English Dub Review: Black Clover “Together in the Bath”

Just having a nice soak with the dudes.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Asta, for all of his bravado, has found himself in a bit of a depression after losing his shot at being in the Royal Magic Knights to his brother, Yuno. He just sits there, drooling on the couch as the other members of the Black Bulls look on, concerned for their fallen friend. Not content to simply sit there, they try to help restore Asta to his former self. Each of them uses their individual skills and magic to try and cheer Asta up but to no avail.

However, Captain Yami soon arrives and says what Asta really needs is to take a good soak in a bath. In that pursuit, Yami and all the Black Bulls head to their bathhouse, where they get nice and cozy in the tub together. Yami then proceeds to tell Asta and the rest of the Black Bulls a little story to lift their spirits.

We go back in time to when Yami was still in the, at the time, Gray Deers. He was doing his knightly business, patrolling the land and such when he’s approached with a job from some needy townsfolk. As it turns out, bandits have been robbing the storehouses and stealing the crops of the local farmers. They need Yami’s help to get rid of them. Yami dutifully accepts, with the exception that he gets three square meals and several naps a day.

Later that night, Yami patrols the town, waiting for the bandits. Soon, they arrive, and Yami starts knocking them out one by one. He has a swell time until he’s joined by none other than William Vangeance, who is also in the Gray Deers at this time. He introduces himself to Yami, and the two of them defeat the rest of the bandits together.

The next day, they part, with their rivalry being cemented for all time. And with the story told, it seems that Asta is back to his old self.

Our Take:

Black Clover is the oatmeal of anime. It’s not always terrible, sometimes it’s mildly tasty, but ultimately, it’s just a lot of filler. It very rarely elevates itself to anything to worth watching, and more often than not, it’s just a time waster that doesn’t even try to make itself good. This is, sadly, one of those episodes that’s a chore to watch. It has very little going for it in both concept and execution. It has a dull premise told poorly. By the end of this exhausting 22 minutes, I was wondering why this episode needed to exist in the first place. Of course, it didn’t take long to remember the answer: this episode exists to pad out the season. Anything a studio can do to make a little bit more out of a show, right?

Asta being “Depressed” is such a bizarre twist of things I’m amazed that the idea was approved in scripting to be used for the final story of the show. It’s not even so much depression as it is some kind of weird, comatose state. It’s so over-the-top it’s almost comical, but not in the “Haha” kind of way. It sets the main conflict of the episode as completely illegitimate and pointless. It serves as nothing more than a cheap reason to have Yami tell his boring story about meeting Vangeance.

I hadn’t really thought of Vangeance and Yami as “rivals”, necessarily. They didn’t speak with the kind of banter or personality that accompanies a true rivalry. At times, it feels like they barely even knew each other in the show. Yet now, we’re hearing Yami speak so fondly of his long-standing competition with Vangeance as a part of his career in the magic knights. Retconning aside, there is absolutely nothing to this story. No tension, no threat, no real conflict even. Yami just encounters some bandits that are no big deal, and then meets Vangeance, who is also no big deal. If I was yawning any harder during their meeting, my jaw would dislocate.

And if the story wasn’t bad enough, the animation can only be described as delightfully terrible. There are several scenes and sequences in this episode where Captain Yami tweens across the screen, as well as some very wonky physics,  accompanying some of the bandits flying into walls. It looks awful, and there’s barely any interesting animated sequences in there already.

I don’t think anyone can really enjoy this episode. It’s barely even finished. It feels like the half-assed homework of some college student just trying to pass his class with a C-. It is technically an episode; it is technically a story; it is technically an anime, but more than anything else, it’s just plain garbage.