Aaand this clump of episodes does more to exemplify the range of quality in this show than any others.

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

Prepare for a lightning round, folks. These last few episodes have more or less centered around one extended fight. Not to say that’s a particularly bad thing. Quite the opposite. Actually, in terms of action, these may very well be some of the best episodes in the entire series. And yet each episode succeeds for varying reasons.

Episode 33 saw Sally return to the forefront along with the battle against the mud monster from last time. And because of her tricky magic, it took a little more finesse to win. This was an episode that did a lot of good with showing various different magical abilities. It wasn’t the most impressive thing ever. But it did the job well. Gauche does have an interesting type of magic. His contribution was a large part of what made the episode cool. Him and the continued presence of awesome grandma nun. It was also pretty slick on an animation level, I must say.

Then came episodes 34 and 35, which delivered on something I was really missing in this series – Yami. Put plainly, since the guy was introduced, I’ve wanted to see him fight. They kept building up how tough he was. I figured it’d only make sense to eventually show what he could do. The big boss showed up to “avenge Sally” (yeah. sure) and Yami got to fight him. What followed was, by far, the best animated fight in the entire series – Yami vs. Licht. A fight that spanned two episodes and showed off some awesome work with both magical abilities and use of the environment. It was really good to see that the show can actually pull out this level of animation quality, even if it’s a bit late in doing so, getting close a few times but ultimately never quite reaching this height.

“Oi. These action scenes take a lot of effort, you know.”

Then came episode 36, which introduced the Third Eye – a trio of Midnight Sun baddies who are going to become really important, later. There’s an interesting bit about one of them, in particular, that I’m sure a lot of people will probably miss. But it refers to another character’s backstory from a while ago. Anyway, they’re here and powerful for sure. But the next episode promises another hopefully awesome fight as more Knight Captains have shown up to lend a hand. How they knew where this was going down is anyone’s guess. But they’re here now, so whatever.

As per usual, these episodes don’t come without a few flaws. The most notable I have is that, once again, Noelle got shafted. She basically just sat around in town. And while I get that her presence there made sense, it was disappointing that she was the one doing this, rather than sending Sekke or something. She’s not even in one or two of these episodes. And they’re not really using her time out of the action to further develop her character. All she’s done is sit around, wonder when backup will arrive, and swoon over Asta. That’s it. That’s all she got in pretty much the entirety of these four episodes. And that’s a shame. Because, frankly, she’s still the best-realized character in the thing. Yes, it’s a low bar. But even so…

“Why DO they keep leaving me out?”

Overall, this handful of episodes delivers so well on the action that I can’t help but call them wonderfully fun Junk Food. More like these, please. Or, for series with a more insane variation of action, maybe give Hakyu Hoshin Engi a try.

Black Clover is Simulcast on Crunchyroll, 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