English Dub Review: Black Clover “Awakening”

Guess who finally gets her magic in gear?

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Vetto has arrived to do work on Asta and his friends and take the water stone from the temple. He’s put the hurt on pretty thick so far, but Noelle and Kahono arrive just in time to fight back and save Asta’s bacon.

Noelle hesitates, but after Kahono and Kiato get taken out by Vetto, (After an extended flashback sequence for the two of them) she gathers her strength and fights back against Vetto. After a powering up sequence that would make Dragonball Z blush, she unleashes a powerful water dragon blast at Vetto, which vaporizes his right arm and sends him into a brief flashback as well.

Through some twisted magic, Vetto’s arm grows back and a third eye appears on his forehead. He fires back an energy blast at Noelle, but Asta steps in just in time to block the blow, keeping this fight going for another week.

Our Take:

One issue I’ve noticed with Black Clover’s fights is how they can’t hold tension because the powers that the combatants have are so poorly defined. It’s not like this in every battle, but the “Rhythm Cushion” which Kahono uses early on really speaks to this issue. A character’s special abilities don’t seem to have any real constraints or limitations beyond the author’s imagination. Unlike shows like My Hero Academia, which make it very clear that a character has distinct weaknesses and constraints on their powers, Black Clover doesn’t even go near the subject of “the rules” of how a particular power works. Who’s to say that someone can’t use “Game magic” to set arbitrary rules on existence which can create life or death situations. Who’s to argue when, as happens earlier in the series, a character uses his smoke magic to make an actual functioning automobile made out of smoke. Anything goes in Black Clover; nothing is certain, everything is permitted, much to the detriment of the story. A story can’t be intense without consequences; without a weight to the actions of the characters. What a character does with their abilities needs to be an important, conscious choice. There need to be rules for how combat happens because life has rules. People have limits; people have things they can and cannot do, and giving every character a “Deus ex machina” ability that is previously unheard of and activated only by the will of the character that uses it makes even the most vital of fight scenes fall on their face.

This is the singular problem that follows the story throughout this entire episode. Noelle’s powerset until this point has been so poorly defined (Largely because she hasn’t been able to use magic) that she basically has a blank check of magic that she can use against Vetto. Magic in this series is little more than a plot device used to keep things moving rather than a developed part of the setting. It’s no secret to be discovered at this point that Black Clover doesn’t give a shit about developing its setting, but the point must be persisted. This episode sucks, and it sucks because its boring; because I know that the only thing holding Noelle back from unleashing magical fury on her foes is that the author doesn’t want her to. And when you’re trying to sell me on a fantasy series, that’s just no good.