English Dub Review: Black Clover “Asta and Yuno”

Let’s meet our contestants!

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Welcome to the Clover Kingdom where everyone in the world has magic granted by receiving grimoires by the age of 15. Early in the episode, Asta and Yuno are presented as orphans raised by the local church with Asta acting as a sort of protector of Yuno who finds himself on the wrong end of bullying. When the two grow up, it’s Yuno that showcases immense wind-based magic even without grimoires and as such is essentially tapped as a future Wizard King aided even more so by the acquisition of his four-leaf clover grimoire. Asta doesn’t have any natural magic abilities just yet, but eventually, we learn that the grimoire he acquires is the anti-magic which allows him to have non-magic battles that, with his own unique strength, should allow him to be competitive in battle and hopefully see him become the Wizard King.

Revchi shows up and attempts to make off with Yuno’s belongings for sale on the black market, but Asta is able to make the save.

Our Take

Black Clover can be best described as a cross between My Hero Academia and Harry Potter but with way more teen-angst. That said, the show has me hooked due to the captivating plot as set forth by the show’s debut dubbed episode. Micah Solusod is largely quiet in the first episode as a result of his character’s (Yuno) personality, but we did get a heavy dose of “Revchi” and “Asta” voiced by Daman Mills and Dallas Reid respectively and both of whom were excellent and played well off of one another. We didn’t get to spend a BUNCH of time with the ancillary characters as clearly this episode was meant to flesh out our two main characters and friendly rivals, but I’m excited to see what the rest of the season holds. Already the mix animation techniques used in the fight scenes look a lot of fun and hopefully will be put to good use a bit this season.