English Dub Review: Black Clover “Mereoleona vs. Rhya the Disloyal”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

The Royal Knights continue their onslaught on the headquarters of the Eye of the Midnight Sun, handily knocking off wave after wave of henchmen. However, one of them only cackles that their efforts are futile, and that those of the group will be given their “true forms” soon. This doesn’t stop Asta and Zora from continuing to kick ass behind Mereoleona, but suddenly a second Asta appears, which she soon susses out as Rhya, the final member of the Third Eye. He uses his own magical powers: Copy Magic, which allow him to copy another person’s magic if he’s touched their grimoire. He throws dozens of different spells and styles at her, but he can only use one attribute at a time, which limits his versatility. Mereoleona fights them all off with her fiery fists, even against water spells AND Asta’s anti-magic sword, then finishes the fight with a Mana Zone spell, the next level of Mana Skin to use all the mana in the area for the attack.

Meanwhile, Yuno also utilizes a Mana Zone attack to take care of the remaining henchmen before leading Mimosa and others to an inner chamber, where a body floats in an orb of light.

OUR TAKE

There’s a lot that I can say to disparage Black Clover as a whole (and probably will do so in this review), but I have to admit that this fight with the last of the Third Eye was pretty entertaining. It felt pretty quick compared to the fights against Vetto and Fana, as well as kinda just hitting the same beats of those fights with the flashbacks to their previous lives with Licht, but without much of the gravitas those fights had (which wasn’t a whole lot to begin with). It feels more like this was just about tying up loose ends before something else happened, and given that this knock-off Akatsuki/Espada group was already pretty underwhelming, it’s not exactly the ideal send-off for their last member. With that in mind, getting to see Mereoleona cut loose against someone was pretty hot (pun intended) and the fight itself was very fast paced, so that was neat.

…but now I’m at a bit of a loss on what else to talk about because that fight was basically what the entire episode was about. Hmm. Well, there were little hints about a pretty big event on the horizon, what with the talk of the Eye of the Midnight Sun members getting their “true forms”, the seemingly important markings in the hideout, and now this strange figure that Yuno is leading some of the knights towards. It was pretty obvious that this fight wasn’t going to be the end of it with Licht still being on the loose and several notable members of the group unaccounted for (plus this being the longest arc of the manga so far, so we have at least 35 more episodes worth of story in this season to go before even just this arc is resolved. I’m just kind of questioning the pacing of the story so far, with us jumping around places so no particular battle feels very important.

But that looks to be changing next week, as we jump perspectives…AGAIN to check in with Yami and the Wizard King for what should be another big, entertaining, and important battle. I just have to question some studio decisions here once again, since the preview for the next episode looks PRETTY SPOILERY, which is to say nothing of the new version of the Opening we’ll be getting, but I’ll talk about that when we get there next week.