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Sep 2, 2019
Review up to episode 5. Verdict: A "mediocre" 5.
About me: 20-ish woman, so I'm exactly the advertised target audience. I've enjoyed sports anime such as Kuroko no Basuke, Tsurune, Haikyuu and Kaze ga Tsuyoku Fuiteiru and hell, even gone through Yuri on Ice as well as Free!. I'm no rugby (or sports in general) fanatic and I'm fine with not 100% accurate technical stuff.
To be honest... I'm disappointed. This could have been so much better.
But this totally stands and falls with the animation.
Have I seen worse? Yes.
Have I seen better? Hell yes.
You don't just animate a title with a manga that has art
...
by Takarai Rihito and then come up with this subpar gibberish for the anime -- it won't fly. If you went for a shounen anime for 6-10 y.o. boys, sure...Go ahead. They might easily forgive/not notice the bad art and horrible (!) computer animations. But this is supposed to be Josei...? At least they stopped using the computer animations after episode 3 (?).
I think they spent 90% of the budget on the voice actors and character design makers. Sure, you'll have a decent image here and there but the overall animation/design is bad and the characters don't match their published/advertised character design. When I saw the trailer for this a few months back I was hopeful that these problems would be fixed once the actual series premiered but it got even more horrible at times.... And I'm someone who even endured the most horrible Black Clover animations...You can get through that if an anime will have 200+ episodes... But not on such a short anime... Then it's usually go big or go home (unless you're producing for kids who won't care or notice either way).
The voice actors are great though. So much that I actually feel like it's a waste...
They should have rather taken lesser known seiyuus (come on, there's a bunch of them in Japan... and even the rookies there are often ten times better than the English dub pros, so you'd still find enough matching voices) who might come with a lower price tag and invested the difference in better animation.
The story is okay to good. Nothing too exciting up to ep.5 but nothing too boring either.
Sports anime do need a lot of background stories and stuff to make you invested in the characters after all, so I don't mind that too much. How many episodes is this supposed to get though? 13? If so, I'm not sure we can get anywhere. We'll either be stuck with no real development/a cliffhanger or they'll rush through the actually interesting parts at the end of the season and leave us hanging all the same....So I'd actually hope they'd get like 20-24 episodes. Though they would absolutely have to up their game with the animations to make more people watch it...
As I have no clue about rugby, the chibi tid bit at the end of each episode explaining some rules is nice though I'd certainly prefer it if they integrated this into the actual episodes like they did for example in Haikyuu. People who actually know the rules and expect more tactical info will probably be disappointed.
As for the coming DVD/Blu-ray release... They must overhaul the existing animations. I see no way they'd sell more than 200-300 copies otherwise because I can't imagine anyone other than the die-hard fans of the seiyuus or the manga/novel spending money on it otherwise. Which is really sad. Come on, this has potential....
By now, I might even prefer it if they put this on hold for half a year and fixed the animation....It's obvious they were either entirely under-budgeted from the beginning or they ran out of time horrendously and just half-a**ed it all to hell. I don't get why they didn't test this out with 2 nicely animated episodes as OVAs and then followed through with a decent season if it got the attention they wanted.
Oh well.... Fingers crossed that they'll save it somehow. I haven't lost hope entirely yet seeing as how they at least (for now) didn't use the horrible CG anymore.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Mar 30, 2019
Attention: Spoilers ahead. My review is more or less a comparison of the anime and manga and describes why I'm not happy with what they did with this adaptation.
I'm not sure how to rate this season. I'm stuck somewhere between 6 (fair) and 8 (very good) because I guess that without the manga comparison, it might be better. I'm also reading the manga and I felt a bit shortchanged at some points throughout the season.
They left out some manga chapters entirely, took away from scenes that were very emotional in the manga but were only so-so/had less impact in the anime. I guess that was
...
meant to help keep the episode length but I feel like they should have rather lengthened those 1-2 scenes and shortened other scenes that showed scenery etc.
