English Dub Review: Black Clover “Storming the Shadow Palace”

(Possible Spoilers Below)

As Gueldre Poizot and Revchi are tempted to sneak inside the Shadow Palace to steal some magic items. Charmy and Mimosa help everyone recover with food and recovery magic which has become a consistent plot-point and running joke throughout these episodes.

As the two elves try a sneak attack while everyone is distracted, they’re instantly caught by Fuegoleon and Mereoleona. Magna notices the entrance portal starting to shrink while more possessed Golden Dawn members arrive. The Bulls decide to fight the elves, relying on Charmy and Vanessa to keep them alive, while all the captains, Asta, Noelle, and Mimosa enter the palace. Solid wakes up in time to admit that Noelle is stronger than him and that he wants her to survive so he can one day surpass her which compared to his previous behavior is the closest thing to something nice he’s ever said to her. Inside the palace, everyone ends up magically separated and Mimosa ends up alone with Asta.

As Mimosa determines that the elves are strategically spread throughout the palace, as are the captains, they all will need to defeat at least one Apostle of Sephira at a time to reach Patry and Licht. While Asta and Mimosa confront the elf Lira who is currently possessing Rill, Noelle is confronted by Fana, Mereoleona by Vetto and Fuegoleon by the Purple Orca’s new captain, Kaizer Granvorka. While the episode doesn’t end with a big twist, It’s a decent flashback leading up to a badass dual battle to show that through sheer determination both Mereoleona and Fuegoleon despite how different and opposite they are, manage to land the same powerful flame attack on both of their opponents.

Our Take

Although it was meant to be played for laughs regarding the women fighting over Asta without being open about their feelings towards him, how many anime & manga franchises will keep re-purposing this overused bullshit cliche in regards to all the female characters being attracted to the main character because the plot says so? I mean c’mon! How many male readers read the manga version and see themselves as Asta the same way Naruto or Tenchi Fans vicariously see themselves as the oblivious idiots in a borderline Harem-Anime scenario who can’t take a hint when someone’s attracted to them romantically? Shoe-horning something like this has no place in the narrative and hurts what makes the show compelling, to begin with. You can make the argument that shows like Inuyasha infamously did it, but it wasn’t a compelling storytelling formula in that show either.

At least we got to see more of Mereoleona and Fuegoleon in action again. There’s just something about how the two siblings handle fire magic that makes the fights look better. And feels like they poured a decent amount of effort animation-wise into the fight. These 2 are quite the heavy-hitters. But as an unspoken rule within Anime storytelling, a flashback sequence either tries to help the audience understand the character and what shaped them into who they are now, or a foreshadowing sign that they’re going to die so their deaths can evoke a level of sympathy, but I’m hoping for the Former for how badass their moment to shine was.

Also on one final note, Yuno’s necklace is only mentioned once and It’s treated as an Important plot-point for the Elves to get their hands on and was greatly foreshadowed in the show’s intro so are they just gonna ignore it until the last episodes of this Arc or something? We haven’t even seen Yami since that big reveal regarding that necklace so we don’t even know what he’s been up to but I hope they touch upon this later on as well.