Story

After the defeat of the Demon King by the hands of the human hero, the Demon World begins to hold a tournament to select the successor to the throne. However, among the participants, there is a particularly strange one. Why? Well, it's a fucking human. Winning over the demonic crowds with his charisma and denouncement of humanity, Helck becomes a strong candidate to win. The only one suspicious of his intentions, Red Vamirio of the Four Heavenly Kings goes to lengths to investigate this mysteriously, ridiculously buff human. However, what she discovers goes beyond her expectations, something that would shake both the Demon and Human Worlds.

The whole "Defeated Demon King" plot is standard fantasy comedy material at this point, and Helck certainly doesn't add much flavor to the trope. The story initially focuses on the tournament and gag comedy, with Straight Man Vamirio amusingly failing to expose Funny Man Helck, whose ridiculous antics increase his popularity. If you're not a fan of the comedy, you'll find the start quite boring and dull.

However, the story progression rapidly evolves into a more complex plot with a darker tone, yet still retaining the comedy. Helck's past is slowly unraveled while strange things start to occur over the world. The Demon World enters a state of emergency with the arrival of mysterious angelic enemies, Helck and Vamirio are stranded in a foreign world and must return back to aid their comrades, and more mysteries loom that all somehow connect back to Helck's past.

The rest of the start and middle of the story dedicates themselves to Helck and Vamirio's relationship and the Demon World fighting against the new enemies. The former is my favorite part about this series. We simultaneously witness a beautiful flourishing of the bond between these two severely polar opposite characters and world-building exploration through their adventures while being stranded. The comedic chemistry and the feelsmoments between the two, plus one other strange green little chick, is fantastic. I absolutely adored this part of the story.

As for the latter part, the Demons fighting the new enemies, it served to simultaneously unravel and add more questions to the mystery. Who are these enemies? Why are they fighting the Demons? Who are they to Helck? Who's the mastermind? The anticipation and excitement of this aspect of the story was another favorite of mine, I think Helck hit a very enjoyable balance of mystery and action within this portion of the story. Side characters get their screen time and characterization not by interacting with the mains, but among themselves. The side characters in Helck never had their roles diminished as the story progressed, and I enjoyed them nearly as much as our main characters here.

Now, the story towards the end. I ride with the popular opinion that it was convoluted and rushed. Without any major spoilers, it basically all felt like this. My enjoyment took a moderate dip at this point. Everything was going balls-deep bonkers now, the action and mystery were at their peak with twists at every turn and corner. But the clean-up was definitely not clean. However, I quite enjoyed the actual ending. Feelsgood moments everywhere and felt like a proper conclusion to this epic tale. Overall, I still massively enjoyed the story.

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Characters

Helck's characters aren't incredibly deep or anything, but they're well-done in their simplicity. Minor characters are characterized sufficiently to add depth to the story, comedy and mystery. They're all fun to watch, both in action and comedy. As for the main characters, they're an absolute joy to read.

Helck comes off as a happy-go-lucky, standard gag character and Vamirio as a strict, serious straight man character. Two precise polar opposites. However, with the story told from Vamirio's POV, both we and her steadily see past Helck's surface-level personality and see his incredibly heavy burdens and thoughts. Losing her initial hostility, Vamirio slowly becomes the shoulder for Helck to lean on. Her biases and disdain towards humans dissipates in favor of protecting her first human friend and his world. Helck, who wanted to take on the entire world's burdens on his own, realizes he has people to rely on. The steady progression of their relationship through empathy and trust, not romance, is phenomenal. Helck and Vamirio's relationship is absolutely my favorite platonic male-female relationship I've seen and one of the highlights of this series.

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Art

Probably the biggest highlight of Helck. The artistic improvement over the course of the series blew me away. While the initial art was far from mediocre, the visuals exploded in fine details. My particular favorite is the fantastic lighting and use of black-and-white. The character design took a massive improvement, as well. The facial expressions, anatomic composition, hair, everything visual about the characters became ingrained with massive detail. The enormous artistic improvement truly elevated the action and emotional scenes.

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Enjoyment

Barring the end, I tremendously adore everything encompassing Helck. While not perfect, innovative or god-tier, I chuckled, impatiently shook my legs like a mad man, had my heart beating rapidly, choked up, and grinned toothy grins during the course of this emotional uplifting journey. Out of all the series I'd followed during the course of their ongoing runtimes, Helck had undeniably been my favorite one and it was an absolute blessing to come home from school to see a new update. Though my top 10 list changes so often, I firmly believe Helck will continue to be cemented in mine for a long time coming.

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Final Words

Helck is a scrumptious culmination of comedy, fantasy adventure and action. An emotional mess of light-heartedness, crushingly dark and hope. It blew my expectations for just a dumb, fun comedy out of the waters, with its care in top-notch mystery and action. With its long-awaited sequel coming out this week, I earnestly hope this fantastic gem to perk the ears of those who've yet to read.