Example: [spoiler]When Ashiya had been attacked by the Executive and then remained alone in the room while waiting for Abeno to return, Fuzzy runs to him and tries to cuddle.. In the manga Ahiya is still very traumatized and is shaking..He reaches out to Fuzzy but at the last second hesitates and drops his hand again,fearful to touch the yokai. While the scene did exist in the anime, it felt rushed. 1-2 seconds more showing Ashiya's anguish and fear would have been welcome here. The same goes for the scene at the riverbank where he has a breakdown. They left out the whole kappa part -which would have been okay if they needed to shorten the episodes- but again... the breakdown was very emotional in the manga. He's never really cried earnestly in the manga before, so that scene was very important for his character development in my opinion.In the manga he starts crying without even really noticing at first and then breaks down entirely apparently (actual crying spree not shown in the manga either, but the beginning and end was shown so that you knew what happened). In the anime, you can barely guess he's been crying, so it feels pretty flat. Therefore the scene did not develop the same "soul cleansing" effect for Hanae that it had in the manga.[/spoiler]
But now to the thing that had me confused/angry/disappointed: The complete deviation from the plot at the end of this season when compared to the manga. I'm still not really sure about how to feel about this:
[spoiler]They changed the entire Sasa incident. In the manga, Sasa does posess Ashiya and orders him to kill Abeno. Ashiya tries to follow suit but regains consciousness for a moment where he realizes that he's strangeling Abeno and stops. He withdraws within the deepest part of his soul thinking that he's killed Abeno. He's really desperate there and you're hurting with him. In that moment Sakae makes his appearance and takes over Hanae's body and consciousness to protect him from self-destructing inside and being killed by Sasa. Sakae then releases and kills Sasa (who is not in the least repenting and who would have killed Abeno and Ahiya and whoever else he got his hands on). Abeno cannot stop Sakae but witnesses a memory of Sakae sealing that demon years before. He thanks Sakae for protecting Hanae before Sakae's consciousness disappears and Ashiya faints again. In the anime Sakae is way more hateful. He takes over when Hanae is possessed but before the whole strangeling incident. It doesn't feel like he's taking over to protect Hanae - more like he's doing it out of a selfish desire to act upon his hatred for yokai and kill one. While he starts trying to kill Sasa, Abeno interferes, so Sakae *then* ends up strangling Abeno because he's interfering. In the end, Sakae's consciousness vanishes because he's passed the time-limit apparently. Sasa's still very much alive and suddenly a good yokai who's overcoming his hatred for humans because Fuzzy tells him (or rather her in the anime) how Hanae was so nice him etc. Bonta and Sasa are sent to the Underworld together.
I guess for someone who hadn't read the manga, this might all be nice and dandy but for me... I feel let down.
To me, Sakae has always seemed like he did indeed hate yokai before but probably learned to be less aggressive and accept most of them through Aoi. He also seemed very introverted but still loving in his own way in the manga. As if he was really concerned about Hanae and loved him. He didn't seem like a truly evil/bad person. Just really complex. The way Hanae's mother is reminiscing about him, also suggests that he's actually kind. The strange thing here is that they didn't change *that* in the anime. So it's even more confusing.
Also, by not having Sakae kill Sasa while acting in Hanae's stead, they're taking away other important facts that shape Hanae's character in the manga (as he comes to learn of "his" deed later on and is trying to make up for it with other actions that will become important in the subsequent manga chapters).[/spoiler]
They pretty much destroyed the chances for a season 3 pick-up if they don't plan to go 70% original story-line with that one... which I just don't think they will do. They more or less pulled a Blue Exorcist S1 2nd half on this... Since I really love the series, this breaks my heart a little.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Sep 21, 2018
I really can't understand how someone could give this a high ranking. :/
Maybe they watched it when they were kids and are now blindly nostalgic?
