English Dub Review: Black Clover “Three Eyes”

How many episodes have we been inside this cave for now?

Overview (Spoilers Below)

The long, long battle between Yami, Asta, Gauche, and basically all of the Eye of the Midnight Sun continues on. Though Licht has been defeated, three new members of the cult have emerged from a spatial magic portal to avenge their leader. These three, known as the “Third Eye”, (Haha) are apparently more powerful than their leader. Rhya the Disloyal, Vetto the Despair, and Fana the Hateful are their names.

Using their powerful “captain-level” magic, they manage to put Yami on the defensive, so much so that he seals off the younger Black Bulls to protect them while he goes all out. The three are about to overwhelm Yami, but at the last possible moment, three other magic knight captains appear. Nozel, Charlotte and the newly revealed captain of the Green Mantises, “Jack the Ripper”, are here to put the Eye of the Midnight Sun in their place.

Our Take:

This week on Black Clover, there’s some good, some bad, and a whole lotta ugly. This once-small arc has escalated to a full-blown big bads vs. big damn heroes affair, and for what it is it works decently well.

Three new villains are introduced to the fray this time around, which aren’t so bad, to be completely honest. They’ve all got their one-note character cliches, (One likes to kill, one is lazy, one is proud) which is to be expected, but at least they’re competent enough to be a threat to Captain Yami. One needs to appreciate the small blessings sometimes. Having these three be stronger than Licht, the leader of the Eye of the Midnight Sun is actually a smart little twist on what one can usually expect from big bad villains. Yet, it still feels like Black Clover is playing its cards too early; where are things going to go when these three eventually get beaten, as they are surely soon to be? Having no big villains to chase after puts the plot in something of a downturn.

Though this has a little bit to do with the episode prior, the fact that Sister Theresa (A name that isn’t even a little bit clever) didn’t die completely baffles me, and is indicative of the larger problems with the series as a whole. Black Clover’s inability to take things seriously is more than just a chronic illness of its characters, its a problem with the show’s thematic core. If a character like Theresa can’t be given a meaningful sacrifice, then where is the tension of a character ever meeting their untimely end? I’m a big fan of shounen anime, in particular, the long-running show, “One Piece”, so I’m not unfamiliar to zany comedic sequences intruding on the plot. But One Piece is able to separate comedy from drama; when things get serious, so do the characters. This is an essential aspect of making a good adventure show. Tone doesn’t always need to be deadly serious, but it needs to vary enough to keep me on my toes. But Asta, Gauche, and Yami can’t seem to ever get it together. There’s always time for crappy jokes and awkward slapstick, even when life is on the line.

There’s some improvement here from a technical perspective. I haven’t noticed any egregious animation errors, though the copy-paste triangle faces on many of the lesser characters are still putting me off. As an episode, it’s definitely not pretty, but that’s nothing new. All in all, its a decently entertaining and substantial 22 minutes, sure to raise its fans spirits a bit.