he received did good for his spirits. Even if it's now giving Vermilio some serious case of guilt for how much she absolutely hadn't trusted him to this point .

Cute little scene as well of her trying to hit home how things aren't all good with the demons...only to immediately feel bad when seeing how down he was over it .

The saddest thing is how worthless humanity's intel is here. They have absolutely no clue about the demon realm's power structure or how strong certain individuals are. Yeah, we haven't seen anyone that can stand up to Helck so far, but the winged troops aren't anywhere near Helck either. They have potential to get much stronger, but they aren't remotely strong enough to be invading like this.

[Tuor]

My impression, based only on the anime, is that the Human King may have either willingly or unwillingly been co-opted by something Not Human. The King then used buzzwords like "safety" and "peace" to justify and encourage people into transforming themselves into Not Humans in order to fight the demons (and eventually everyone else).

From the sounds of it, there may not (is probably not) be any way for the humans to transform themselves back. Which means that the humans in this world have wiped themselves out of existence.

But, I also think that there are probably other powers which we haven't been made aware of yet which may be able to do something to restore at least some of the humans. Or not.

This is an interesting series in that despite all the humor/comedy acts, there's a lot of really dark things going on. Hopefully the Witch will show up next episode and we may get the story of what's up with those ruins, maybe even why there is toxins in the demon lands, too.

[Twi]

Review done.

If you think about it, Azudra speaking from personal experience means that he likely is one of the older demons in the setting who had been around back then and remembers when they got along. The fact that he knows about the civil war when most humans wouldn't due to being so short-lived and even Vermilio only remembers constantly being betrayed by them probably means that it was more than a thousand years or so ago. That's plenty of time for human history to get revised over and over again.

Add to the fact that Humans rarely get powerful enough to be a challenge unless they are Heroes and the last one prior to this generation was 200 years ago, and you can see that there really was no reason to try and reconnect with them. It's clear they got bigger problems to the north anyway.

[FlareKnight]

Man if humanity had heard in the past how low they ranked on the threat scale that might have set them off on this insane plan they are on . That's just downright disrespectful . I get the initial rank is based on there not being a Hero in play, but geeze.

Though seriously why is everything coming after the Demonic Empire in the first place? That's a pretty garbage territory to be making a move on. I at least get how humans may have been misinformed and gotten things mixed up over time. But is there a reason the various creatures and factors are all focusing in on this one area?

Still what an absolutely idiotic thing. Humanity had everything going for them including the Demons basically being a shield against other threats coming at them. Since for some reason they can't go around to attack any human territory (that or those creatures bizarrely have no interest in it). And they've potentially wiped themselves out of existence just to create an army that eventually could be decently powerful. But that's only once they get some level grinding in.

I wonder if Azudora's plan is going to go that smoothly? If just taking down the King was both easy and a simple solution wouldn't Helck have just done that himself? So far we haven't seen a single demon that matches up to Helck. He may be outnumbered, but it's hard to believe he couldn't power his way through a bunch of relatively weak soldiers to get to the King. Still feels like there is more to this.

[grecefar]

That was some info and while I know these chapters are necessary, I still feel sad that we saw so little of helck and vermilio.

[scififan]

The plot so far depicts humanity as bad guys and demon as good guys. Of course, it is from demon's perspective, such as Maou Gakuin no Futekigousha. The initial claim by the hero, "Human are horrible", sounds funny. The current situation is making it a sad quote. The letter is teleported to Ann, and picked up by B51. B51 is helping Ann on setting up fire. Ann is motivated by Helck's cooking skill. She wants to cook as good as Helck.

[ssvb]

Originally Posted by FlareKnight

Still what an absolutely idiotic thing. Humanity had everything going for them including the Demons basically being a shield against other threats coming at them. Since for some reason they can't go around to attack any human territory (that or those creatures bizarrely have no interest in it).

It's possible that shielding is not perfect, some creatures still manage to leak to the human land and that's the reason why humans are so agitated.

This reminds me the North Sentinel Island inhabitants, who are very aggressive and territorial, but have zero clue about the rest of the world and how insignificant they are in the grand scheme of things.

[Kanon]

Nice world building in this ep. I wonder what the SSS threat in the North is. I assume the show will take us there once the humans are taking care of.

[Twi]

Review done.

Originally Posted by FlareKnight

Man if humanity had heard in the past how low they ranked on the threat scale that might have set them off on this insane plan they are on . That's just downright disrespectful . I get the initial rank is based on there not being a Hero in play, but geeze.

Though seriously why is everything coming after the Demonic Empire in the first place? That's a pretty garbage territory to be making a move on. I at least get how humans may have been misinformed and gotten things mixed up over time. But is there a reason the various creatures and factors are all focusing in on this one area?

Still what an absolutely idiotic thing. Humanity had everything going for them including the Demons basically being a shield against other threats coming at them. Since for some reason they can't go around to attack any human territory (that or those creatures bizarrely have no interest in it). And they've potentially wiped themselves out of existence just to create an army that eventually could be decently powerful. But that's only once they get some level grinding in.