The main character is so annoying and dumb I couldn't stand to watch this past episode 40.
I thought BnHA Midoriya was whiny... Forget that. Take Sailor Moon Bunny, cross that with Midoriya and multiply the whiny-ness by 3, then you get KHR's Tsu.He's got nothing going for him. He can neither plot, work hard or even encourage others verbally. All he ever does is whine and act stupid. I mean...come on... he's told he's the 10th big shot...and he never
...
even really asked why? Yet he keeps on denying the fact. No...less..he acts like nothing happened and hopes it goes away on its own? Ughh...so much that makes me furious in this series.
What were probably supposed to be gags were nothing short of annoying...
The story could have been okay but I just couldn't get past the annoying MC and some other over the top annoying stuff. :/
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Sep 14, 2018
I was hoping.... Yeah, what was I actually hoping for? That the writing would get better and the fan service take a step back? Guess I was hoping in vain.
7 chapters in and we've already lost one of the main characters' credibility. *sigh*
Minor spoiler about the "Quest" ahead..
Remember Natsu? The guy RAISED by a dragon? Who LOVED Igneel and thought well of dragons except for the evil ones running rampant? Yup, the same guy now sets off on a quest to "seal" some dragons without even bothering to ask why. And initially he thought he'd just beat them to a pulp because he didn't think
...
twice about what sealing actually meant.
WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY? If we think of Natsu, he should be the first one to jump in the defense of dragons and being vary of sealing dragons just for for the sake of sealing them.
So those dragons COULD destroy the world. Well, duh. Obvious for pretty much every dragon out there. Considering that the fictional world is pretty much peaceful, it means those dragons haven't set out to go on a rampage and terrorize everyone like Acnologia did. Yet Natsu sets out to seal them?! Give me a break. The real Natsu would have a blast searching for and meeting those dragons - not sealing them for having done nothing wrong.
Character relationships have not developed one bit. Rather the opposite if I may say so. The tiny couple scraps we got in the last chapter of FT were entirely ignored as well. No pairings here, nothing.
The fan service got to a level where at least one female needed to loose all her clothes twice a chapter. Give me a f---ing break. Just do a hentai spin-off and be done with it already! I don't mind if there's a bit of fan service now and then. Every demographic probably has that. But it's not necessary to have EVERY damn woman except for 2 Loli characters have E+ cups and apparently not enough clothing to cover her butt cheeks. It's just gotten tasteless. Sure, I'm a straight woman, so I may be biased. But even the guys I talked with were annoyed by the level of fanservice this has reached.You can't have blood and big wounds in this manga but this level of porn?! And it gets a PG-13 rating?! I mean... seriously...
FT could be so much more... Please just stop this farce and concentrate on the story and world... *sigh*
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Aug 27, 2018
Tried to get into it because I was bored but had to drop this because I couldn't stand to watch another episode.
Characters
- Winy MC is so winy, he'd cry if you took away his candy. Seriously. Most shoujo heroines are not as winy (and I still hate them o.ô; )
There's just a limit to how much an MC can cry. I think there's not a single episode where Deku is not sniffling or crying at some point. Don't get me wrong, I don't even mind the occasional emotional outburst...but here it just got to a point where it was plain annoying. Remember DBZ little Gohan?
...
Thought that was annoying? Deku is a 15 years old crying like 4 year old Gohan.But we're supposed to see him as the next big hero and root for him? Sorry, while I may root for a kid that's trying to surpass its cry-baby mentality, we're talking about a teenager here...So it's just annoying.
- Psychotic rival character is case for the loonies
Deku's childhood "friend" is non other than the childhood-bully. You know, that one kid that is always portrayed as needing to torment and make fun of others to feel superior? Again... this over-the-top stuff may be believable for kindergardeners but in this case... Ugh.... He just seems like he's lost some of his marbles. And the tip of the iceberg? Deku still idolizes that guy and follows him like a lost puppy. Heck, it's no wonder there are so many yaoi doujinshis about them out there... One acts like a total sadistic tsundere seme and the other like the begging-for-it-don't-hurt-me-but-you're-still-so-smexy-I'll-follow-you-everywhere uke. And I'm saying this as someone who does read and enjoy the occasional yaoi. In this settings their characters are just too much and ughhh...
