English Dub Review: Black Clover “Despair vs. Hope”

This episode fills me with despair.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Asta has teamed up with Finral and Vanessa to take on Vetto with all their powers combined. They’re able to outmaneuver Vetto, but aren’t able to deal any real damage. And Vetto is also starting to get their rhythms down and turn the fight on the Black Bulls. Yami soon informs Asta that Vetto is figuring out his patterns, and the next time he attacks he will certainly die. Yet, Yami thinks they can win the day if they go past their limits.

Asta and the others concur and decide to push themselves even harder. Then, we learn about Vanessa and Finral’s pasts, who clearly aren’t important enough to get their own backstory episodes. After seeing their melodramatic backstories, they both resolve to do their best to help Asta win the fight since they’re inspired by his example. They go as hard as they can, and manage to buy enough time for Charmy, Gauche and Grey to come in and help them out. With their assistance, Asta is able to deliver a powerful stab to Vetto’s midsection.

Our Take: 

This week’s episode of Black Clover is a complete and utter failure. What is supposed to be a big moment for Asta to demonstrate the power he’s attained, we’re forced to endure an episode that is barely even finished, let alone a good story.

Special attention here has to be paid to the horrendous animation that the audience is subject to in watching this episode. It’s Black Clover, so there is a certain degree of amateurish craft that is to be expected, but the fight scenes this week are some of the worst we’ve had so far. In, what are supposed to be intense combat moments, Asta’s eyes will grow and shrink in size, while movement will look more like keyframes than actual animation. This “Checkerboard” style of animation, where some things are left as the kind of animation tweens that a high school student would be able to make, is a deep black mark on the series as a whole. This is a challenge to the basic functionality of what an anime. Without its animation being complete, an anime can never really tell its story. Nothing can be built upon the ugliness of an anime left unfinished.

This fight would be a great time for this series to show us what Finral and Vanessa are capable of, but unfortunately, Black Clover doesn’t seem to think so. Instead of enjoying the splendor of seeing two undeveloped characters show us their cool powers, the two of them take a backseat to watch Asta do the same thing he’s done since the beginning of this series, hit people with a big sword. Though its made clear that Vanessa and Finral’s magical buffs add to Asta’s strength, that doesn’t make the awkward hand movements they make in the air any more interesting. I don’t think a series could make two character’s powers more boring. Sometimes, it seems that “Entertainment” isn’t what Black Clover has in mind. It seems barely unable to make a normal show’s runtime without excessive recaps at the beginning of its episodes, and it can’t be arsed to try and do something different for a fight than having Asta slam himself against an enemy over and over again.

Don’t expect anything of value from Black Clover this week, except a fight scene that will make you embarrassed to say you like anime. The quality of this episode is bad enough to rival that of the Saturday morning imported dubs that gave the medium a bad rap for years to come. This is an embarrassing episode to watch.