English Dub Review: Black Clover “Storming the Eye of the Midnight Sun’s Hideout!!!”

Riding the storm out.

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

The Royal Knights stay in the Capital for three days to plan and rest for their attack, going over every key detail and previous encounter they’ve had with the Eye of the Midnight Sun. Little do they know that a spy for the group using shadow magic has been listening in. Luckily he hasn’t informed his superiors, but Mereoleona sees this as a sign that they should move up the attack to tomorrow morning. Once at the enemy base, the plan is to split into five teams of four so that they can spread out but maintain their fighting strength, with Asta and Zora get put with Mereoleona on Team 5. The Royal Knights start making a commotion, so much so that Rhya, the remaining Third Eye, prepares for battle.

OUR TAKE

Did you get the sense that this episode was padded out to hell and back to fill twenty minutes? Well, so did I, so I checked how many chapters of the manga this episode was adapted from, and it turns out…just one chapter. Yeah, this show has been known to really drag out its source material for the sake of conserving it so that they don’t have to end the show or resort to filler. And the result is that the story slows to a snail’s pace, so we have to linger on really uneventful scenes where nothing is happening for almost the entire runtime of the episode. This was definitely one of those times, as the build up to the assault on the Eye of the Midnight Sun’s base is as dull as it can possibly be, with characters defaulting to their already painfully overdone recurring gags without any substantial growth or development.

I think the main problem with the lineup for the Royal Knights is that next to no one has any real chemistry with each other. They each have their token personality trait that usually translates into one line or one type of line or a constant speech impediment that is done over and over and over to acknowledge “yep, that’s a line that character would say”. Maybe the only ones with something to expand on are the captain of the Silver Eagles and Mereoleona, who have a shared interest in wreaking vengeance for their rival/brother. Other than that…you might as well have a team full of walking cardboard cut outs.

But you see, even the show itself is bored of this team. So much so, in fact, that next episode will be switching back to the Black Bull base and those who were left behind! Because you can always tell there’s a lot of confidence in a story when the author decides “you know, this magical super team fighting the main terrorist group is cool and all, but let’s not stay too long on them and instead focus on the guy who is sexually attracted to his kid sister!” And before you ask (because I know you will), no I have never liked Gauche, I don’t understand how his one character trait is such a disgusting thing that is also somehow meant to be comedic, and I really hope he gets killed off sometime real soon.