Review of Black Clover

A lovingly crafted story about never giving up. I’ll make this a bit shorter: Black Clover doesn’t try to re-invent the wheel. Many classic concepts of Shounen can be found within the story and it can even be argued that there are a bit too many of them. Especially in the beginning it always felt, as if the author tried his hardest to not get the show canceled by playing it safe and mainly using concepts and ideas that have been proven to work. There are tons of points you can criticize Black Clover for: Over-usage of Shounen tropes (probably my biggest issue with the show), predictablewriting, inconsistent animation (arguably more fault of the studio + the weekly schedule but it’s still worth pointing out), sometimes the dialogue is a bit shit and sometimes the show feels a bit childish. These are what comes to mind and I’m sure if I’d re-watch I’d find even more to point out.

However, as you’ve probably already noticed since the title + score gives it away, I didn’t hate this show. Why would I even watch 170 episodes of a show if I’d hated it? But I digress. I don’t hate Black Clover, far from it, I like it. I like it a lot actually. I think the concept of subjectively liking a rather objectively speaking mediocre show is hard to explain, maybe something like “guilty pleasure”? I don’t feel guilty for liking this show or any show for that matter, but maybe that’s a way to describe it. To me a big part of the appeal from Shounen has always been this big hype moments, that have been built up for dozens of episodes. It’s not just the fight that is epic, but also the slow build up, the gradually increasing tension and the aftermath and growth of characters that we as the viewer get to experience in its fullest. We can see how characters change because of their experiences and often also how the “world” (as in setting & side characters) changes as a result of that.
Almost every Tuesday for the past three years I, an adult, have been eagerly awaiting coming home from work/whatever I had to do that day and watch my new episode of Black Clover. The tournament arc, the underwater temple, the arc where they fought the first devil antagonist and we saw the backstory of the intro, the current arc and honestly many more … I’ve been so hyped to see the fights happening in these. Yes, the writing is fairly predictable and a classic PG13 Shounen would also never let his main character(s) die, but it was nonetheless an absolute pleasure to watch. Every fight was so enjoyable, and the story also just keeps getting better and better up until a point where I’d now say that it is actually good and not just a “guilty pleasure”. The characters grow more and more and the struggles they face also grow with them … it’s beautiful to see. Almost like a slice of life in which you just want to watch the characters be happy and achieve their goals. Just like that you get invested more and more.

Like I said in the beginning I’ll cut it short, so I won’t go into detail here about every character or whatever. Most of them are pretty generic but not all of them and even the generic characters feel lovingly crafted and fit the story well. Is this an 8/10 purely objectively speaking? Probably not. But I also put enjoyment into consideration for my ratings and I genuinely enjoyed this show for the most part. Obviously, there are some episodes out of a 170 that I didn’t like. Nevertheless, a show that keeps me entertained for over three years? A Shounen that had some of the best fights I’ve ever seen in Anime? A series that was so hype that I often thought about it during work on a Tuesday? To me it absolutely deserves this rating. Black Clover was never my favorite Shounen, and it will never be my favorite Shounen, but it is something dear to me and I’m glad I was able to watch it in these past three years. 8/10.