I wonder if Azudora's plan is going to go that smoothly? If just taking down the King was both easy and a simple solution wouldn't Helck have just done that himself? So far we haven't seen a single demon that matches up to Helck. He may be outnumbered, but it's hard to believe he couldn't power his way through a bunch of relatively weak soldiers to get to the King. Still feels like there is more to this.

Azudra explained it pretty clearly before. Humans and Demons got along pretty well until a Civil War broke out long ago in the Human lands and they turned on them. Presuming that's when he actually fought a Hero who could resurrect and considering that none of the existing demons know, then we're talking potentially a span of more than a thousand years. Humans don't live long, don't get special powers unless they get lucky, and the last heroes who were born was around 200-300 years ago.

Since the King possesses special powers to get his title, most likely someone awakened into the role back then and decided not to play nice with the Demons, sparking the Civil War and usurping the throne. Then they proceeded to spearhead the war with his own champion and wiping out records.

Just the sheer ignorance of the Winged Soldiers who kept their minds make it clear they don't know the situation. Helck mentioned fighting New World Organisms from before and monsters constantly spawn from the lands outside of the Human's, so its easy to assume that they all come from Demons and there's no way the Demon Lord castles could stop stray monsters from pouring in.

This is speculation, mostly because I've opted not to re-read the series but instead go chapter by chapter, but I think that the previous King with resurrection abilities came up with the idea and had plans to put it into motion when someone who had the same power awakened. It just took this long for it to happen, but now they have an army of infinitely respawning agents of destruction.

[grecefar]

the witch knows a lot it seems but is secretive, and she may be relate to ann?, she warns about helck too, there are a lot of questions now.

at least I'm so happy piwi is with them, they needed a mascot.

[Kanon]

I was wondering if either one of them was going to mention how much the witch looked like Vermillio. Helck pointed it out, and Vermillio suspects she's from the Empire but that's about it. She's definitely related to Vermillio in some way, either her mother or Vermillio herself from the future, which would explain why she seemed to know so much about Helck.

Vermillio seemed surprised by the implication there are other continents in this world. I feel like there's going to be some really massive twist.

[Strahan]

Originally Posted by Kanon

or Vermillio herself from the future, which would explain why she seemed to know so much about Helck.

That's what I was thinking too.

[FlareKnight]

I agree with the future Ann theory. It would explain a lot of her information, her reaction to Helck, and her warning to Ann. Plus she even happened to have what seemed to be an older Piwi as well.

Could easily see events unfolding where something really bad happens with Helck. Then Vermillio either sent herself or was sent due to some disaster back in time. That island being a place she has a connection and past with. Then she's set to give herself a warning in the hopes of things turning out differently.

Would be a sad turn of events though. Would mean that Vermillio's positive feelings to Helck while good aren't all that she needs. Having blind trust in Helck might be a bad thing in the bigger picture. Obviously she's got positive feelings towards him and that ship has potential. But maybe a healthy dose of doubt or at least keeping an eye on Helck is a good idea.

Also makes me wonder what hopeless goal Helck is supposed to have...Probably has something to do with his brother? Maybe he wants to stop the tragedy that's befallen humanity from having ever happened? If his goal involved time travel that would tie into the whole Future Vermillio theory.

Regardless, this was a pretty good episode. Interesting stuff to chew on.

[magnuskn]

Good episode. And, yeah, that'definitely seems like either a future version of Anne or maybe her mom.

[Twi]

Review done.

The Witch's resemblance and her general knowledge do give off the impression of her being a future Anne. I mean, the pieces feel like they fit. She knows about different continents when Vermilio doesn't despite being a lot older than she looks due to Demons aging differently. She has an older version of Piwi and then sent the younger version off with them, along with a note stating that Piwi can take a ton of abuse. She also knows more about Helck than Vermilio and basically warns Vermilio that she needs to make the right choice when the time comes.

It feels like she came from a Bad End timeline where she and Helck didn't get the seahorse and went to different lands before making their way back home, only for it to be too late and a reset button needed to be hit. Maybe she went even further back in time to look for a way to change the past. The fact that Vermilio felt she spotted sunken cities in the past but can't remember doesn't help dispel the thought. If someone had called her Anne the moment the others were gone, it wouldn't have surprised me.

Mind you, this is purely speculation.

[~Yami~]

Glad that they keep giving us more and more clue about Helck's possible hidden dark past.

Also watching this episode made me think that this is island of future where future Ann created after the civilization collapsed due to either awakened heroes or new world monsters

[grecefar]

We got to see a somewhat serious and angry helck. The chapter shouldn't have ended that way is not like that monster with the power up will beat helck and I'm pretty sure helck will just one-shot him.

[Kanon]

I thought things would pick up now that they finally got off that island but it's still pretty slow.

Bet the princess is actually a total cutie. Not that I expect her to be an important character, the preview shows Helck and Vermilio already in another town.

[Twi]

Episode review done.

And we all know you gotta do the side quests before you get to the main quest.