English Dub Review: Black Clover “Guardians”

Wherein a battle is fought, and predictable things happen.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

We begin mid fight from last week’s episode; Noelle has just tapped into her water magic, learning a new spell in her grimoire after going up a power level in order to protect the innocent townspeople from the last episode from the ice-themed evil mages trying to kill them. She uses her water magic to create a water shield over everyone, while Magna and Asta try to push the offensive on the ice mages. Yet, their powers are no match for their foe, who begins to freeze the shield in order to shatter it and leave them defenseless.

Asta and Magna persist on though, with Asta repeatedly taking the brunt end of their foe’s ice waves. Meanwhile, Magna gets a flashback where we see how he became the golden boy of his village when he was accepted into the Black Bulls. Reflecting on his past gives him the strength to carry on, and he unleashes a powerful scattering fireball attack at the ice mage, but its no good, it can’t get past the ice mage’s shield. Except, it turns out it was a ruse! He actually fired some of the shots behind the mage for Asta to reflect back with his unique ability to reflect magical power with his sword. The attack stuns the ice mage long enough for Asta to finish the job with a powerful sword blow, giving Magna the opportunity to bind all of the enemy mages with fire magic.

They try to interrogate the mages but using some kind of magic item the mages have inside themselves, they commit an icy suicide, stating that “The end days are coming.” It would seem they were more willing to die than to potentially give up information. The rest of the episode is just a rehash of the major themes of the series, with our protagonists telling Seyhe’s mourning grandson that he too can be a magic knight with the power of hard work and determination. Then we wrap it all up in a scene with a mysterious hooded figure, no doubt our big bad, receiving information about his minion’s defeat, making vague statements about things to come.

Our Take:

This episode suffers from all the same problems Black Clover usually has, only more dramatically. Nothing in particular of note happens in this episode, except that we resolve a fight from the last episode, and were treated to another round of shounen cliches that are quickly wearing out their welcome. It feels rushed, uncreative, and forced; the episode shoves too many things into a limited time frame while not building anything new or interesting. Everything that happens is so completely predictable it’s almost comical. Its cliches all the way down, and what hope I had gained for this series after Asta’s admission into the Black Bulls is quickly diminishing.