English Dub Review: Black Clover “The Great War Breaks Out”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

While the Golden Dawn recover from being decimated by Zenon, the other two members of the Dark Triad make their moves on other fronts. Vanica arrives in the Heart Kingdom with several troops to face Lorepechika while Dante attacks Black Bull headquarters to capture Yami, but when he doesn’t find him there, he decides to destroy the place. Luckily Asta and Vanessa are strong enough to protect against Dante’s Gravity Magic, but he still overpowers most of them and mortally wounds Gauche. Asta lets his Devil powers overtake him to give him an edge against Dante, but he makes use of his own Devil to keep things in his control.

OUR TAKE
As we tick down towards the finale, at least for now, we start up what will be the last two big scale fights of the series. We’ve already seen the power of one of the Dark Triad, so now we’ll see the other two fighting main characters to get a good idea of their abilities…and then I guess you need to read the manga to see how the rest of that goes. But in the meantime, there are plenty of interesting things to point out. For one, this is the first time we’ll be seeing Asta really go all out since obtaining his Beefy Dwarf timeskip design, and it will also be his first fight against someone else who has powers gained from being possessed by a devil. Plus, as we’re already seeing, Dante is on much better terms with his own devil, Lucifero, than Asta is with his, even putting aside the power difference, so things aren’t looking good. It’s kind of like when Naruto had to face Gaara for the first time, in that we have the main character finally fighting someone with comparable abilities, though I guess taking over a hundred episodes to get to this point.

I’ll probably have this feeling all the way up until the end, but it’s a little weird trying to get invested in this series when I know that it’s going to leave so much unresolved. I’ll try not to bring that up every single week until the last episode, but it’s something is ever present in my viewing of these. With that in mind, it does at least look like the animation studio is bringing their A game in making sure these last few fights are in their best possible quality, which is good because it’s not like they’re saving that money for anything else down the road. Studio Pierrot, the ones that make this, have had a reputation for cutting corners for their long running Shonen action shows like Naruto and Bleach and ESPECIALLY Black Clover, so it’s nice that they’re at least going to make sure that this goes out on a high note, which will no doubt keep demand for more episodes high while the show is on indefinite hiatus. Then again, Bleach’s manga ended in 2016 and we still haven’t gotten word on when they’re animating the last arc of it, so who knows what will happen with Black Clover. In the meantime, nine episodes to go!