Black Clover

Episode 68

Black Clover isn't ready for this little Star Festival side story to end too quickly, so how about some filler? Last week's episode ended on a nice enough note that everything could have continued on smoothly, but Jack the Ripper of the Green Mantises had to show up at the last minute and start beefing with Yami, leading to this episode's series of escalating challenges where they try and determine who's truly the best once and for all. I don't think the show ever specifies what it is they're actually fighting over or if there's even an origin story to this rivalry at all. It's just an old-fashioned grimoire-measuring contest, if ya know what I'm sayin'.

The "joke" of the episode is that it keeps setting us up for some huge battle to commence between two Magic Knight captains, but then pulls the rug from underneath us to reveal a grilled squid-selling contest, and then a butt bump fight, and then a thumb war, etc. Eventually, they do take the action somewhere else in order to avoid hurting civilians (the cave where Yami and Licht had their really cool fight), but the Wizard King shows up to stop them before the fight gets serious and they start using their most powerful spells. Yami was ready to bust out his Dimension Slash, the super cool move he used to kill Vetto, but he doesn't get to let it rip and instead the episode kills about three minutes by focusing on his squad studiously discussing the logistics of the attack. Would it destroy the cave? Would it injure Jack and leave the Magic Knights without a valuable ally? Yeah, probably.

As you can likely tell, there isn't much to chew on in this episode. The beginning of the Star Festival already felt borderline filler-y, but this week goes whole hog. It's minimally animated and just feels like a chance to give Jack, an incidental side character, a little more screen time. Where last week's episode was able to get by on a little sweetness, this episode is all about debilitated humor. It isn't very interesting. There's the faintest moral-of-the-story towards the end, where Yami and Jack call it a draw and Noelle learns that arguing can be healthy in a friendship, which I guess makes her feel better about her relationship with Asta. Somewhere out there an anime staff writer is shrugging and saying, "Hey, man. I work for the weekend."

When the episode starts winding down, we come back to Kahono and Kiato still singing and dancing for the crowd. It's like, "Oh snap! They're still here?!" It would have been nice to see them on the sidelines with the rest of the cast. The cliffhanger of the episode shows Asta wandering the Star Festival some more and encountering a pretty blonde woman he seems to recognize, but he can't quite put his finger on her identity. This appears to be our segue back into canon material, so hopefully next week is meatier than this. Filler of this nature is pretty expected between arcs, and while this week's episode is entirely inoffensive, it's also incredibly bland. The fatuous misadventures of Yami and Jack's grudge war leaves plenty to be desired.

Rating: C-

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