Anime: Black Clover (2017)

IT’S RUN OF THE MILL
Black Clover is your cookie cutter fighting shonen, which was heavily promoted as the KING OF SHONEN ANIME because the industry really wants the money of easily impressionable teenagers who have no experience in good anime. It’s nothing more than stolen ideas from older shows and presented in their most basic and easily digestible form so they can appeal to the largest amount of people without ever challenging a single thing in the formula that would occasionally make it above average. Naruto takes part in the Hunter Exam, gets chosen by a Shinigami Captain, and enters the Fairy Tail Guild, so he can become the Pirate King. The best things people can say about the plot are how well it copies the same stuff they have seen so many times in the past. And every time they act like it’s doing some things better than its predecessors, such as being the only shonen that relies on hard work instead of asspulls for cheap power ups, is soon proven to be a lie since it’s also relying heavily on every overused plot convenience you can think of. The protagonist still relies on done to death hidden demonic powers he had all along and which save his ass in every mission, despite being the reason he doesn’t have magic because of them and thus he is weaker than everybody else. So yeah, it’s a largely typical and by the numbers shonen with a premise of giving the ultimate power to a loser, just for the sake of bottom tier empowerment fantasy.

TERRIBLE BEGINNING
The thing every fanboy of the show will tell you is to not listen to the haters, because the anime begins in a horrible way and after 40 episodes gets really good. No kidding, the first episodes are about the main character screaming nonstop and sexually harassing a nun. Right off the bat you get pedophilic antichristian deviance with a lot of terrible screaming, which alienated a big portion of its potential audience. But don’t mind that, since all you have to do is suffer through the first 40 episodes and then you will definitely like it… because by then you will have given up on expecting something good and thus the tiniest improvement will make Black Clover to seem like a masterpiece. And that is the only reason everybody says that. Because they either drop it after a few episodes, or they give up and keep watching it while calling anything that is occasionally better than bad to be amazing.

HORRIBLE PROTAGONIST
You might wonder how the heck Black Clover becomes better when the protagonist is a Naruto clone, who screams like a banshee and molests nuns. Aside from the generic “I want to be the best in the world,” he’s an obnoxious loudmouth and lacks everything that could make him sympathetic to the viewer. He has no redeeming qualities until a lot more characters are introduced into the show for mitigating the suffering by flavoring the shit you are given to eat with more types of personalities. And by other types, I mean making most bad guys to come off as one-dimensional evil freaks, just for making the obnoxious protagonist to seem heroic in comparison. They will be always acting like bullies or sexual deviants or coward rulers, just so the Naruto Clone can jump in and tell them how mean they are and that he will beat them, thus getting the moral high ground despite being a nun rapist. This is how the show fools you to think he is great; by fighting people who are worse than nun rapists.

LAME SIDE CHARACTERS
This Naruto clone (some call him Asta for some reason) has a rival, like all shonen do, but there is no reason for the rivalry to exist. The emotionless pretty boy (some call him Yuno) grew up with Asta as if they were brothers. They are super friendly and constantly save each other in battle, so you see no actual rivalry going on. It’s like they are best buddies, but call each other a rival for the sake of ticking the square on the must-have list of shonen clichés. A similar issue appears when the Naruto clone gets chosen by the Black Bulls because of his attitude instead of his skill at magic. It’s like hiring the guy who directed and played in The Room just because he has guts, and not because he can actually do something worthwhile. And then the Naruto clone goes to a guild where everyone is as annoying as him. They all have one-trait personalities and are defined by one gag, which they repeat as often as they can. One only talks about food, another one only talks about booze, a third one is obsessed with his 5 year old sister and even has nosebleeds whenever he looks at her. Eventually, these Pokémon-like characters get fleshed out by doing missions that focus on them, but even then their personality remains the same one-liner throughout the series and it gets tiresome very fast.

TYPICAL SHONEN ACTION
The main appeal is obviously the action, which at certain highlights, when the animation is not the typical lazy crap studio Pierrot does all the time, can be pretty awesome. But for about 80% of the duration you are stuck with subpar animation that makes the show to be completely passable in terms of entertainment compared to Demon Slayer or Jujutsu Kaisen. There are battles that can last for dozens of episodes and which seem to be epic because of their duration, but to the most part they are a waste of time since they come down to spars between minor characters. No joke, there are parts where you can skip twenty episodes and nothing will be lost since it’s just nobodies fighting nobodies (the magic tournament, anyone who got possessed by elves, and those who were given powers by the Dark Triad).

