Helck – Episode 24 [Season Review]

And so the adventure continues…

The twenty-fourth episode of Helck has aired, meaning we’ve reached the Season Finale. Helck is now faced with the ultimate challenge that will test his resolve. Will his heart be able to handle it? Or will Vermilio offer him a chance to walk a new path to a brighter future?

Let’s discuss it in my Recap and Review.

Recap

The episode (which covers Chapters 68 to part of Chapter 70 of the Manga) opens with Helck facing down the Helmeted Soldier while Rafaed has the Winged Soldiers under his control attack Vermilio. She can handle them easily enough with her flames, but Rafaed tells her that she doesn’t know Helck as well as she thinks. Despite all the power he has he never uses it for himself, so for someone with such a soft spot for his friends, he’s nowhere nearly as fine as he looks having to fight them.

Backing up this claim, the nebulous dark aura comes off him as he blocks arrows from the Helmeted Soldier until she runs out of arrows and then pulls out a half-broken sword and charges him. The dark wind intensifies to the point where the Winged Soldiers fall down and even Vermilio struggles to fight against it, and Rafaed tells her that’s all Helck’s pain and sorrow. Even he can’t overcome the despair of killing the person he loves.

Helck then removes the helmet to reveal Alicia, whom he apologizes for sparing when she asked for death before. He then promises to put an end to everything as he prepares to execute her, which causes Vermilio’s heart to palpitate as she thinks of needing to do the same and how even she wouldn’t be able to do it. Regretting that she should have put herself into his shoes and understood sooner, she tries to run over to stop him only for Rafaed to stall her and state if she were his friend she would let him become a monster so that he could suffer no longer.

Vermilio calls him out stating he’s the one who doesn’t understand before drawing the broken Hero Slayer and slicing his cheek with it, which causes a spreading injury that hampers him. He realizes that Helck entrusted a Demon with a sword meant to kill Heroes only to then see that Helck’s power is starting to fade. He questions if Helck is about to overcome his despair as he gets ready to thrust the blade into Alicia’s heart when Vermilio unleashes a massive blast to stop Helck and send Alicia flying.

Vermilio then states that she shouldn’t have invited him to come with them to the Empire when everything was done. What she should have said instead was that they should save the Humans. It might look bad right now, but the world is vast. There’s still hope that they can be saved and he’s not alone, so he can’t give up just yet.

Then she starts laughing like a maniac, stating that her mind has finally cleared. She realized what the Great Witch was telling her when she said to make the right choice. That even if he stayed with them, he would never be able to smile again if he had to kill the rest of his people.

Rafaed states that their mutated bodies and shattered psyches can’t be repaired, and to stop giving Helck false hope. She throws back that there’s no proof they can’t be turned back to normal and she’ll come to her own solution. Rafaed then tries to break her by stating they killed Azudra and overtook the castle in the last battle and asks if she can still say she wants to save them.

Vermilio again throws it back in his face that Azudra is the most tenacious bastard she knows. So many people have told her over the years he was killed for one reason or another, yet he always came back… which is confirmed as we then cut to Azudra being alive but injured in a bed. She’s so confident she tells Helck they’ll go ask him for answers since he’s been alive for so long and has a soft spot for Humans, so he’ll be glad to help.

Seeing her assertion that she won’t change her mind, Rafaed prepares to use the talisman that Mikaros did to transform Alicia as a last resort. That’s when Helck steps in with a quiet resolve to fight him and he realizes Helck truly believes he can save them. It’s enough that Rafaed decides to leave him be, taking his army and telling him to keep resisting and learn how pointless it’ll all be.

Once he’s gone, Vermilio apologizes for pulling the rug from under Helck after he gathered his courage to do so. He tells her that she managed to pull up all the feelings he had buried and he does want to save them no matter what. She promises that they will.

We then cut to a flashback where we see a young Azudra holding the Hero Slayer. He’s telling a Hero that they’ll fight for real this time and he’ll make his death quick to make sure he doesn’t suffer. The Hero only smiles in response before Azudra wakes up in the present and smiles at the memory.

