English Dub Review: Black Clover “The Mirror Mage”

The filler episodes continue this week on Black Clover.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

The Black Bulls get another day off to spend fooling around doing whatever their little hearts desire. That means another episode of slice-of-life hijinx for our favorite band of eccentric magical weirdos. Things are focused mostly on Gauche, who tries to spend some time in town with his little sister who he’s completely obsessed with. Unfortunately for him, Asta’s interference throws a wrench into his plans. What’s worse, a rogue mage with mysterious mind-altering powers arrives in town and kidnaps the village children in the night.

Our Take:

These filler episodes are really starting to take their toll. This episode, similar to the last few weeks’ iterations of Black Clover suffers from not giving their characters anything important or interesting to do. This means that most of the scenes are filled to the brim with lots and lots of unfunny comedy. It’s hijinks galore, but I don’t expect most people are going to be laughing at the repetitive, awkward, poorly timed jokes that feel like a middle-schooler wrote them. Of particular note is the tired “Noelle stalks Asta” bit that was never funny, to begin with but the writers of this show insist on focusing on. Yes, we get it, Noelle has a crush on Asta and is bad at expressing her feelings; shit or get off the pot, Black Clover because that shtick is getting really old, really fast.

What especially makes this episode difficult to enjoy is the awkward situation that Gauche presents as a character. The trouble with him is that I’m not sure if he’s supposed to be funny or creepy, and the show’s tone can’t seem to figure that out either. Perhaps this is one of those “Lost in translation” moments, but Gauche’s little sister obsession tends to come off more as creepy and weird than cute and eccentric. He hasn’t been on-screen a whole bunch up to this point, so he’s been kind of a non-issue, but now that he’s got an arc centered around him, his character problems are on full show. Is he a pedophile or just a concerned big brother? I really couldn’t tell you, and that’s a big problem when you’ve got an episode that’s supposed to be clear-cut levity and goofiness.

Though I can’t say for sure, I imagine this is the sort of episode that even fans of this show would hate, because it offers so little in terms of any story development, and doesn’t even try to reach any kind of satisfaction with the show’s characters. This sloppiness reflects on the vocal performances as well, which feel especially weak this time around; you can tell that things are bit rushed here, as deliveries tend to fall on the awkward side of things and don’t always match up with the character’s mouth movements. By the end of the episode, things do give way to what might be a more interesting “Pied piper” esque fairy tale setup, but it occurs too late for anything of note to really happen. It’s obvious the show is just trying to pad time to stretch out its episode run. A cardinal sin of anime, and one that will not be forgiven.