Oh. That joke’s back, now. Greeeat…

Black Clover
Studio: Pierrot
Genre: Shounen, Action, Fantasy, Magic, Adventure

With the Winter 2018 season ending, Black Clover delivered episode 27. Asta’s been saved by Wizard King Julius. But now the big bad of the arc has arrived to save his peons. There’s no real exchange, there. He appears and disappears with almost all his people. Julius only manages to hold onto one of them.  After that, we’re sent to the medical ward, where Leopold and Fuegoldeon are being treated for their injuries. I find it interesting that Leopold is as hot-blooded as Asta (figuratively and quite literally), endured the exact same injuries as Asta, and yet Asta’s basically fine.

But I will admit… the next bit got me to laugh. The Wizard King brings Asta back to everyone and the reunion with Noelle, Mimosa, and Klaus is genuinely funny. After that, though, they talk shop. The pendant Fuegoleon was wearing has been taken by the bad guys. Presumably because the jewel belonged on the stone slab that Julius found in the previous episode.

After a rousing speech from Julius – or, rather, during one – Nozel and the other members of the Silva family (sans Noelle, of course) leave. Nozel, himself, pouting about how useless he was. But not. Still don’t feel any pity for the guy. He’s still an arse.

Next, Leo wakes up and declares himself Asta’s rival… again. But this time he makes it official by burning a mark onto his forehead that’s identical to Fuegoleon’s. It’s an interesting little character moment and is pretty nice, considering what we saw of their relationship. Despite the brothers having not gotten a ton of screen time, the show had done a pretty good job of establishing their dynamic, to now. Their interactions, Leo’s reaction when Fuegoleon was wounded, and a few little trauma-induced flashbacks helped. And, I will be honest. Asta’s response is also worth a chuckle. Not even just from me, evidently.

So I guess, now, we have a triple rivalry going on between Asta, Leo, and Yuno. I’d like to see how Yuno responds to Asta acquiring yet another rival. Seeing him interact with a rival more like Asta would be interesting. Though, to be honest, I’m not sure how much he’d care. He is pretty dismissive of anyone who isn’t Asta, himself. Frankly, at times he’s even dismissive of Asta. As evidenced by a later scene when they spot one another while walking through town.

Aaanyway, next up we spend a little time with the villains. Turns out Rades is just a whiny little crybaby, complaining about his wounds. So, you know… real compelling villain, this guy. Much winning. A champion is he. Sally calls him on it, pointing out that he can’t kill Asta because she wants him alive, etc. The big bad talks cryptically about their future plans and it’s back to business as usual. All in all, just a wind-down episode, really. Nothing special.

I’d have liked to not been able to hear him…

Episode 28 kicks off the Spring season with another fairly light episode on actual development of any kind. It’s basically just a comedy episode. But it does have some merit to it in terms of characterization. Finral gets Asta and Luck to accompany him on a mixer and we’re treated to several minutes of watching them fail horrendously at winning over the invited ladies.

Also, Noelle sneaked along behind them to spy. Because she’s worried about Asta. And I’ll be honest. As weird as it is that she was somehow able to secure a job and training at the tavern they’re visiting in under ten minutes, it’s amusing. Her temperamental nature just makes her scenes genuinely funny in how she absolutely denies doing actual work of any kind. How she went completely unnoticed is beyond me, but whatever.

Noticed by no one except the bird, that is…

The one thing I could see being questionable is Noelle’s tsundere nature. Put plainly, I can see how one could think there’s been no actual progress regarding her position at all. Truly, there’s been very little. Even Mimosa has seen more progress in her own affections, and she’s had less than half the screen time. As of the prior episode, she’s using her admiration of Asta as a motivation to improve. It’s an effect he has on people. Noelle included. Yet Noelle is still in that early-Tsundere stage of adamant denial.

Being in denial isn’t exactly a necessity of the archetype. You can still be a tsundere without it. That being said, I do have a vague theory about how they’re trying to go about this. It almost seems mathematically calculated that her own progress down this route was tied to the cours. It really started towards the end of cour 1. It escalated to active swooning and the whole denial thing throughout cour 2. So if that’s how this’ll go, then I suspect she’ll finally be out of the denial stage by the end of this cour. And as they’re likely to run into whole new levels of adversity by then, I could see Noelle doing a little more growing than she had throughout that second cour, where she was basically shafted. Already, this episode gets one thing right by having her take on a more active role. So we’ll see.

Good friggin’ question. Won’t, lie, though. That acknowledgment was funny.

As to the other aspects of the episode, it does a pretty fair job of showing off what I suppose could make Asta appealing – his earnestness. That said, I don’t know why, but I feel like another legitimate route just slyly got added to Asta’s pseudo-harem. Because the girl in this seemed pretty intent on winning him over. Then there’s Noelle, who misunderstood him at one point and started getting all kinds of flustered. Add Mimosa to that, as well as (depending on how they decide to spin her attitude towards her “scientific curiosity”) Sally, and… he doesn’t care because he is still set on the whole “Sister Lily” thing. Yeah. Remember that joke? That was a funny one, right? What? No? Oh… well then. Sucks, because they brought out that golden oldie.

Overall, episode 27 was meh. Admittedly funny at parts, but otherwise not a lot to it. Easy Viewing at best, perfectly Harmless at worst. Episode 28 is admittedly funny as well, and that’s what it was going for. It’s filler, but it’s fun filler. A dumb bit of Junk Food. Nothing stellar, but at least entertaining and pulling off what it was going for. If you’d prefer something even sillier, though, there’s always Mahou Shoujo Ore.

Or, if you’d like to see how Black Clover‘s 3rd cour pans out, check with Crunchyroll, where it Simulcasts Tuesdays at 6:25am EST. That’s all I’ve got for ya here. As always, thanks for reading, folks. Keep up the awesome.

Take care,
C. Voyage