[Animation review] [Eng | Esp] Black Clover

Welcome my dear magical knights of the internet and thank you very much for having made a temporary stop in my post, once in a while I like to watch long popular animes to see what these famous works have to offer (it takes me a lot to make them, it should be noted) That is why today it was the turn of "Black Clover" which presents a world which revolves around wizards and magic, these elements being crucial for the functioning of the world but they will also be a weapon for those heartless who are dissatisfied with the status quo. Without further ado, prepare to be magical knights without having magic because we are about to begin.

Black Clover was released in 2017, it is based on the manga of the same name created by Yūki Tabata, the anime was directed by Tatsuya Yoshihara and produced by Pierrot, it has a duration of 170 chapters. It is a fantasy and adventure animation, the story takes place in the kingdom of clover, a place protected by magical knights, at the head of these is the wizard king, which is the title held by the most powerful of these, being conferred by first time a magician who saved humanity from perishing at the hands of a terrible demon, in a city of this kingdom live Asta and Yuno, a couple of orphans who grew up in a small village in the kingdom, the particularity of the matter is that the Young Asta lacks any kind of magical power in this world that is governed by it, however, that will not stop him from achieving his dream of becoming a wizard king.

Pierrot is one of those Japanese animation studios that does not disappoint and this anime is no exception, as a standard the animation performs well with settings that are quite detailed and look very beautiful, however, the quality of the animation shines is during combat because the different styles of magic look fantastic and very attractive, both elements being very good, the above is accompanied by an exquisite fluidity that is simply excellent.

The soundtrack is not at the level of excellence of the animation, but it is fine, it has one or another pleasant moment although it never goes beyond that.

This is the first point at which this anime begins to fall apart due to its poor development, it proposes a world in which magic is extremely important since it has shaped the way of life of its people, however, it is never delves into this at the level of setting, things like: The grimonios, the type of magic, its evolution, genetics (This is very important and is never explored), among others, all of this is left in the pipeline and never It gives that magical touch that its setting so needs to reflect that fantastic touch that it is supposed to have. At a social level, there is clear discrimination based on the magical power that an individual possesses, with the nobles being the ones who have the highest status because they have greater magical abilities. The anime tries to demonstrate that this is a cruel and unfair system, although the only thing that What it achieves is indirectly to reinforce that idea because the vast majority of powerful characters have noble ancestry and/or absurdly broken gifted powers, this leaves us with justified discrimination that is pathetically attempted to discredit.

The plot is a disaster in every sense, we go in parts, the combats are very entertaining and pleasant, the problem is that they only follow the rule that the one who manages to get the most powers out of their sleeve wins, the fact of unlocking being very common an extremely convenient spell for the situation (There is an attempt to explain how this is justified but it is complete nonsense because it is only something that happens to good guys so it makes no sense) another problem related to combat is its inconsistencies, some characters are extremely powerful in some confrontations and in others they are extremely useless. Narratively it is very generic, the protagonist is motivated by being the strongest in the kingdom, such a simple focus does not really allow us to do anything interesting that is moderately complex so there is not much to highlight about this weak writing, furthermore, in more than one occasion everything is resolved by the magic of the script making it even more pathetic. The length is not the problem but the misuse of its episodes, throughout the anime there are episodes that do not really contribute anything (without being filler) so they feel wasted and tedious to watch, all this is noticeable in the aspects that I mentioned previously that are not explored at all.

This is without a doubt the worst section of the anime and is due to different factors, the first lies in the main characters being that their rivalry is a joke, this is because Asta is constantly made a fool of for some reason and They give powers to Yuno so that he can make fun of the poor idiot even more, in turn, neither of them have a personality, they just want to be a wizard king without further ado, they lack any kind of halfway decent characterization. Another big problem lies in the exaggerated number of characters, there are so many that there is no correct exploitation of any of them and in the few moments of focus they have they give an idiotic speech about friendship or some nonsense like that (This is something that is repeated a lot) so that at the last minute you empathize with them even though they are still unknown; This increases because more are constantly added, in addition, in the last arc many of these are directly left aside for being weak (Applying that of Dragon Ball) still losing relevance.

Undeath is a huge problem, on many occasions there are important characters who have very emotional scenes shortly after having suffered a fatal injury, all in order to give them a good ending with their death, however, all this is sent to hell Because they are always saved in stupid ways, this causes the entire meaning of said event to be lost, the only characters that die are the irrelevant ones that no one cares about (Although the anime desperately tries to make them matter). As a final misfortune but no less disastrous are the villains, most of them are only bad because yes, there is no background or anything similar, there is only one who has a justification that is moderately interesting but in the end he is evangelized for what he loses all its value.

Black Clover is an accumulation of the cliché things that current generic anime do: A protagonist with some kind of disadvantage who overcomes everything with force of will, a world that is wasted by not being explored, saved at the last minute thanks to the power of friendship and/or never giving up, one-dimensional villains who want to end the world because they woke up in a bad mood this morning, a scale of power that favors those the script wants, among others, I could go on all day mentioning all their flaws but now My point is clear that it is an extremely basic anime with no aspirations to anything. It is for all the above that it deserves 1.5 stars out of 7, the only redeeming thing is its fights that look fantastic, I recommend searching for them on YouTube and watching them, I'm sure you will easily get them with Linkin Park in the background.

My dear magical gentlemen, we have reached the end of another review. If you liked it, I would greatly appreciate it if you left your positive vote and used the reblog button. I upload content daily, so if you don't want to miss it, I invite you to start following me. so you are aware of all my updates. If you want me to review something specific, you can leave your suggestion below in the comments box and I will gladly dedicate a post to it as soon as I can. Without further ado, I thank you for having reached this point and I send you a big hug from a distance, I remind you that you have the strength of your greatness giving you its support, you just have to take the helm and set a course, I hope that Let's meet again when you decide to make another temporary stop in one of my future posts.