English Dub Review: Black Clover “The Devil-Binding Ritual”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Noelle and the rest who fought in the Heart Kingdom awaken in an area populated by reincarnated elves from the Eye of the Midnight Sun, among them Patry, as well as the half-elf descendants of Licht and Tetia (who were THEY having kids with if there were no elves before now?). After a test of their resolve, Patry offers to teach them Ultimate Magic. Back in the Clover Kingdom, Nacht meets the rest of the Black Bulls for the first time and tells them that if they want to be part of the plan to get Yami back, they’ll need to get much stronger in two days. Nacht then takes Asta to his abandoned house where he starts Asta on the Devil-Binding Ritual, summoning Asta’s devil Liebe and forcing the two to fight so that Asta can properly control Liebe’s power, although he reminds Liebe of a strange woman from his past.

OUR TAKE

We’re at the penultimate episode of the series now, but we’re spending it and the remaining episode building up to a fight we will not be seeing animated for many years, if ever. It’s an odd sort of feeling knowing that the big showdown that things are leading to will need to be viewed in the manga for the time being. It almost feels unfair to be judging the episode for what is out of its control, but knowing the context that this is the second to last part of the series (again, at least for now) just gives me this undercurrent of frustration, which is only going to be all the more apparent in the finale next time.

But as for the episode itself, it’s…mainly set up for fighting the Dark Triad in two to three days. Noelle and her group get set up to get more power and magic (along with a brief check in with the old bad guys so they can cash one last check on this show), the Black Bulls get set up to do the same but without supervision, and Asta gets set up to face his devil, which will be getting the main focus in the finale along with a flashback from Liebe’s perspective. Black Clover has consistently felt it rather blatantly takes from its Shonen peers and uses those elements in noticeably less good ways. Not necessarily worse, but definitely not as good as where it comes from. In this case, it’s the Naruto/Bleach thing of facing the demonic presence inside one’s self to master its power, combining Hollow Ichigo from Bleach with Kurama from Naruto. Except now that he has a proper physical form beyond being a creepy looking shadow, he gets to be voiced by Ben Diskin for this and next episode. Welcome to the cast, Ben! And also, goodbye after next time!

It’s still weird acknowledging that Black Clover will be over next episode. I mean, it’s been over for a few months, but now the dub will have finally caught up, followed shortly by it finishing its run on Toonami. The show made its loud and annoying impression back in Fall of 2017 but just kept chugging along all this time with its outdated model of adaptation until it inevitably ran out of material. It’s been a crazy ride, reviewing this series off and on luckily getting to come back right at the end. Now there’s nothing left to do but wait for its not-finale, which will no doubt be coming by next week. See you all then.