English Dub Review: Black Clover “Wild Magic Dance”

Zombies are pretty overpowered.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Our foray this week into the world of Black Clover takes place in the capital city, which has been overrun by zombies led by an insane wizard. The magic knights, who were previously gathered at the distinguished service banquet, have deployed themselves all over the city to try and contain the undead threat. Asta, being Asta, ran off on his own to try and help as many people as he can, and has run into the big bad necromancer tormenting a young girl while the city burns all around them. Asta’s anti-magic power allows him to deal with the zombies relatively easily, but their massive numbers prove challenging even for him.

Meanwhile, we see what the other magic knights are up to in an intercut montage of the respective squadrons dealing with the zombies with their own magical powers. The scene serves mostly as a showcase for each of the knight’s magical powers. The Silver Eagles use water magic, The Crimson Lions specialize in fire, and so on, with some minor variations.

Of course, none of the magic knight’s efforts really matter if Asta can’t take care of the puppet master controlling the zombies. His fight continues on, taking out zombie after zombie with a sword smack in the face. Things heat up, though, when the necromancer summons a goliath of a corpse, which he has nicknamed “Jimmy.” Jimmy manages to land a bolt of dark magic on Asta’s face, which leaves a grizzly-looking wound. Asta realizes that the wound is only getting worse as time goes on, and the necromancer reveals that Jimmy’s cursed magic shells prevent wounds from healing. Also, Asta’s new rival, Leo, shows up to see Asta’s peculiar fighting style, but he doesn’t really help him out in the fight.

The necromancer realizes that Asta is fighting with a handicap; he has to protect the little girl behind him from harm. Knowing this, the necromancer is able to lock Asta into defense by lobbing a bunch of magic shells at the little girl. It looks like Asta’s about to become zombie food, when Noelle arrives at the last minute, determined to help her friend. Yet, Noelle doubts herself and has flashbacks to the Silver Eagles taunting her at the banquet. Overcome with self-doubt, she can’t bring herself to use her magic, until Fuegoleon comes along and smacks her over the head. He gives her a pep talk and tells her that its okay to be weak, but it’s not okay to remain weak as a magic knight. Inspired, and thinking of Asta’s many successes, Noelle jumps into action with her water magic to protect Asta from a fatal blow. Yet, this only riles up Asta’s opponent further, who summons more zombies to deal with the upstart mage. But then, at the last minute, (This seems to happen a lot in Black Clover) Leo takes care of the zombies with a burst of fire magic.

With Leo and Noelle watching his back, Asta rushes Jimmy with a spin move, wildly swinging his swords around in a circle. The attack is successful and delivers a coup de grace to poor Jimmy the zombie. But it’s not over yet! The necromancer summons another powerful zombie named Alfred to deal with our heroes! But to see what happens next, you’ll have to tune in next week, because that’s the episode.

Our Take:

Well, this episode isn’t terrible, but it’s not terribly good, either. What should be a menagerie of riveting action sequences is held back by obvious and meandering scenes of filler: characters spouting obvious and cliched dialogue over and over to draw out the length of the episode. What displays of action we are treated to are stiff and creative, with the elemental affinities of each mage being used in the most obvious ways. Rock mage throws rocks, fire mage shoots fireballs, etc. etc. It’s nothing you haven’t seen before a thousand times over. This isn’t even considering the outright ugly animation, which seems to be getting progressively worse as the series goes on. All that aside, I found Fuegoleon’s dialogue with Noelle to be sincere and heartfelt, so I’ll give the episode some praise for making a move in the right direction. This episode is sub-par, but not insulting.