English Dub Review: Black Clover “The Wizard King was Watching, Continued”

The Wizard King sure has a lot of free time.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Yuno’s mission continues as their escortee enjoys a homemade dinner with Sister Lily and the rest of Yuno’s crew. The food is unorthodox for their noble guest, but the dinner is a big success, and Father Shinpu graciously thanks Yuno for sending some of his wages back home to support everyone. Yuno is shocked to find, however, that he’s been upstaged by his brother Asta, who has trounced even his generosity. Spurred by competition, Yuno promises to send the entirety of his next paycheck to Sister Lily. All seems well, but Sister Lily is kidnapped when she goes outside to fetch more water. It seems the thieves mistook her for the nobleman Yuno is escorting.

Yuno is ready to go get her back, but Klaus decrees that they’ve wasted enough time, and they need to get back on their escort mission. But Yuno stands his ground and goes out on his own to find Sister Lily. Yuno quickly finds the kidnappers and dispatches the first three one by one with his powerful magical abilities. Yuno soon figures out, though, that these kidnappers weren’t there for the nobleman, they were there to kidnap him for their own nefarious purposes. Eventually, he finds Sister Lily and the last kidnapper, who threatens to kill Sister Lily if he fights against them.

After a brief flashback, the kidnappers demand Yuno’s grimoire as a trade for Sister Lily’s life, but Yuno refuses to give in to their demands. Surprise! It turns out Klaus had been tailing Yuno the whole time and uses a surprise attack to take out the remaining bandits. Klaus then goes on to explain that he knew from the beginning that the bandits were actually trying to kidnap Yuno the whole time, with the nobleman’s assistance, who blames Yuno for his own failure to get into the magic knights. Using their magical abilities, Klaus and Mimosa figured out the treacherous plot. What follows is a tender moment between Yuno and Klaus, who congratulates Yuno on his abilities, and decides to forgive him for his insubordination. The team decides to let the bandits go, on the condition that they give up their evil ways. But Klaus is still curious, what happened to the last kidnapper?

Well, that last kidnapper was none other than our cheeky friend the Wizard King in disguise. Seems he enjoys these days out quite a bit, and, similar to what happened with Asta, used this as a chance to see what Yuno is really made of. All ends well as Yuno and friends enjoy another meal together, and The Golden Dawn is given with a gold star from the Wizard King as a reward for their excellent mission. Back at the Black Bulls hideout, Asta is furious at hearing the news of Yuno’s gold star.

Our Take:

As far as Black Clover episodes go, this one isn’t bad. As opposed to the last couple that has been vacant of any real plot development, this one actually felt like it was starting to go somewhere. This show gets more interesting when it focuses on the competition between Asta and Yuno instead of Yuno’s wacky shounen antics taking all the spotlight. While a lot of the characterization still feels flat, especially with Yuno’s no-nonsense teacher, Klaus, this episode was pretty okay.