English Dub Review: Black Clover “The Battle for Clover Castle”

(Possible Spoilers Below)

As the elves possess the Golden Dawn members, led by Langris, head for the three royal castles to murder the royal families. The King, furious over Langris’ crimes, cancels the engagement between Langris and his royal great-niece, Finnes Calmreich. While his concern seems warranted, the King comes off as a braggadocious overweight coward. Several elves fight the royal guards while Langris leads other elves to kill the royals. Finral arrives with The Black Bulls Captain Yami to fight the elves along with the hilariously sadistic Green Praying Mantis captain, “Jack the Ripper” (Yes that’s his actual name).

They manage to knock the elves guarding the gates unconscious. Inside the castle of House Silva the elves begin massacring the humans, royals and servants alike. Noelle’s siblings, Solid and Nebra are even attacked by an elf named Kivn. Nebra is impaled and incapacitated while Solid, still injured following his loss against Noelle due to his arrogance, senses the floating dungeon approaching just behind Nozel, Noelle and their comrades. Yami is proud to see that Zora is finally wearing his Black Bull robe.

As Yami, Jack and Finral decide to find and protect the king. Nozel and Noelle try to save Solid and Nebra, but Kivn aside from frequently impaling people with “Compass Magic” casts a spell that distorts their magic, making it difficult to control their spells, and Nozel is wounded saving Solid. The Silva siblings are surprised to learn that Noelle, has struggled to control her magic all her life and forcing herself to train to control it, The episode ends when she decides to stand her ground against them as she’s now the only Silva sibling who can take this threat on effectively.

Our Take

There has been a while since Noelle had the spotlight, so I’m happy she will finally have her chance to shine. That compass magic is also ridiculously overpowered and feels forced for the sake of possibly giving the plot a sense of peril. To shift gears for a second, while the focus isn’t on the Black Bulls squad this time, It was a nice break to focus on the other characters and how each of them are reacting to the current situation regarding the Elf crisis. Part of me feels like I shouldn’t give a shit about half of these characters as one of them was a royal who was cowardly enough to use a maid as a human shield when the shit was going down, It also seems that next episode will be the spotlight for Noelle, finally.

I always waited for the moment that Noelle was going to prove that she is strong and deserves to be part of the family as a massive “Fuck you” to them for the way they belittled her in the beginning. The Black Bulls as a whole should’ve just been called “Black Bulls: A Magical Underdog Story” because much like Saitama from One Punch Man, Their greatest superpower is working hard and always being underestimated, So I can’t wait to see her families faces if she does unleash her true power in front of the very people who shunned her.