Review of Black Clover

I watched this anime up through episode 8 before finally realizing I was starting to stop paying attention to the show and look at my phone when it came up on my playlist to watch. Let's go over these aspects of the show one by one. I want to preface my review by saying I do recommend this anime to those who are new to anime, and I cover the "why" more later. Story: The story is a bit original. A bit. But many aspects of it, such as "underdog MC who is useless and powerless gets a special power" is an overused trope. And a cheapone, at that. The story itself is fairly predictable, to the point where I was thinking "I should be making bets on what happens next, I'd make a killing." The exception was the drawn out flashback episode... well, the fact that I wasn't expecting a flashback episode, anyway. Everything in the episode was predictable. The way I figure, when I can tell exactly what's going to happen almost 100% of the time based on overused Shounen tropes, and there's nothing to really spice things up or make the predictability endearing, the story is garbage.

Animation: Probably the only thing that kept me coming back despite the MANY flaws of this anime. Beautifully styled and well animated scenes make you want to watch more... until you see another standard, overused trope or hear that voice actor screech his lines... but that's not part of this category. As animation goes, I can't find any real fault with it, and generously give it a perfect score in this category... it needs one somewhere, because the other categories aren't getting close.

Sound: Oh boy. The sound itself isn't bad, it's just one particular sound that's really horrible. UNFORTUNATELY, that sound is every sound that comes from the MC's mouth, thus making it one of the most common sounds in the show. Everything else is fairly standard, and the quality is of modern make, so that MC and his VA are the main issue here. Can someone tell that VA to stop screaming his damn lines, please? I hate to cut a score severely just because of that, but as the MC's VA's voice is basically the most common sound heard in the show, and will always be there, I have to take that into consideration. Still, I'm being a little generous, since that's the only issue.

Characters: Remember what I said about overused tropes in the story? Well, that wasn't the only place. I don't want to spend all day here identifying character tropes, but I tell you what, it's easy to play the "find the trope" game in this anime. Don't make it into a drinking game, though, you'll die. Let's identify a few:

Overactive, loud, obnoxious underdog main shounen character

Overpowered shouen character rival (bonus for being childhood friends)

Side characters with little to no definition

Intimidating boss character who scares people but is endearing anyway somehow

Delinquent character

Food eating character

Silent character

Snobby royalty/nobility with "hidden problems"

The list goes on, but there we go. Every character is either so minor you forget them or is a trope.

Overall: Averaging these numbers up, you get a 5/10 (20/4= 5). It fits... alright; I think story and characters should be weighted more heavily, but I have no algorithm to do so. I'm inclined to personally say 4/10, hence my actual overall - an overall based in instinct that takes the mathematical overall into account, but has no algorithm.

The sound would be better were it not for the MC, and the animation is great. The story is predictable to the point of boredom, though, and the characters are all predictable tropes with predictable responses. In other words, watch the anime on mute and without subs and you won't know how boring or predictable things are. That's the only way I can recommend this anime. Likewise, if you're new to anime and don't mind going deaf from the screeching VA, this one's for you, as the overused tropes aren't so overused to you yet.