English Dub Review: Black Clover “A Black Beach Story”

Even Black Clover gets its obligatory beach episode!

Overview (Spoilers Below)

The Black Bulls have been deployed to the ocean to search for the ocean temple, where a magical item of great power is located. That means the Black Bulls have some zany antics to undergo. Noelle goes bikini shopping to try and win Asta’s heart, though her lack of self-confidence sabotages her at every turn.

By the method of broom flight, the Black Bulls make it to the beach and immediately get down to business. Everyone is off doing their own thing; picking up girls, building sand castles and, in Vanessa’s case, getting smashed on the beach. A good time is had by all, except for Noelle, who can’t seem to get Asta’s attention, despite her alluring new bikini.

Eventually, Captain Yami steps in to put a stop to their nonsense and brief them on the mission to come. He informs Noelle that they’ll be heavily relying on her and her water magic to get this mission done, but Noelle still doesn’t know for sure if she can handle it, and is given a deadline to train herself to control her magic by the time the mission begins.

That night, while Noelle is training her magical discipline, she runs into Asta, who offers to help her out. But just as they meet up, the two hear mysterious singing coming from off in the distance. Mysterious singing coming from a young girl on the beach.

Our Take:

Having a fantasy anime with all the tropes and trappings of a modern slice of life episode about the beach is a little bit weird. The whole setup of this episode is the “Shopping arc” for their mission to the beach just feels odd to me at its core. Noelle shopping for bikinis, the Black Bulls having floaties; these are things that magic knights wouldn’t normally do. It doesn’t quite belong in this hard fantasy setting, and its played too straight to be self-aware. At times, the story can be a bit funny, but everything just feels out of place. Its as if this plot was just completely transplanted from a totally different genre.

Plot-wise, this episode is mostly a comedy. Don’t expect too much in terms of story, but a whole lot in terms of wacky slapstick and shenanigans. Some of it works, some of it doesn’t, but I don’t think Noelle’s ultra-cliched tsundere troubles could be more boring. What this episode really relies on is the ability of the main cast to be funny and charming, and your mileage may vary on that.  Get ready to expect every twist and turn in the episode; it pulls directly from the “Anime beach episode” handbook. It’s so predictable to me that this episode almost feels like a parody of itself. Regardless, I’m a lot more impressed with the Black Bulls as a group than the Black Bulls as individuals. By themselves, their one-note shticks get really old, but combined together there are some decently entertaining times to be had.

The animation is much improved in this episode. It’s colorful, energetic and much crisper than we’ve had in prior episodes, and not an animation error in sight. It helps that they don’t have a whole lot of action to animate, but the quality is duly noted.

At its core, this is just a filler episode, designed to kill some time. The only development of any consequence is when Captain Yami briefs the Black Bulls on what’s going on with the ocean temple, and that falls within the last five minutes of the episode. It’s not a bad five minutes, admittedly, but it comes way too late to really grab my attention.

This week also comes with a new opener for Black Clover, and it’s easily the best one yet for the show. Dramatic, aggressive, and detailed, it has an intensity that decisively primes the viewer for the events to come, despite how dismal those events may be.