Review of Black Clover

Well, well, well, what do we have here? The anime that I thought that would be the next Naruto in terms of length, already got to an end. Black Clover is an anime that I started watching right after I ended watching Naruto, so you may understand my confusion when, back in 2017, I started this anime with a friend after school and I asked him “why is this so much similar to Naruto?”. It was like my tenth anime, so I was actually and purely confused. However, we promised that we would watch it together in my house, but then college happened and we hadto drop it. This year I retook it by myself, by the 15th episode, I think? And it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.

The premise is as classic as a premise shounen tends to be. Asta is a young boy that wants to become the next magic emperor, but he doesn’t have mana nor magic powers; his adoptive brother (let’s say) and rival, Yuno, is a prodigy boy that is the mangaka’s favourite one. When they go through a ceremony where they can see whether they can or not be magicians (by receiving a magical grimoire), the mangaka’s favourite gets the best grimoire ever that only the chosen ones can have, so you can’t forget Yuno is way better than Asta, and even than you. Asta, on the other hand, is the poor little thing that ends up having some sort of evil grimoire. From that moment, they decide they will be magic knights in order to be the next magic emperor. They have always declared each other their rival, but from that moment they actually become rivals.

As the story continues, we get to see how Asta screams all day and says the same stuff about not giving up and that he will marry a nun once he become the emperor. At first it is unbearable, but you eventually get used to ears pain. Meanwhile, we get to see how every person in that kingdom falls for Yuno and how indredibly he is and how Asta is a loser, and of course, when they have to be chosen for a captain from an organization (there are like 12) during the the exam to become magic knights, every captain asks for Yuno as some sort of The X Factor move when everybody press the buttom for the same guy and he gets to decide which one he wants to join. He, obviously, accepts the offer of the biggest organization’s captain; Asta, at the same time, is not chosen by any captain, except for the poorest one, at last moment. After this they start their lives separate and they start this adventure.

As the viewer can appreciate, Black Clover falls in every possible cliche. The beginning is completely predictable and doesn’t make any effort to try to add new nuances to such a classical shounen story formula. It’s a beginning made for beginners. If you watch Black Clover as one of your first animes it is fun, but if you watch it after that you have seen a lot of shows, this starting is rather boring and insurmountably generical. As I always state, I’m not against generical animes, but please, at least try to change a personality, a motive, a rivalry. Anything would have add anything to this, but it didn’t happen. Even talking about characters presentation are poor. Asta screams and shouts and claims he’ll be the next Hokage, Yuno doesn’t talk at all and has a resting face all day, but he is perfect and has whatever he wants and you are not (in case you didn’t notice). It does not only falls in story’s cliche but in characters. Most of them are a walking stereotype: the incestuous unbearable character that is disgustingly obssessed with his little sister, the shy one, the womanizer, the glutton that only fights when there’s food in the middle, the tsundere one that falls in love with the main character because he treats her as a person, and the lazy leader (captain) that is a bastard.

However, the interaction between them has also its pros and contras. The rivalry between Yuno and Asta is forced, lacks of interest and depth, and comes off as a bad use of a cliche: they want the same thing, and clearly Yuno is the blessed one that has more chances to win. They appear, they say “I’m going to beat him and become the magic emperor!” and that’s it. The rivalry is weak because their both motivations are weak. Asta’s motivation is to marry the nun and to demonstrate that he can win without magic powers. Yuno doesn’t have motivations because he doesn’t have any development. You see Yuno and you can’t tell if his face is because he is sad, because he is motivated, because he is happy, or because he is just hungry. He is just too overpowered to care for anything.

On the other hand, what I do like about their interactions is how the partnership is handled. The Black Bulls are not good characters as such, but their friendship and union is managed with subtlety, is gradual and is pretty natural. After 100 episodes, when you see them support each other, it becomes touching because trust was slowly built and is something the mangaka succeeds in. Maybe I’m such a crybaby and that’s it. I liked the Black Bulls, and I liked to watch them grow. I like the way Vanessa becomes a elemental character; I enjoyed the background of Finral; I liked the way the incestuous guy opened up to his comrades. I like the annoying thing between Luck and Magna, and I liked the way they helped Noelle to grow as well.

One thing that I like about series like this, is that its world has a big amount of characters to know and care. Although, at the same time, in a world like this where everytime there’s war and figths, this big lot of characters must be reduced. That’s how it is. In Game of Thrones you have more than one hundred characters, and when you make a list of your favourites you just have to enlist thirty of them at least, but eventually they die like some sort of ant that is crushed by the author, and that’s how is supposed to be. If we have a lot of magic knights, most of them will have to die since they have to fight all the time and not everytime they are going to win, won’t they? A lot of battles in Black Clover don’t have useful conclusions. A fight can endure eight episodes, and by the end of it, no one is going to die and the enemy is going to retrieve “haha, I’ll see you soon” (This Licht guy does that like three times). I don’t say that the author have to kill them indiscriminately, but he shouldn’t be afraid to kill some of them either. That’s a problem to me. Even in the hardest situation, at least in the first half of the anime, all of them survive, most of the times and battles, and that’s a plot armor that I dislike, not only because it becomes a bothersome, but because every fight comes off as irrelevant. The enemies don’t die, but the main cast don’t either; the enemies don’t win, but the main cast don’t either. If there are going to be arcs with fights that involve ten episodes (or more), at least make it juicy and with important consequences. Captains injured to death survived in ways that it shouldn’t be possible; also the enemies, even the secondaries. Please, dude, killing Fuegoleon in that first fight would have been a good impact, but no. An author must not be afraid of killing his characters in good moments, and that’s essential.