Then we cut back to Vermilio, who tells everyone they’ll be heading to Castle Shin next. It’s further to the south than Castle Thor, where she suspects they’ll find Azudra. The spy asks if Piwi can handle the toxins of the Demon Realm, so the Search Party opts to go ahead and prepare a carriage for them with a barrier while bringing a letter to Azudra that has her intentions for them.

Once their ride arrives and they have confirmation that Azudra survived, they prepare to set out for Castle Shin as the episode ends…

Review

Where’s the Season 2 notice? You can’t end with “the adventure will be continued” style ending without a Season 2 notice? I know there are enough materials for it, so why delay the announcement?

Anyway, wrapping up this season I hope will have its second one announced soon, we ultimately end in contrast to how the series begins as Vermilio chooses to save the Humans.

I’m going to be honest, I don’t think that she really cared for Humans that much to begin with. I think that it was Helck who managed to turn her opinions about them around, as she placed herself in his shoes. She realized that even if he put on a strong face he wouldn’t be able to handle the despair from killing his friends with his own hands since she wouldn’t.

She admits that it’s not the decision she should be making as one of the Four Emperors. However, the Great Witch on the island told her to make the right choice. I believe that was what gave her just enough leeway in how flexible she made her thinking and let her come to her own conclusion about saving them.
Mind you, this still only adds to the time travel theory floating around about the Witch and Vermilio.

That being said, I kind of understand where Rafaed was coming from. He genuinely sounded offended when she said she was going to save the Humans since it was giving Helck false hope. Yet he couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger using the spellbreaker to transform Alicia and simply left.

If he truly thought that Helck would be better off giving into his despair and going berserk to put an end to his suffering, there’s no reason not to do it. If anything it would be just the ticket to make Vermilio walk back her words. The fact that he didn’t leaves me to speculate there are two probable reasons.

The first is that he saw that Helck wouldn’t break even if he did that, and so turning Alicia would just be a waste. Once one of the Winged Soldiers goes berserk, you lose them as an asset since they become exactly the kind of monster that he was trying to make Helck into. She’s still useful, so there’s no reason to do so if Helck won’t break.

The second is that Vermilio ignited a faint hope in himself. There’s not much evidence for it, but considering how much he goes on about despair instead of ranting about a New World like Mikaros, he’s probably acting out of a feeling that he’s putting an end to suffering as quickly as possible. Maybe seeing their archenemy trying desperately to save them has made him decide to see if they can do it by giving them more time.

Either way, we need more information on him.

Then we go back to Azudra, who survived being impaled by Edil. They don’t show how he survived, but we do see the Hero Slayer in his possession as a youth and the Hero who reached out to him. That’s probably Alicia’s ancestor, which would mean that Vermilio choosing to save her rather than let Helck kill her would be the same path he took in the past.

That said, with their resolves in place, the heroes will finally meet back with Azudra and the others at Castle Shin.

I guess that’ll be Season 2 content if we get to it.

Season Review

I’m calling this a Season Review because of how it ended there “better” be a Season 2. They skipped some very relevant details like how Azudra survived and the discussion he had with the Hero in the past. Since it wasn’t an anime-original ending, this is only acceptable if a Season 2 is in the works.

Overall, I’ve liked Helck as part of my watching list for the last several months. I liked the source materials so being able to see it animated was a treat. It might not have been the best at times, but it was solid enough that I had no complaints.

Some people might have been turned off by the several episodes-long flashback that was pretty dark, but I thought it was fine since it added more depth to Helck. We got to see who he was and how he rose out of the bad place he was in, from being an orphan who grew up poor in the slums to being a kind-hearted mercenary who could do anything. Then we saw him lose it all.

This is where the “Helck is Gag Manga” meme came from, as it pulled back the curtain and made all those funny things a lot more bitter. But it made me want Helck to find happiness. And so I want to see them succeed and save the Humans.

I enjoyed it and will be looking forward to the inevitable Season 2.