“In Pursuit Of A Map”
What They Say
Helck and company end up in the Erille Kingdom where they must fight the barbarians of the Tothman Tribe. The Tothman King goes berserk after tapping into a mysterious power.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The time spent largely with Helck and Vermilio the last time around was certainly fun and it’s good to have them back on the continent after their little excursion together. It did the heavy lifting it needed in order to get her to look at him in a new light and the teases of what’s going on in the big picture sense, at least early on, is helpful as well. The pair aren’t like best buds or anything at this point but she’s letting her guard down a bit more regarding him and realizing that, in certain ways, he is exactly what he seems to be. When dealing with the kinds of people she’s had to deal with over the years, with all the scheming and plans within plans and generally untrustworthy humans, her wariness certainly makes a lot of sense. And while Helck may not change her big-picture view of humanity, she’s at least softening toward him.
Getting caught up in this whole thing of dealing with the Tothman tribe and protecting the Eirlien people is pretty standard fantasy stuff but it also lets us see how our leads are going to work with each other here. Amusingly, the fight is pretty quick overall and pretty direct as once the enemy king is dealt with, the rest just up and leave because they were never really into this and were basically forced to fight for him. In the city itself, the curse has ended and everyone turns back to normal and that provides a big boost as they’re thankful and deferential about it. It’s definitely important in how Vermilio views things as we again see her learning more about the varied world than the usual demon-oriented ideas and methods that they’ve had over the years. Of course, having Helck get a lot of the praise and her being misnamed in a way definitely adds to the lighter aspects of finishing it out.
What the show leads into here is that Helck and Vermilio end up facing off against a different group of opponents that have shown up, which are basically a bunch of chefs. Honestly, the whole thing is just weirdly forced even for a show like this with how the initial tournament aspect went. Again, I do think anime in general has lost its touch with doing things like this and having kind of empty episodes, but we’ve been trained for so long with an everything-counts mindset that it’s hard to enjoy stuff like this. It’s basically like a low-rent Food Wars side story that plays out and it didn’t do much for me as it unfolded, even though you can figure that one or two characters from all of this may be important at a later point or become part of the greater journey that is the series. Helck is just in a kind of weird place at the moment where it’s moving forward but in an almost listless way.
In Summary:
I don’t mind the sideplots and things that we get from shows like this and wish we had more but it’s hard to adapt to after not really having them for so long outside of shows like Naruto and One Piece for me. There are cute moments here but it didn’t exactly engage me and it’s certainly an episode that I would skip on a rewatch after the opening big with the Tothaman side of things. I can totally see why it will work for a lot of people and it helps to cement more of some of the simple silliness of the series.
Grade: C
Streamed By: HIDIVE
