English Dub Review: Black Clover “Peasant Trap”

Never underestimate the power of a strategically placed hole.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

We’re on our way to another round of the tournament to decide who gets to join the Royal Magic Knights. Before the next fight can begin, however, there is the matter of the post-match to deal with. Noelle thanks her fungus-wielding friend for giving her inspiration in the last battle, and she gains a new sense of self-confidence. Novachrono then decides to change up the battlefield for the next round of battles, adding in a variety of new, mountainous terrain to test the entrants.

Asta’s team is up for the next fight, going up against Magna’s team that has the vice-captain of the coral peacocks, Kirsch, in it. The match begins and Kirsch immediately uses his magic to spread a flood of cherry blossoms that obscure the battlefield. Asta, in response, powers up with his new devil powers and uses a “Devil Tornado” attack to clear the blossoms with his anti-magic sword. Everyone is impressed, except for Zora, who gets upset that Asta’s attack cleared out all the magical traps he had set out on the field the night before to gain an edge over the competition.

Asta doesn’t seem to mind though and explains to Zora that he wants them to win as a team, not by cheating. Zora takes Asta’s kind words of teamwork to heart and decides to stop being such a prick to his teammate. The two of them hatch a plan to make use of Zora’s trapping abilities to defeat their foes.

Asta ventures forth to pick a fight with Kirsch, who jumps forward ahead of his time to defeat the “Commoners” that are defacing his wonderful world. Asta runs off, luring Kirsch behind him into a cave. Just as it seems that Kirsch has Asta cornered, he falls into a pit within the cave. Surprisingly, the pit wasn’t made by magical means, but with simple elbow grease so that they could throw off Kirsch’s magical senses. Asta then divebombs into the pit and knocks out Kirsch with his swords, basically cementing their victory in this match.

Our Take:

This is a pretty standard episode for Black Clover; underdone, half-baked and insufficient to make for a truly entertaining episode of anime. Don’t come into this expecting more than the usual sentimentality of Asta combined with a couple of weakly animated action moments. Like all battles in Black Clover, there is the potential for a good episode, but it mostly just falls short. I don’t think anyone is gonna be writing home about how “Kirsch the cherry blossom mage” was defeated by falling into a hole.

That’s not to say that using a physical hole instead of a magical trap isn’t clever; it is. It’s a little more clever than what I’m used to seeing in Black Clover. But it’s just too clean, too simple. The victory is completely straightforward and earned without anything more than the most basic of trap plans. It’s completely obvious to the viewer that Asta has something planned, and it feels as if the only reason it worked is that Kirsch, like many of this show’s villains, is a foppish moron. He has as much personality as a rock and serves the same purpose, to be an obstacle for the protagonists. Without villains that are compelling or at least more creatively interesting, these fights aren’t going to go anywhere worth watching.

I’m also not wild about Asta being able to demonstrate so much control over his devil powers right off the bat. What’s compelling about the “Devil within” trope popularized in anime by “Naruto”, is that it offers great power but at a great price. If Asta can just tap into that power whenever he needs to, without suffering some kind of loss, then what’s the point of making a deal with the devil in the first place? It took Naruto a really long time and a whole lot of training and struggle to be able to wield the demon fox as he does, but Asta barely even understands what his new power is. Yet, he can already use special moves from this new power without much difficulty.

What’s worse, the animation takes a serious dip here. The last episode was far more visually appealing, but this feels like the animators just decided to take the day off and phone it in. The devil tornado has the motion of a piece of clip art and is almost laughable to watch. Don’t even bother with this episode if you can help it. There’s so little that happens and so much time wasted