English Dub Review: Black Clover “The Guy Who Doesn’t Know When to Quit.”

The anime that doesn’t know when to quit.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

The Eye of the Midnight Sun goes up against the Black Balls, with each of the Black Bulls mages going up against an enemy mage. Our episode for this particular conflict focuses on Gauche, who goes up against an enemy wielding chain magic with Grey at his side. After they summarily defeat their opponent, they meet up with Charmy who’s sleeping and dreaming about food. This lets a couple more enemy mages sneak up on Grey and Gauche and ensnare them with vine magic, but in a weird twist, Grey wakes up Charmy by transforming a rock into a piece of meat. Charmy is clearly not too reliable as a mage, but then again, none of the Black Bulls are, so its no biggie.

After some more shenanigans, we go to Asta, who’s dueling with Vetto to the best of his abilities. He doesn’t stand much of a chance, though, and is easily defeated, until Noelle arrives with Kahono to try and turn the tides.

Our Take:

Sometimes in Black Clover you get an episode that takes a break from the hard, hard work of making a professional quality animation and decides to take it easy for a little bit. Instead of taking the time to make sure that the animation is well…animated, the animators let it all slide and spit out an episode that barely even qualifies as an animation, and is something more of a glorified storyboard. Whether for the budget, for poor management, or just terrible animating, that’s we got ourselves this week: an episode that compounds onto the normal laundry list of terrible storytelling the sin of not even being a finished episode. I wish I could say I was surprised, but I’m really not; a show like this that already takes generous liberties with its “storytelling” is bound to keep making this mistake over and over again. Let’s not forget, of course, that Black Clover is really pushing it with these recap openings, with this one taking a solid four minutes to be over and done with. With a two-minute ending theme, that puts this episode at a paltry 16 minutes.

The ugly animation is, of course, an even bigger problem than usual because we’re in a fight-heavy arc and this is “supposed” to be the climax of this whole water temple affair. The climax is a generous word, of course, because this whole arc still feels like an inconsequential filler episode that just sort of exists. It’s hard to really care about what’s going on when I don’t care for this villain or the denizens of the water temple who are at stake. Bad characters make for bad fights because the power of a fight scene is always dependent on the quality of the characters taking part in it. The episode tries to shove in some high stakes by throwing some civilians lives’ at stake, but its a cheap maneuver to try and illicit some tension. I really couldn’t care less about these underwater people; if I don’t really care about the main cast, then how the hell are some nameless extras going to earn my empathy?

Yeah, it’s not a very good episode. This arc, in general, has been an absolute loser. Having all the Black Bulls in one place has done little more than make their flaws that much more noticeable. The fights are boring, the animation is ugly as all hell, and the storytelling is so melodramatic and juvenile it makes professional wrestling look like high art.