Villains leave much to be desired. Villains without substance that are just full of hate. They don’t have ideals, they just want revenge and to exterminate. The same speech is repeated a lot of times. We get it, the elves hate humanity. We get it, we saw that flashbacks a lot of times.

Female characters are... well, average. They are not that bad, since they are, at least, useful. Nevertheless, what is, actually their weight on the work? How much do they add to this, more than being in love with the two male leads? Noelle is a character that I personally like a lot, I don’t know why, I just have affection for her, but the 80% of her character is being in love with Asta and chasing after him, and being jealous and tsundere type. An exaggerated tsundere type, I must admit. However, she gets a gradual development that is clearly notorious, and is not forced. She starts being the clumsy magician that gets bullied by her siblings because she belongs to royalty and it’s the weakest of the family, and ends up being an interesting character that has a noticeable development as a magician and as a piece in this work; she demonstrates that she can be a lot more than Asta’s fangirl.

Mimosa is like Noelle (is funny because they are cousins) but worse. She is way dumber and is a lot more undeveloped. She falls in love with Asta because of a fight and his great abs. She starts to blush and that’s all she does. She has a protective abilitie, but that’s all she does, again. I like her though.

Charlotte is a captain that I thought would be different, but at the end of the day is a woman that is in love with Yami, Asta’s captain, and that behaves almost the same way as Noelle, synthesizing her personality around her romantic attitudes.

The same goes for every woman in this anime that meets Asta. Two words and they fall for him. Almost the same case with Yuno, but he doesn’t need to speak at all, since he is perfect as Sasuke. Sasuke misstreats a woman and she swears etern loyalty to him. Yuno doesn’t misstreat them, but he sees them as the same way he can see a tree. Everything applies for every woman in this anime, except for Mereoleona, and maybe Vanessa. Mereoleona, however, THAT IS A HELL OF A WOMAN: interesting backstory, explosive personality, imponent, strong. My favourite, by far; she may be the stereotypical overpowered, but she is so charismatic that I could hear her scream all day and I wouldn’t mind.

The comedy in Black Clover is really poor; is VERY repetitive. When I say VERY, I mean it. Jokes about Charlotte correcting her subordinate is repeated like 10 times per episode every time they appear. When some sort of sensei to Asta appears, they make jokes about him being naked like… I’m sorry, I can’t recall how many times they did it. You could even see it coming. Yami threatening Asta by pressing his head is another thing that you get to see too many times. Jokes about Noelle and Charlotte acting extremely tsundere are on another level of repetition. Nonetheless, when you have watched like 70 episodes, you just get used to it and pretend to laugh when they repeat the same joke for the 3rd time in the episode, but that’s how they are; if you like the characters, those jokes won’t be a bothersome for you, like it was in my case. The humor is mediocre? It is. Did I have a good time laughing at it? Well, of course.

At the same time, Black Clover is not only full of filler episodes, but it’s also full of plot armors and incoherences that complexed the story without apparent reason. I’m talking about all the entire White Eye arc and its elf-revenge stuff, with reincarnations and pasts lifes and so; some things made sense, at least a little bit, and some things were just too much convenient for them to actually bother. Some evangelisms were forced, like Finral’s brother, like half of the guys that Asta touches. That true reason behind Nozel’s contempt towards Noelle was so ridiculous. I like Nozel because he is a stoic character, but I would have preferred him as a cold brother, rather than the “I wanted to protect you” brother. Ruining your sister’s self esteem because you wanted to protect her is not allowed in this house.

As I said in other reviews, I hate studios Pierrot. After I watched Akudama Drive I thought “definitely, Pierrot improved a lot”, but then I returned to Black Clover and I knew why I hated them. Fights’ animations are lousy, character’s movements are inconsistent and in one frame you have Noelle and in the next frame you have N0ell3. In a moment you see Yami and in the next moment you see Yami without eyebrows and with his muscles like made of paperboard. There are animes that make bad frames in the middle of a fight because that way those can sleep by unseen; however, Black Clover has those stinky frames even when they are talking about the weather. There are a couple of fight that nobody knows what they wanted to do, like Asta vs Ladros. That coreography is so terrible that the viewer doesn’t have a clue of what’s going on. It seemed like a Devilman Crybaby fight that didn’t go well.

In conclusion, I’m not going to lie: my friend also retook it and we both had good laughs talking about this anime, we both shared fun experiences while watching this and we never suffered it. Black Clover is an anime full of flaws, filler episodes, not the best characters ever, and with a lousy animation and some things more that make it an average shounen, but if you like simple things without paying attention to mistakes and cliches, or if you aren’t tired of shounens, you should watch it. Besides that, I want to add that the second half is a lot better than the first one. Generical mediocre shounen or not, I don’t regret watching this.