English Dub Review: Black Clover “The Light of Judgment”

Man, Licht really doesn’t know when to stop talking.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

With Asta learning how to use Ki and going back on the offensive against Licht and his minion, Valtos, things have turned in the favor of our heroes. Yami and Asta continue to lay the hurt on their two foes, while Licht keeps on rambling about his order and why they exist.

The Eye of the Midnight Sun apparently exists as a consequence of the social inequalities in the magical kingdoms, though Yami isn’t exactly convinced of their legitimacy. As Yami and Licht fight on, Asta eventually bests Valtos by jumping through one of his own portals to deliver him an express order knuckle sandwich.

Meanwhile, Gauche and Finral attend to Theresa and her injuries. She hangs on to life and decides to impart Gauche with some of her magical power, (Which is something people can do, I guess?) and entrusts him to keep everyone safe. Inspired by Theresa, Gauche uses Finral’s teleportation magic to go back to the cave, just in time to deflect Licht’s ultimate light-magic beam attack back at him. The blast knocks out Licht and makes our heroes the victors of the day.

Our Take:

Black Clover decides to kick things up a notch, delivering an episode that shows more off an effort than the last few episodes combined. Unfortunately, this is a case of “Too little, too late.” Though there are certain improvements to be noted, one episode can’t solve the chronic troubles this series faces on a constant basis.

The animation really does kick itself up a notch here. Compared to the last episode, the amount of honest-to-goodness animation is increased significantly, while fish-lipping dialogue scenes are kept to something of a minimum. One gets the feeling that this particular fight is what the studio saved all of its money for by skimping out on the last few episodes. Seems like a case of “Robbing Peter to pay Paul”, but credit where it’s due: this episode does look pretty good. Character expressions are far more detailed, and the magical powers in use are far more developed and fleshed out. Unfortunately, though, this increased animation quality seems wasted on this fight.

A big issue here is that the fight between Yami and Licht is completely incidental. Big fights between important characters demand that the fight be more important than just the fight itself. It’s not enough to have two characters fight each other, they have to fight for a reason. The strength of those reasons is what underscores and supports the primary tension in a fight scene. When Yami and Licht fight, they don’t fight for a reason other than “They’re supposed to.” Yami stands for basically nothing except his own self-interest and the interest of the Black Bulls, while Licht’s backstory goes completely over Yami’s head. No amount of combat animation or flashy powers will be able to remedy that. Story; theme; character motivation; these things are the elements of a really good fight scene.

Out of everything in the episode, I’ll give some love to Yami, whose irreverent silliness is actually pretty entertaining. The rough and gruff voice styling of Christopher Sabat juxtaposes well with his childish demeanor. Out of all the awkward and excessive humor that Black Clover barrages me with, Yami is the only character who genuinely makes me chuckle. That would be great, of course, if this anime was a comedy, but being in Black Clover makes him just a misplaced comic relief character in a milquetoast, cliched shounen series.

Series fans, I’m sure you’ll have a good time watching this. But if you’re not already enthralled with Black Clover then I don’t think there’s much here for you.