English Dub Review: Black Clover “Breaking the Seal”

(Possible Spoilers Below)

Finral teleports Nero to the bones and removes the magic stones from Patoli’s stone tablet and places them in the First Wizard King’s statue atop the skull, causing the statue to crack. The mass proves capable of draining magic and life force from its victims, and the Demon plans to unleash it on the world. While saving Rhya and Mimosa Asta is swallowed by the mass, only to discover his anti-magic makes him immune. Nozel then orders Asta, Yuno and Patoli to assist Yami while he takes Mimosa elsewhere.

At the same time this is going on, there’s a separate sub-plot since the last episode’s post-credits when “Nero” begins to speak and asks to be taken to the ancient “dead demon” ruins by Finral but it’s here when things take a more interesting direction as the statue crumbles it transforms back into the first Wizard King, who goes by the name “Lemiel Silvamilllion Clover”, while Nero also transforms into what’s revealed to be this whole time, her original self a which is a young girl with tiny horns on her head named “Secre Swallowtail”.

As the two travel into the Shadow Palace, we get a more detailed flashback that takes place “500 years ago” when we see the shit that really went down in regards to what started the Elf-War and what kind of person the Wizard King was like and Secre’s purpose in the story as his servant. Lemiel would spend his time creating magic tools and fully believed in the idea of a more equal society. But on the day of Lemiel’s sister’s wedding to the Elf King Licht, he was captured by that very same Demon who manipulated his family into causing the murder, death, and chaos that affected the Elves into the rage-induced individuals they are now. As Lemiel escaped it was too late to prevent the massacre and the Demon succeeded in creating the original “Five Leaf Grimoire” spell-book that would one day belong to Asta. The episode ends when we learn that the same Demon tried to possess Licht but in an effort to keep that from happening, Licht makes an uneasy choice that puts both him and Lemiel in a tragic situation that will forever affect the course of history in the Black Clover Universe…

Our Take

Damn, we’re finally getting to the “truth” behind this Demon’s vile machinations and the first Wizard King has been officially revealed now. As for the Elf-King, Licht really was a good man though, he and by-extension his people certainly didn’t deserve such an end… but more importantly, Nero in human form!  What has always been an iconic image within the Black Clover world has always been that giant three-eyed demon skull statue that’s often used as a landmark but sometimes when we grow up, we never know the true stories behind such monuments that were around way before our time such as “Stone Henge” or what really went down in Ancient Egypt with the ancient pyramids other than the stories we were told, so it’s a completely different matter when we see the truth from a different perspective.

It was also nice to see that some of the limitations of the magic of that Black-Devil thing. (like he can’t just order people to die and the anti-magic also affects his monsters) have been revealed, but he’s seemingly overpowered as heck. If I got any complaints, It’s that Asta’s current situation feels like was done out of plot-contrivance as Asta’s “anti-magic” abilities pretty much serve as “plot-armor” for this particular situation and feel like it’s only there to give our lead character more importance to the narrative. Before this, the previous episodes were doing a good job giving other characters a moment to shine and to prove they were more than just “magical misfits” who didn’t fit in, but Asta always felt like the poster child of the series as a “Magical Naruto” of sorts, but hopefully, that won’t be the case in later episodes with these new pieces of lore re-contextualizing everything.