English Dub Review: Black Clover “The Underwater Temple”

It’s a temple. It’s underwater. Surprise.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Our heroes accomplish a whole lot of nothing this week, as they finally descend into the ocean to find out about this water temple they’ve set out to plunder. Noelle manages to carry the Black Bulls down to the ocean floor with her water magic, where they find that it’s not just a temple down here, but a whole civilization of people.

They get a warm welcome from all these friendly ocean folk, who are just happy to have visitors. The Bulls are guided to the temple by the town villagers, who go to meet the temple high priest to see about getting the water stone. The high priest turns out to be a complete nutter and does everything he can to be the most annoying character on screen.

He subjects the Black Bulls to a game, essentially a test of will that separates the Black Bulls and forces them to fend for themselves against the trials of the temple. Asta runs into a squid-faced man in robes who underestimates him for not exhibiting any magical power. But, of course, Asta draws his sword and gets ready to prove his cephalopod ass wrong.

Our Take:

Sometimes Black Clover seems like its just picks and pulls things from the “Generic fantasy tropes” playbook. Very rarely, if ever do we come across original ideas in this show. How much the magic system feels like an abridged version of Naruto’s bloodline, and the adorable band of misfit mages in the Black Bulls is just a little too similar to Fairy Tale’s guild of eccentric magical folk. And of course, we can’t forget about the “Magic Knight” squads and how they resemble the Gotei 13 from Bleach, all the while Asta does his darndest to become the Pirate King, I mean the Hokage…wait, what was it again? And now, we learn that Asta has the quirktastic trait of not being able to swim; let’s just add that little bit from “One Piece” to the ever-expanding list of things stolen from better anime.

Now look, I’m no stranger to the shounen tropes that Black Clover likes to dish out as its bread and butter. Basically, every shounen draws from these things in some way, and that’s fine, its an expectation of the genre. I expect shounen to have magical powers and emphasize the importance of hard work just like I expect a western to involve deserts and rootin’ tootin’ revolver shootin’. If it didn’t, I would feel perhaps a bit cheated, but there is a line, and Black Clover steps way over it. What makes a shounen worth watching is not how much it relies on tropes, but how much it gives its own unique take on those tropes in the story.

I cannot imagine an idea more boring than a generic “Water temple.” (Except perhaps that silly obligatory dungeon that showed up 30 episodes ago) Why is it here? What makes it any different than the water temple in “Legend of Zelda? or any other video game? Who cares, I guess. Black Clover certainly doesn’t. It seems more concerned with vomiting out as many episodes as it can to try and get the attention of fledgling anime fans who don’t know any better than doing something unexpected.

The episode’s not good, but chances are you already knew that. I don’t think I’ve actually reviewed a “Good” episode of this show since I started watching it. The Black Bulls by themselves had these cute little antics that were supposed to be endearing but kind of annoying. I had thought that when they all banded together they might be able to play off of each other, but I couldn’t be more wrong. These characters don’t strike me as magic knights or heroes of any kind, but completely incompetent, totally useless amateur comedians, who need to go back and workshop some shit because clearly, these bits are not making anyone laugh.