English Dub Review: Black Clover “Memories of You”

Diamond boy strikes back with a vengeance.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

The magic knights’ battle with Mars is over, and to the victors go the spoils, its time for our heroes to claim the treasures within this dungeon. Of course, first things come first: Klaus locks up the defeated Diamond Kingdom mage in some magical manacles, and there are the usual back-and-forth shenanigans between everybody. Klaus is arrogant, Asta is defiant, Noelle is repressed, I’m sure you know the drill by now.

Eventually, we get to the good stuff. They open the door to the dungeon core to reveal a treasure room filled to the brim with riches. Gold, magical items, treasure, you name it. Everyone proceeds to fiddle with the goodies within, astounded by the splendor of the dungeon’s vast wealth. Yuno comes across a mysterious scroll full of writing he doesn’t recognize. Strangely, after reading it, the text disappears in a shimmering green glow, perhaps imparting some nature of magical ability to its reader?

Things seem to have ended peacefully, but just as our heroes are about to celebrate, they’re ambushed from behind by none other than Mars, who wasn’t quite as defeated as he appeared. Its round two, everybody, and Mars is back in the saddle of his diamond golem ready to teach these kids who is boss. Surging his diamond magic outward, he ensnares most of the magic knights in a diamond cocoon. Klaus examines Mars’s person to see him enshrouded with some sort of flame recovery magic, which he must have used to escape the binding Klaus had locked him in. But something is very wrong here. Klaus gives us a quick explanation of the four elements of magic: fire, air, earth, and water, and says that each mage can only wield magical attribute. Conveniently, each attribute is effective against the other in a rock paper scissors sort of fashion; water beats fire and so on. Klaus concludes Mars’s ability to do this has something to do with the jewels implanted on his head, which appear to be the result of some kind of sinister experimentation by the Diamond Kingdom. Meanwhile, Mars keeps having flashbacks to his past, to some mysterious young lady who he knew in his youth.

The battle resumes as Noelle tries to mount an offense against Mars, but is quickly backhanded by his diamond golem into the opposite wall. This sends Asta into a rage, but Mars has figured out Asta shtick and brings the beatdown on him as well. To Mars, only the strong survive. While Mars is distracted, Mimosa tries to use her plant magic to heal the wounded Noelle, and we are treated to a flashback to their royal upbringing. While the two were close when they were young, Mimosa’s magical power quickly surpassed Noelle’s, who needed to practice every day just to accomplish the most typical of spells. Back in the present, Mimosa pleads with the unconscious Noelle that she had always admired Noelle for working as hard as she did to use magic. Because in their pish posh world, working hard is looked down upon as something for the lower classes.

This touching moment is cut short as Mars approaches for the kill, chanting to himself over and over that “Only the strong survive, the weak deserve death.” Just as he’s about to land the killing blow on Noelle and Mimosa, Asta comes right back ag n, and charges up Mars’s golem to slash him right across the chest. Reeling back from the attack, Noelle weakly tells Asta that he’s the only commoner she has any fondness for, so he better not give up. The power of friendship inspires Asta’s sword with a magical blue glow, which manifests as a water-based energy wave which Asta swings at his opponent. The magic-less boy has wielded magic for the first time in his life, apparently being able to “borrow” other people’s magic now. With his newfound power, he knocks out Mars for good, but looks down to see a diamond sword lodged in his stomach. He collapses on the ground, leaving us on a bloody cliffhanger for next week.

Our Take:

This week’s episode is functional, but not terribly interesting. I thought the fight had concluded just fine with last episode, but apparently we need to drag this encounter out as long as possible, so it was time for round two. I’m noticing now that these fights basically go the same way, with Asta getting his butt whooped at first and eventually just coming back at his opponent with more frantic sword swinging with a bit of “the power of friendship” to keep him going. It was fine at first, but its getting old at this point, and in a series that already drags its feet on episode creativity, no less.