English Dub Review: Black Clover “The Briar Maiden’s Melancholy”

There’s always time for another tragic backstory!

Overview (Spoilers Below)

The Star Festival continues, and this time, we come across Charlotte, the captain of the Blue Rose squadron of the Magic Knights. Asta witnesses her use her briar magic to deal with a handsy nobleman. Asta runs into Charlotte’s second-in-command, Char, who also gets up to some shenanigans with Charlotte, forcibly putting her into a new dress. Charlotte, dressed in her new scanty dress, is embarrassed to be seen, especially by Captain Yami, who she has a crush on.

Naturally, Captain Yami and Vanessa stumble upon Charlotte, and Charlotte, who believes Yami to be getting chummy with Vanessa, challenges Vanessa to a duel. Though their duel initially seems to have an air of intensity, it takes the form of none other than a beauty contest, where the two of them compete to see who can wear the most attractive clothing. With Finral announcing the ordeal, Charlotte dresses up like a sexy witch while Vanessa dresses up like a nun. The two are both quite attractive, and the audience finds it too close to call the first round.

The next round, as declared by Vanessa, is a drinking contest. The drinking begins, but Vanessa turns out to already be a few drinks deep and hits the table early on in the contest. Meanwhile, Charlotte has a flashback to her past, when she reflects upon a strange family curse on her house that is said to enact upon her on her 18th birthday. Because of that curse, Charlotte has always valued her own strength above all else, since she didn’t want to be a burden and shame her family. This prevented her from finding love in life, until the day that Captain Yami came out of nowhere and saved Charlotte from the briar curse that was destroying everything around her. Since then, Charlotte has been hopelessly in love with Captain Yami.

The duel between Charlotte and Vanessa ends with a draw and the beginning of the Star Ceremony, which promises to reveal the new captains of the Crimson Lions and the Purple Orcas.

Our Take:

The filler-esque shenanigans of the Star Festival continue, deciding this time to focus on a character who has had very little development thus far. Charlotte’s resurgence in the plot comes from out of nowhere, but this sort of one-off plot is appropriate for an arc like this to have. After all, there’s nothing wrong with taking a little economy off of the main cast to make a previously uninteresting character a little more worth watching. However, like most things in Black Clover, this story is done half-assed and is left wanting. By the end of it I felt that, though I knew more information about Charlotte’s character, I didn’t particularly care about her anymore than I did before, and found that her love of Captain Yami is actually less interesting knowing where it comes from.

I like the idea of a series of challenges between Vanessa and Charlotte as a means of introducing more aspects of their characters. However, the plot doesn’t really factor into any of the development around Charlotte, rather its an entirely separate part of the episode. The real “plot” doesn’t kick in until we go through the flashback of Charlotte’s past, where things that matter actually happen. The rest of the episode is basically skippable. There’s no important dialogue or interesting situations that happen, just a lot of fooling around to try and waste time with mildly interesting tomfoolery. And, of course, because all of Charlotte’s character gets crammed into a five minute flashback, she seems more shallow than ever. Mystery is not always satisfying, but it allows the viewer to fill in the blanks with their own mind, meaning that when faced with the prospect of a boring backstory, it would be better to have no backstory at all.

I don’t find Charlotte’s “curse” conflict to be interesting, probably because its completely arbitrary and doesn’t amount to much. Instead of taking the boring route, the episode should have found ways for Charlotte to reveal her character through her actions and interactions with Vanessa during their challenges. As it stands, though, that doesn’t happen, which means that this is a boring episode from start to finish. It’s meager offerings supplemented by meek attempts at fan-service by having Asta fall into Sol’s generous bosom or by having Charlotte and Vanessa wear cute clothes. Don’t bother with this one, it’s just another waste of your time.