I recently completed the manga "Helck", and to sum up my opinions on that very shortly I'd say...


Let's start with the characters. As it stands, I'd say that even with nearly a quarter of the time, I already love the cast of Volundio far more in comparison to Helck's cast. The characters all feel fresh and nuanced, and every side character is legitimately fun and doesn't feel like unnecessary fodder meant simply for making omake. The villains are always fun, and the visitors that come to Poofy's are always so unique! Side characters are interesting, and I never feel annoyed by their appearance in the story. It really helps the SOL experience for the occasional chapter to feature a random wanderer that happens to stumble upon our main cast's humble brewery. Speaking of the main cast, they are all fantastic! Cleo with his straightforward, yet confusing nature is not only a solid everyman protagonist but one with a surprising amount of wisdom as well. Kohaku's mystery is still very intriguing, and I'm curious to see her relation to the other 4 holy demon kings. Saphia is cute, like really cute, and Shrike is a blunt edgelord kid who has some neat parallels to Cleo. I love every one of the main cast, and overall this is a largely positive part of the series! My only complaint is that I hope they can get around to continuing to develop more of the side characters, as I find them all equally as interesting.

Now the plot is kind of hard to really talk about since... We are so early on in the story. There is no inclination of what Kohaku's goal is, very few drawbacks to Helck have been made, Cleo's role in the future is ominous as ever, and at the moment it's far more of a slice of life than anything resembling an actual plot. But, the little bits and pieces that have been put in are cool, the worldbuilding is excellent, and the introduction of these elements has been flawless thus far, including other characters, plot elements, and foreshadowing. My only complaint thus far with the story is that it seems to be headed in the same sort of fatalistic mindset that Helck went down, later on, which kind of stalled Helck as a story. I hope the story stays relatively high in terms of stakes, but not to the point where it's a save-the-world plot like Helck became. Overall, the story thus far is great, but since there's so little it's a bit hard to judge.


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