And even when you eventually get to the finales, which are supposed to be the good parts of the fighting, you still get typical magic conveniences that always trigger when some nakama is in danger. Power ups in the show are mostly the result of willpower instead of some sort of tactic, and thus the battles lose most of their impact since it all comes down to ‘whatever dude, it happened’. There isn’t much choreography other than people firing lasers at each other, or teleporting left and right, or using new attacks that didn’t exist up until that moment. It’s literally like the imaginary wars children are playing, where they make up attacks and the one being attacked says why it doesn’t work and how he counters it with more imaginary attacks. In general, everything that happens in the show is easily fixable and feels cheap. Examples include:
-A bird comes out of nowhere and gives a macguffin to the good guys, who didn’t even know the villains were looking for.
-A sprite that appears out of nowhere and saves the good guys with hax magic, just because.
-They expose a traitor amongst the captains. The traitor is someone we haven’t seen before and know nothing about, thus his reveal means nothing to the reader. The method they used for exposing him was magical mind reading, which makes the reveal to feel easy and cheap. Also there is a second traitor within the same group and for some reason they don’t find him, despite having the ability to mind read him as well.
-Yummy (easily the best character in the show) is trapped inside an unbreakable barrier. What does he do for escaping and for saving his teammates? He… breaks the barrier with a new power up and easily saves the day. No tactics whatsoever.
-The Naruto clone has his arms disabled by a curse and there is nothing that can heal them. What does he do for still being useful? He finds a witch and she cures him. Just like that.
-How do you stop a crazy woman that wants to kill everyone? You unlock your hidden familiar out of nowhere, which resets the plot however it wants, so anyone who gets killed is instantly returned to life. As deus ex machina as it gets.
-What do you do after the wizard king gets assassinated? Nothing. He returns to life on his own. Such a shame; his apparent death was the most tragic scene in the whole show.

MINDLESS PLOT
Anyways, you are not supposed to think when you watch this show. It’s a dumb action flick for ten year olds who haven’t watched many anime yet, or for manchildren with very low standards. Don’t bother asking why they are sending rookies in S-difficulty missions. Oh, hey, here is a dungeon that can potentially destroy the world with the artifacts stored inside it. It’s super dangerous and only the strongest wizards must go there. Which is why we allow the worst guild to send its worst members who never work as a team, nor are that strong. Don’t forget to get molested by a plant that looks like a vagina, but do forget to use the very useful magic barrier that can save you from a lot of trouble. You know which one, the one you asspulled out of nowhere in the previous arc and now you act like it doesn’t exist because that would make the battles too easy. In the meantime, every other wizard will be doing absolutely nothing, and they won’t even give the heroes a promotion for saving the world. Yeah, that’s how you prove how serious the situation is.

By the way, the Naruto clone eventually gets a promotion. Not for saving the world, but for being captured with magic when he can counter magic. And he gets said promotion from the wizard king himself, who is the strongest mortal in the whole show, but never does anything in the missions because that would make everything to run on easy mode. The first time he eventually does something is for saving the protagonist and for giving him a promotion, which is followed by the protagonist forming a large harem of fangirls and lots of episodes which are nothing more than girls in bikinis or naked in spas. By the way, most of the girls act like they are strong and independent, but the moment they see a cool guy, they act like shy schoolgirls. Because that is how male empowerment fantasy works. Women are there to be objectified no matter how their personalities are portrayed.

After the promotion, the show becomes far more predictable, as it’s just the Naruto clone constantly being taken over by his hidden demonic power, which obviously they want to make you think it will lead to him killing his friends. And obviously it never happens, because it’s a show for kids. He always regains control and always befriends his enemies and always gets more powers that make him look more and more like a demon. Because it’s really cool to have a hero that looks like he belongs in the deepest layers of hell. Also the show never forgets to give us double standards, such as that he has no magic, despite having the most powerful magic, or that he never gets rewarded for his actions, although he is one of the strongest in the kingdom. He even goes as far as telling you the moral message of the whole show comes down to: You are nothing special, and that is what makes you special. I am not joking; this is an actual quote in the story. The author is literally promoting loser mentality. Being last makes you the best of the worst, well done.

I wouldn’t mind all that if the show wasn’t coming off as pretentious, but it does. It kept shoving this anti-racism message down our throats and we were supposed to take it seriously when the presentation was as childish as it gets. Supposed, humans hated elves and that led to a big war, only to be proven it was just some demon brainwashing them into acting violently. There is no free will involved, which means there is no depth to the theme. What anti-racism? It was brainwashing! And what a great way to solve the conflict by having both the elves and the humans teaming up against a one dimensional evil demon that was laughing like an idiot and even outright called everyone a fool for falling for it, just to make it even easier for the audience to hate him. Oh, and all the hatred the good guys were feeling towards the elves and the assassin of the wizard king were erased from existence, because thereafter everyone is friendly to each other and act like they never harmed anyone.

Thus, for all the aforementioned reasons, Black clover is a mediocrity with below average writing. It just rehashes ideas of earlier shonen and does nothing special with them, thus forever being stuck at a demographic for ten year olds and manchildren with low standards. Plus it looks subpar 80% of the time and the protagonist is a screaming nun rapist who wants everything to go his way because he is not special... and that is what makes him special.