Black Clover

Perhaps I am going to rewrite this review (even though I do not think I will) after I have finished watching the final episode, however, I am now at the forty-six episode mark and it is all still quite the same. I think I have watched enough to safely say that Black Clover is a very poor example of a shonen anime series, it features all the biggest tropes, clichés, nastiness, and atrocities that we have already seen many times before in other shonen productions. In other words, take the most irritating things about Naruto, Bleach, One Piece, Fairy Tail, and many others and you have got Black Clover. There is an excessively hell-bent main male protagonist (Asta) who is incredibly shouty and annoying, he is so awful that he makes Ichigo look like a nice guy, makes Naruto look like a chilled-out dude, and finally makes Monkey D. Luffy seem like an amazingly endearing guy. And his voice is so terribly loud and high, it can even wake the dead! As far as the episodes are concerned, each one starts with a three-minute recap, which unnecessarily wastes valuable time they could have spent on the plot, and once again there are some rather out-of-place and vibe-killing flashbacks during some suspenseful scenes, which are not as long as an entire episode, but are still quite disturbing. The fight scenes are like something out of Bleach, where the hero has to get his ass kicked at least three times but he is always getting up again because he is still not done ("mada mada..."), at the most opportune moment, accidentally discovering that he has some new abilities, and then finally winning. The only thing stopping this from being perfect is Dragon Ball leveling up to ultra-super-duper-god levels and beyond, even though that could still happen... The supporting characters are mostly just a bunch of clichéd formulaic stereotypes, there to kill time between the main male protagonist’s fight scenes. They also seem to be there to sometimes (repeatedly by the same characters) supposedly be amusing and serve as motivation, because the "power of friendship" must prevail. Their development is the same as the main male protagonist’s, getting smacked around, only to find new strength and get smacked around again, or getting rescued by someone else (usually the aforementioned Asta). Well, what about the narrative? As regards "I want to be the Wizard King!" - this has obviously been done before (The Pirate King, The Hokage)... Plus there are the magic guilds like when you cross those from Fairy Tail with the divisions from Bleach. Summing up and reiterating, Black Clover is just an unoriginal and very-poor shonen anime series, and the only thing that keeps me going is probably the fact that I am a fan of this particular genre (because they are action-packed and have fight scenes...) + that it is set in a rather likable and an interesting fantasy world (the huge demon skull at the beginning alone grabbed my attention...) + that there is at least one cool character (Yami). So far 4/10. EDIT 09.04.2020: The whole epic Elf Reincarnation Arc was quite interesting, and it turned out that at least the fight scenes have improved, although it is also obvious that this is going to be very long, and to be completely honest I almost do not care what happens next. Yami is a great character and so is Zora, however, that is still not enough for me to continue watching this show. I have wanted to give up on it several times and this time I am really going to (or perhaps I just need a longer break). So in the end I am going to drop it after the one-hundred-and-twenty-ninth episode and throw in one point for the elves. I am giving Black Clover the tag "mediocre shonen". 5/10. (08/21/2018) (less) (more)