Helck continues to grow into the season, and its own premise. Each episode has added something to the mix, and the tone and substance of the series continue to diversify. Pairing off Helck and Vermilio was pretty clearly fated to happen, and the possibilities here are obvious. I certainly found myself hoping the camera would return to them every time it wandered elsewhere this week.  I think the story played a little constricted when the series started – it works better progressing on multiple fronts, even if Helck and Vermilio remain at the core.

This mysterious island has more than a whiff of Hare Guu to it.  Especially when the locals start showing up.  Helck is naturally a master builder on top of everything else, and he’s already finished a handsome lodge before Anne from Management has finished fretting over what that hammering noise she’s hearing is.  She greeted by a strange green bird-like thing named Piwi, who can speak human (demon) language but doesn’t immediately come off as the sharpest knife in the drawer.  She’s still resolutely unconvinced that Helck is on her side, and resists even coming in out of the rain, but Helck is having none of that.

Back home, Azudora makes an ironclad case for why a counterattack against the humans must be launched before too many of them awaken into heroes – then proceeds to announce he’s too worried about Vermilio to do anything but search for her.  This entails a trick up his sleeve, namely a tracking spell using a lock of her hair fortunately left over from Isuta’s salon exploits.  The only problem – the place it tracks her to is nowhere near the map of the world which seems to be the limit of demonkind’s geographic knowledge.

This pretty much confirms that Anne and Helck are literally off the grid, if not how they got there.  Helck certainly can (and does) build a boat if he can build a house, but if even he doesn’t know where he is, just setting off blindly on the open ocean would be a pretty dumb thing to do.  And Helck is obviously anything but dumb.  Even Vermlilio should be able to see that his goals and hers are aligned here – even if he is her enemy, they’re still at a stage where it makes more sense for them to work together.

That means we’re likely going to be on this island for a while, and that’s just fine with me.  Piwi is already pretty amusing, and I enjoyed this goofball who shows up to deliver Vermilio a breakfast he’s just eaten half of.  As I said it puts me in mind of Hare Guu with a sort of innate zany quality to it, and there’s no reason to think that’s not going to deepen as more of those locals (including the village chief) start to enter the fray.