Review of Black Clover

Black Clover was definitely made to teach the anime fandom about the term "subjectivity". Many people swear by the show : it is the anime that brought them back into anime, the best "simple" story written after the era of the big 3. As many people rather despise the show for various different reasons, be it the characters, the plot progression, the pacing, the recurring "power of friendship". What's this? "It's a Naruto copy"? Well of course, this series' motto is "Good artists copy, great artists steal", after all. Even Cinderella was not spared. Of course it's a "Naruto copy" – not a good look, bythe way – Asta literally screams in his very first scene, and doesn't seem to stop.

Honestly speaking, the show has great potential. The author actually explores some good stuff, but it comes in WAY too late for any reasonable justification. The first 60 or so episodes are especially conflicting – their pacing is wildly inconsistent (yet somehow still slow for most of it), the characters are very cliched and uninspired, events unfold very conveniently to be even barely believable (Just one example of many – Fanzell's backstory).

Even past this, and the problems up to here are WAY too vast for me to cover in a single writeup (be it copying ideas or just narrative issues), the Royal Knights Exam shines only slightly better than the, for lack of a more nuanced word, mediocrity that precedes it. Don't get me wrong – even the first 60 episodes had some redeemable qualities, that's why I kept watching, after all – but it only picks up the pace past episode 80. Black Clover defies expectations every time, but not necessarily for the better.

And honestly, I kind of understand. Considering the second half of the show's run and how good it actually gets, the buildup was necessary. Yes, it could have been done way better, and yes, it could have been paced well, but Pierrot did what they could, and it did actually pay off.

It was incredibly frustrating to see discourse say "it gets better after 80", like 80 episodes worth of content is insufficient to be engaging. However, past this threshold, the show really picks up the pace – by 120, so much has happened that the first few arcs and their flaws seem irrelevant in retrospect. Yami and Mereoleona are actually such likeable characters, and both of them got respectable amounts of screentime in the Elf Arc.

In the Elf Arc, the plot initially progresses a bit slowly, but it is not boring – that distinction is required. Fights are interesting, the initial twist is great, and the lead up to the reveal of what actually happened in the elven land is one of the best usages of unreliable narrators and lost folklore on display. For a hundred episodes, we are fed a certain story repeatedly, regarding both the Wizard King and the Elves, only for the viewer to be told that the retellings only held a part of the actual truth.

Yet what happens? Anime Canon and/or Filler episodes, the bane of the anime community's existence. Almost 30 episodes' worth, even. Does it progress the plot? No. Does it add anything important to the overall story? No. It literally kills immersion.

And AGAIN, in the last 15ish episodes, post-timeskip, the show displays how good it can be. With probably the highest production values of all batches of Black Clover episodes created till date, the climatic showdowns were never this great before. Worth sticking with it, honestly.

This is a very conflicting series. I liked it – for its occasional narrative qualities, for its characters (I warmed up to them with time), and for the heart it showed – but I equally understand if someone dislikes the show. My advice – avoid fillers and the "anime canon" episodes (or don't, if you have the ability to tolerate them).