English Dub Review: Black Clover “The Man Named Fanzell”

I’m not a fan of Fanzell.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Flash back to before Asta passed the Magic Knight Entrance Exam. While learning how to swing his oversized anti-magic sword, he runs into a bedraggled mage named Fanzell, who, in addition to having a severe allergy to clothing, is willing to train Asta in his swordplay. With Fanzell’s tutelage, Asta learns the art of swordplay quite well.

Fanzell shares more about his past with Asta, and how he was once a mage in the service of the Diamond Kingdom. However, unhappy with the inhuman life of being a mage in that world, Fanzell fled with his fiance to the wilderness, who he’s still searching for after being split up. With the help of one of his ex-students, Mariella, Fanzell finds out that his fiance has died.

Later that evening, Fanzell discusses the day with Mariella, who suddenly turns on him and reveals herself to be an assassin in the Diamond Kingdom’s employ. Her goons then reveal themselves, and their combined force captures Fanzell. Asta arrives just in time though to deal with the assassins and save Fanzell. Asta’s indomitable spirit inspires Fanzell, and renews his dedication to life.

Mariella survives the fight and departs peacefully. The next day, Fanzell leaves Asta to pursue his own dreams and sends Asta on his way to pursue his.

 

Our Take:

So, on this week of Black Clover, we get a filler episode that happens way before the current arc and features Asta learning how to wield his sword from the teachings an older, naked man.

Yeah, this is a weird one.

Here is an episode that nobody asked for and delivers on very little. I actually started to like the way the story was going, despite the usual lack of quality in the animation, so this is a weird turn for the story to take. Especially at a time when the story is reaching such a critical point. Not to mention, I had never been particularly curious as to how Asta learned how to swing a sword. The way I saw it, Asta’s self-taught brutish swordplay was something that defined his reckless, unstoppable character. Not that I particularly enjoyed that character in the first place, but if a story is going to make that kind of character they should eat least have the decency to commit to it. Plus, Fanzell doesn’t really add anything to the story that we don’t already have and just muddles up the things we do have. Asta has a father figure character in the form of Captain Yami, who, quite frankly, teaches him a lot more than this Fanzell fellow ever does.

Furthermore, his character is pretty open-and-shut, and his backstory is told through, I kid you not, a slideshow. I don’t mind seeing a little more complexity to the diamond kingdom, its one of the few plots I think has a lot of potential in Black Clover, but this isn’t really the best way to go about it. And, not to overly dwell on the obvious, but a character being naked all the time does not a personality make. Yeah, I know that Gray did it in “Fairy Tail”, but even there that jokes get a bit old after a while.

This is just a bizarre episode all around. Its something of a disappointment to the fans who would rather see the actual story continue instead of dwelling on filler, and to critics like me, this episode does little more than repeat the same tired formula that Black Clover has relied on so far. It’s not creative or experimental enough to work as a filler, and since it’s not canon, nobody ends up happy. Next week, Black Clover, remember to put on some clothes.