Black Clover

Episode 47

In true shonen fashion, "teamwork" appears to be the dominating theme for the Underwater Temple arc. I may have my issues with the initial setup for this battle, but I'm enjoying how much everything is falling into place, with almost every member of the Black Bulls taking a crack at Vetto in some form or another. To explain how Asta was able to get back up for last week's showstopper, this week's episode opens by telling us that Kahono was using the last of her strength to revive our little shouty boy. The Vetto fight has gone from Asta, to Kahono, to Noelle, to Asta again in a series of action-packed baton passes.

But it doesn't stop there. Asta isn't enough to take on Vetto who, as a member of the Third Eye, is even stronger than the Midnight Sun's leader. This is where Vanessa and Finral arrive to have their moment to shine. (Everybody else already has, so they might as well have a turn.) Vanessa adds a lot to this fight because she has thread magic, which allows her to use strings to tie people up and puppet them. Vetto can break her strings with his immense strength, but she can still use her powers to steer Asta around through his fight, keeping him mobile in his injured state and able to change trajectory in mid-air to keep Vetto on his toes. Finral's portals are also useful in a similar manner.

At this point, the more headstrong and aggressive Black Clover gets, the better. That's where the much more lively and brisk manga serves the story better, but the longer this Vetto fight goes on in the anime, the more I like it. There's an enthusiasm to how it stacks its consecutive team-up attacks against its singular enemy. It makes the audience feel like we're watching a pristine body of armor slowly get chipped away until it finally cracks, and it's a lot of fun as a result. This show's bluntness is a double-edged sword, because there are instances where it's finally as infectiously cool as it tries to be, but those moments tend to be few and far between, buried under abysmal arc construction.

Even now as I'm high on the Vetto fight, the show will cut back to Yami and the old man watching on the sidelines and I'll just shake my head. The fight is really good in isolation, but it loses a lot of its power when you remember that they're trying to frame it as a spectator sport. This is an arc about what the Black Bulls are capable of without their captain's help, but the fact that Yami is trapped in the TV room doesn't successfully add any urgency to the situation. The scenario exists so that Yami can watch and gloat about his team without actually participating in the fight. I think it would have been more interesting if Yami was completely MIA, or if he was caught up in an even more dire fight elsewhere in the arc.

Otherwise, this is another solid episode of Black Clover. I'm surprised how much I'm enjoying Vetto as a villain. He appears to be getting even stronger as the fight goes on, which just makes things more exciting. The episode ends with Asta getting a decent hit with his anti-magic sword, which is usually a good sign that things are about to wrap up, so hopefully this battle can go out on a high note with one more strong episode. The tragedy of this series is that it does show potential at times, but the story development and planning needs more time to cook. But hey, a high point is a high point nonetheless.

Rating: B+

Black Clover is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Sam Leach records about One Piece for The One Piece Podcast and you can find him on Twitter @LuckyChainsaw