English Dub Review: Black Clover “Formation of the Royal Knights”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Mereoleona Vermillion, now Captain of the Royal Knights, bashes down the door of the Black Bulls HQ to collect those of their members that passed the Royal Knights Selection Exam, which turns out to be Asta, Noelle, Luck, and one other Black Bulls member who is NOT Magna. They then go to meet the rest of their teammates, most of which are the other contestants of the exam, with the Golden Dawn having a clear majority. There’s also the matter of the unknown Black Bull, who turns out to be Zora, having been recruited by Yami shortly after the exam.

Not that it really matters, since they’re now under one group, uniform, and mission: Defeat the Eye of the Midnight Sun, who have collected almost all of the Magic Stones they need for their own plans. Luckily, two of their biggest guns, Vetto and Fana, have already been defeated in previous arcs, while two of the three unobtained stones are in Royal hands. That just leaves one stone left to find and only Rhya and the group’s leader, Licht, left to defeat, and their first team mission is to fight them right in their own base.

At said base, Rhya dreams of more pleasant days when his friends and Licht celebrated the upcoming marriage between him and the human princess Tetia, who shares an odd resemblance with Mimosa Vermillion. In fact, several people in the dream resemble other characters. He awakens in tears, then prepares for his next plans.

OUR TAKE

And so properly begins the ninth story arc of the series, which seems to be about shifting focus to directly combating the Eye of the Midnight Sun. Basically Naruto’s “Fourth Great Ninja War” arc, even down to having all the rivaling villages/Squads put their differences aside and put on matching uniforms to face their common foe. It’s also the longest arc in the manga thus far at just about 80 chapters with no end in sight, meaning that the anime is really in it for the long haul if it’s starting on this now. With how popular Black Clover apparently is, it doesn’t seem like the manga will be ending any time soon, but it’s hard to say what will happen if the anime ends up catching up too fast. Though at the current rate, that probably won’t happen for over a year. Unless the show is cancelled like Bleach, but we can only hope.

As for the episode itself, it’s pretty much just what it says on the tin, with the newly christened Royal Knights being gathered and given their mission statement while being padded with the show’s usual stale and/or overplayed gags. As such, there isn’t very much in terms of development for the heroes aside from “wow, now I’m on a team with people I usually am not on a team with!” which was already done for the Exam Tournament. Now it’s in the context of a military operation instead of practice fights, but the general mood really isn’t any different. It kind of feels like we might have been better putting this arc off a bit so that this sort of team would feel more novel, or at least to give Zora some time as a member of the Black Bulls for that to actually mean something. Not much point in putting him on a team if those teams are about to effectively stop existing for the sake of this joint operation.

The other main thing of note is Rhya’s dream/flashback about his previous life and all the people he talked with that resembled certain characters like Mimosa, Luck, Fana, and Vetto. The Eye of the Midnight Sun’s goal revolves around recovering their “true forms” with the Magic Stones, so do those two things connect in some way? And more importantly will this hunt for magical stones involve time travel and someone with shrinking magic flying into Licht’s ass? I guess we’ll have to see.