English Dub Review: Black Clover “The 5 Spirit Guardians”

 

Overview


The Black Bulls travel to the Heart Kingdom with the other squad members (Leopold, Mimosa, Charlotte, and Rill), including an uninvited Charmy who insists on sampling Heart Kingdom cuisine. Gaja, who will train Luck, introduces the Spirit Guardians, Sarado of Earth who will train Mimosa and Charlotte, Potrof of Plants who will train Rill, Floga of Fire who will train Leopold, and Smurik of Wind who will train Finral. Queen Loropechika announces she will be training Secre while Undine trains Noelle…

Our Take

Now, we’re getting in the obligatory time skip training arc taking place within the Heart Kingdom. Everyone is assigned a Spirit Guardian for training, and 5 of them no less specializing in different magical elements. Even for the non-mana “Devil” Asta, there are go-arounds to treat him the same way as everyone else. The spirit guardians are quite impressive as they’re only using a fraction of their power which gives you an idea of how freaking strong they are. It’s interesting to see how different they’re using magic in form of the natural mana around them instead of just using their own magic.

I think the most important part of this training is showing Asta and the others within his Black Bulls circle what weaknesses they have to work on. I feel bad for Magna but if he isn’t able to handle the first challenge. But Gaja is also absolutely right about Asta. Based on observation, Asta counts way to much on his endurance and the fact he’s able to take a lot of hits when charging head-on. Sooner or later, there will come a time when he could face mortal danger without thinking things through…

Overall, this was a pretty fun episode and it was nice to see what the spirit guardians can do. I also liked seeing Yami at the end but it’s still just training. But I’m sure most of the characters will improve and possibly learn some new skills that we will see in the future. A few questions that stuck with me afterward were how random is what the message that came from the heart kingdom’s “wizard king” specifically? Why did the queen wait until it was only those 4 in the room? Also, why did Charmy come as well? Interesting setup to this new storyline regardless.