English Dub Review: Black Clover “The King of the Crimson Lions”

This week, Fuegoleon shows us what a magic knight captain is made of.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

This episode, the battle for the capital city reaches its climactic peak. Asta’s fight with the mysterious necromancer rages on, while the silver eagles and other magic knights try to contain the undead around the city. Meanwhile, the king of the Clover Kingdom is bemoaning the fact that the Wizard King (Who is apparently not the dude in charge, who knew?) isn’t present to protect him from this new threat, though he’s sent plenty of his staff to ensure the king’s safety. Also, we pick up with Charmy, who has found the source of the decadent scent she chased after a couple episodes ago. It leads to none other than the head chef of the castle, using his magic to prepare an incredible dish. He’s dedicated to his craft, even in the face of danger, but has no one left to feed his entree course to. Luckily, Charmy is more than happy to abide the chef’s ambitions.

Back in the thick of things, Asta is having a hell of a time with his new undead opponent, Alfred. The floating corpse continuously assaults Asta with lightning he can barely dodge while maintaining distance from Asta to evade his sword blows. Noelle and Leo try to help Asta out in his fight but are stopped by another powerful undead the necromancer summons to keep them at bay. Nonetheless, Asta presses on, though his chances of victory are looking more fleeting by the second.

Just then, a powerful fire blast burns Alfred to a crisp; the handiwork of none other than Fuegoleon, finally stepping in to put an end to this fight once and for all. He praises Asta for his persistence in battle and admits that he is certainly a remarkable young magic knight. Fuegoleon even goes on to say that Asta is worthy of being his rival, too. Can’t have enough rivals, I suppose. Asta is inspired to join in the fight once more with Fuegoleon, but Fuego is having none of it. He smacks Asta in the head and reminds him to be aware of the limitations of his strength.

Fuegoleon begins to question his foe, to find out who he is and why he’s attacking the city. He reveals his name to be Rades, and it turns out this cackling madman used to be a magic knight; a top candidate, who had joined up with the Purple Orcas six years ago. However, the knights were afraid of his wraith magic and expelled him from the magic knights and the kingdom altogether. Because he was a commoner, no one stood up to defend him, and he was left to his fate.

However, this motivation of vengeance doesn’t move Fuegoleon’s burning heart. He decides to take down this necromancer once and for all. He leaves Noelle and Leo to their fight. Fuegoleon starts blasting Rades with fire magic, but the clever mage summons his number one zombie, Carl, to provide an unbreakable shield for him. He returns fire onto Fuegoleon with curse bullets, leaving the two at a stalemate. But just then, Feugoleon annihilates Carl with a powerful beam of light that pierces the shield protecting him. Having taken out his most powerful zombie, the fight is effectively over, leaving Rades defenseless against Fuegoleon.

All around the city, the zombies fall dead to the ground. All appears to be well as the rest of the magic knights survey the wreckage of the city. But wait, a lone witch on high watches the city atop her broomstick with a sinister eye. Licking her lips, she ends the episode with an ill omen of things to come.

Our Take:

Our episode this week brings this “zombie invasion arc” to a close, and suffers from many of the problems that have plagued this series for some time, though it does have moments of enjoyability scattered throughout. Fuegoleon is the stand out character here, being pretty dang cool and one of the only magic knights who feels more like a character and not a cartoon. I wish I could say that for the rest of the cast and the hackneyed, cliche motivations of Rades, but I’m not exactly surprised that they don’t make par with this episode. Also of note is the unfortunate degeneration of the animation quality that seems to be getting worse and worse. Asta’s movements feel incomplete and weightless, and a most of the scenes lack any movement at all. Yuck. Let’s hope this trend comes to a quick end.

Score
5/10