English Dub Review: Black Clover “The Red Thread of Fate”

The ties that bind.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

We pick up where last week’s episode left off: The Queen of Witches had just used to her blood magic to possess Asta, which was her endgame all along. With Asta, and his anti-magic powers, in her thrall, the Queen orders Asta to murder his former friends and allies one by one while they’re crucified by her magic. Things look dire as Asta menacingly steps forth to strike down Noelle, but a sliver of resistance within the young mage stops him from doing the grizzly deed, if only for a moment.

We then see a flashback to Vanessa’s childhood in the Forest of Witches, where she was kept prisoner in service to the Queen. The Queen believed that her magic could be used to alter fate itself, and kept Vanessa locked away so that she could be studied and her magic honed. That is until Captain Yami, under attack by the Forest witches for being a man, accidentally rescues her. Vanessa takes the plunge to leave with Yami and becomes a Black Bull. The rest, as they say, is history.

Back in the present, Vanessa’s thread powers reach a new level of strength and manifest themselves in the form of a red cat, “The Red Thread of Fate.” Supposedly, this is the spell that can alter fate itself, though it doesn’t look like much. However, the cat soon reveals its usefulness when it stops Asta from delivering a fatal blow to Noelle. The Queen is blown away, realizing that this was the magic she was seeking all along. She charges forward, scythe in hand, to take the cat and strike down Vanessa, but the cat intervenes and brings the Queen down.

With the Queen defeated, Vanessa and the others are released from their bonds, while Asta is released from the spell placed upon him. The Black Bulls are triumphant once again, with a powerful new ability to aid them.

Our Take:

Okay, Black Clover, I see what you were trying to do here, I really do. I get how this is supposed to the “big damn hero” moment for Vanessa that brings everything full circle with the Forest of Witches, but like most everything else in this story arc, this episode feels short-sighted, unpolished, and cheap. Asta being taken over by the Queen was a great start to this: a dire situation that seemed actually impossible for our heroes to defeat. Asta, being the most powerful guy in the room, and the Queen, being the most sinister force we’ve seen so far in this series, are a terrifying duo to behold. Yet, despite that strong start, this episode just can’t seem to land the dismount. What should be a powerful emotional moment just falls into the same tiredness that has accompanied Black Clover for so long now, resulting in an episode that sucks not just because its uninteresting, but because of all its wasted potential.

Two major issues exist within this episode. The first is that Vanessa’s backstory has so little going for it. We’ve known that there had been some connection between Vanessa and the Queen that had been hinted at for some time. There is the familial aspect, of course, but there was plenty of room for mystery or deeper ties. Yet, this backstory connects them in the most superficial way possible. It’s just a shallow story of a maiden in a tower escaping with the aid of a handsome prince. Its sincere, I’ll give it that, but so unfinished and half-baked that I wonder if it was cooked up to meet some quick deadline. Yami’s presence in the Forest of Witches goes unexplained, while Vanessa’s captivity is over and done with in just two scenes. She should have had an entire episode to get into what her life was before the Bulls, not ten poorly budgeted minutes.

Secondly, we have the deus ex machina of “The Red Thread of Fate” coming in to save the day. Deus ex machinas are almost never a good thing in a show, and usually a sign that the writer didn’t know how to get their heroes out of a jam in an interesting or logical way. The “Destiny Thread” idea is hinted only briefly before it manifests, like all magic in this show, seemingly without reason. Vanessa just gets a quick power up and bada bing, bada boom, now she has a cat following her that can alter reality itself. No fight, no cunning, no feat of heroism, just simply getting lucky. How nice to know that if the team didn’t get a “Get out of jail free card”, their heroic qualities would be so meager that they would have just died right here.

Make no mistake, if there was an episode that had the potential to be a winner, it was this one, but once again this anime falls short. While its definitely more watchable than some of the episodes this show has, its still quite the disappointment.

Score
4/10