English Dub Review: Black Clover “Friends”

This episode should be titled, “Luck’s Mommy Issues”

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Luck’s high voltage fight with middle-aged smoke man, Lotus, rages on, with Luck being propelled forward to win by the voices in his head. As the two battle on, we get to learn a little more about Luck’s life courtesy of a spooky flashback! Luck’s had a hard life, it seems, due to Luck’s peculiar attachment to smiling. He smiles all the time, no matter what, and naturally this ostracizes him from the rest of his peers and his mother, who literally tries to slap the smile off his face. But things get a bit better for the poor boy; when his mom learns he’s developed magical powers strong enough to defeat a noble, she decides he’s worth loving, thus explaining the voice in Luck’s head telling him to win all the time. Yikes.

Back in the present, Luck fights with all his might, but Lotus has got his number, and uses his smoke to imprison Luck from moving. Meanwhile, at the core of the dungeon, the mysterious diamond mage from last episode presses his attack on Yuno and pals, while Asta and Noelle continue to delve deeper into the dungeon, searching for the source of its magical power. Noelle, with her keen mana senses, senses that Luck is in danger. She’s apprehensive to help the nutty mage, however, since their mission is to get the magical power within  the dungeon before anyone else does.

Klaus presses the attack against the diamond mage, and sends Yuno off on his own to the retrieve the dungeon’s treasure. But as he yells at Yuno to get out of there, the diamond mage senses an opening and sends a surge of mighty diamond magic to take out Klaus. But turnabout is upon both battles! At the last minute, both Yuno and Asta return to help out Klaus and Luck respectively, declaring that they will never abandon their friends in a battle.

Following another flashback, wherein we see Luck standing over his mother’s grave with his trademark creepy smile, Luck gathers his resolve and charges towards Lotus, insisting that he needs to win this fight by himself for his dear old mama. But Asta won’t let him fight alone, and begins chopping through waves of Lotus’s black smoke. In that moment, Luck comes to the realization that he’s not alone after all, and his abandonment issues are thereby cured with the power of friendship.

Right on cue, Lotus decides that its time to get serious, and surrounds the Black Bulls with a whirlwind of smoke. Meanwhile, at the Golden Dawn’s battle, Yuno sends out a powerful dual-casted spell (Which is a thing, apparently) to attack the diamond mage, but before we see what happens, we go back to the fight with Lotus. The Black Bulls are on their last legs, when Luck comes up with a plan to defeat Lotus. He starts rapid firing electric bolts into the smoke, forcing Lotus to dodge the blasts. He does the villain thing and starts to monologue, only to be walloped by Asta’s blade from the depths of the smoke. The Black Bulls then do us the courtesy of explaining their plan after-the-fact, revealing that Noelle used her water magic to shoot Asta into the air with a bubble while Luck distracted Lotus, setting up a powerful sneak attack.

As their battle ends, Yuno’s battle is only just beginning; his attack was powerful, but the diamond mage emerges from it unscathed, holding a giant diamond sword aloft in the air. What incredible power can this mysterious challenger wield? Well, we’ll just have to wait until next week to find out.

Our Take:

The episode started out okay, but as it went along it pretty much fell flat on its face. I was initially interested to learn more about Luck’s backstory, but was surprised that this episode would just immediately resolve his internal conflict with his mother in a single episode, with a “power of friendship” moment that did not at all feel earned. One does not simply resolve an an entire character’s backstory in a single episode, but Black Clover’s got better things to do than take the time to give us a proper characterization of its cast, I suppose. The rest was just alright; passable, but not exciting, though it was nice to get a rest from all the filler prior episodes have saddled its audience with.