English Dub Review: Black Clover “Never Again”

Never again, until next week.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Captain Yami takes Asta to see Owen, the Magic Knights’ recovery mage since Asta got his arms damaged after fighting with Valtos. Things are initially bright and light-hearted between Asta and Owen, but the mood changes when the good doctor gives him a chilling diagnosis. The damage to Asta’s arms is too great, and he will never be able to swing a sword again.

Later that night, the Black Bulls have a party to celebrate their recent successes, but Asta taps out early, which clues everyone into something being wrong with the poor boy. Finral explains to everyone that he overheard Asta’s grim news, and the team gets together to see how Asta is feeling. Spying on him from the bushes, the Black Bulls observe Asta staring at the moon. Just when it seems like he’s about to cry, instead he starts yelling at the universe, telling it that he doesn’t care about fate and that he’ll keep working hard.

The other Black Bulls are inspired and then go out to seek a cure for Asta’s condition. Everyone splits up across the land to find a remedy, but Vanessa has a specific place in mind that might be able to help.

Our Take:

Well, Black Clover dropped the ball again. You really think that at a certain point this show would land the mark, but just when it gets a chance to do something that has any depth or meaning, it just goes right on back to being baby’s first shounen: a show that seems unable to do anything other than rip off other, better anime and do what they do…only worse. This episode represented a genuine opportunity for this series to capture a powerful emotional moment; to take a character who has existed as little more than a caricature of a real hero and make him a little more human. But Black Clover only knows how to play one song, and it’s going to keep playing it until your ears start to bleed.

Where do I begin? Let’s start with the centerpiece of the episode: Asta can no longer use his arms. Where have I seen this before? What other popular anime protagonist received a diagnosis of never being able to use his arms to fight again without major bodily harm? Of course, its Midoriya, from “My Hero Academia”, a much better show that, it would seem, the writer of this clown show started watching and said “Hey, I could do that!” and shoehorned in the same plotline into his creatively bankrupt series. It’s no secret that this isn’t the first time Black Clover has done this. Asta is essentially an amalgamate of Midoriya and Naruto, while the Black Bulls are cribbed from Fairy Tail and the quest to be “The Wizard King” is a copy of both One Piece and Naruto’s main plot lines.

But whatever, that bothers me, but I’m not that surprised. What’s especially frustrating is that, instead of giving Asta a moment of vulnerability that he can grow from, the show instead just has him recycle the same tired lines about “Hard Work” and “Friendship” that he always does. Asta never changes, he never grows, just like his series never grows. The animation may have gotten better, but this plot is as thin as ever, and its characters are still glued together with pieces of cardboard.

I don’t know how this show can keep enough of a following to justify it still being made, but it really does baffle the mind. It looks like while better seasonal offerings can’t catch a break on the second season, the class clown of the anime world gets to coast on through because of easy marketability. There is some talk bubbling about how this show “starts to get better”, but I’m 54 episodes in and I don’t think its anywhere close to something I would watch for fun. Get your shit together, Black Clover. Would you please?