- Girls only existing in this series to have *some* fan service. That pink suit with the stripe *cough* slot down there...really? Was that necessary? Those are 15 year old kids. Yet they all have a C+ rag and every last one of them is in the story only to add a pair of big tits and butt. Most of their quirks also carry some innuendos. Like that girl who's invisible. So she runs around naked all day only wearing gloves. Or did I mention the girl who pops out things between her tits? Or the girl with the incredibly long tongue...? Yeah, you get the drift. If you're looking for sexism - here it is. I don't mind if there is a fanservice scene or two. But when all the girls and women are portrayed like this it makes me freaking mad. I've seen scenes and images from other scenes throughout the series and I really haven't seen even a single female character that is not somehow sexualized.Heck, the even have an entirely naked girl pinning down the MC and licking him? At some point that became too much.
There's even this "kid" character who goes around molesting or trying to molest females in nearly every episode. This is supposed to be "fun" apparently. It just pissed me off. You can have a "pervert" in a manga/anime without it being so darn tasteless. Think of Miroku (Inuyasha) for instance. But the portraying and length of the scenes and how they're packed into the context/the other characters' reaction does influence how they are perceived. In BHA it's not funny anymore. It's just plain annoying, tasteless and sexist.
- Ridiculous costumes are ridiculous
I was never a fan of Marvel character designs but this... ugh.... most of the characters are probably designed to look that way in a bid to be "funny" or w/e. It just takes off the entire series as I can't take any of them serious. And in the case of females, the ridiculousness is topped with sexism. Every damn one of them has to wear skin tight suits with high-heel shoes to emphasize their tits and butts. Most of them don't even get enough clothing to make for a full body suit, so they have to show off their rag.
- The characters overall lack depth. Even fan service galore manga/anime like Shokugeki no Soma explore their characters better, give them a backstory and motives; make them likeable and dislikeable for certain aspects and all that. BHA barely gives you anything even for the "main" characters.
Art
Art-wise this neither especially good nor bad. However the style is much simpler than for other anime/manga, so it's also a lot easier to animate as you have less lines and details et cetera.
Sound
This is more or less one of the few redeeming features of this anime. The seiyuus are mostly well chosen and do a great job. The soundeffects are on par and the soundtrack is nice in most cases.
Story, Enjoyment and overall impression
Possibility-wise this could have been entertaining. While it never had the potential to be something I really liked (as I don't click with Marvel that much), it could have been a way to kill time.. But the execution... ugh... From blatant sexism over sniffling wanna-be-yet-don't-wanna-be-yaoi-boytoys... Ugh... I could have enjoyed this to some extent if they toned down the sexism and made the main character a bit more likeable. I don't care about the "getting super powers without doing slack to deserve it" part as much. I could imagine someone with a personality similar to Mahiru (Servamp) in this setting for example. He was also more of a silent force type that was hard-working and a bit timid in a way. But Deku....I can only see him as a wanna-be-adult version of 4 y.o. Gohan. :/
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Aug 27, 2018
[spoiler-free review from a female's standpoint]
Since anime for girls and women over the age of 12 are still somewhat of a rare good (unless you count the umpteenth music or reverse harem without plot anime - which I'm not a fan of), I've been checking out shounen and seinen anime as well. I'd like to encourage the female audience to give this a try, so I will be talking about some aspects girls and women may be more sensitive about when choosing anime/manga. Of course my review may also be of help to guys - I just chose to mention aspects that might not pop
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up in a guy's review but be important for girls.
To be honest, I didn't stumble upon Black Clover until I was bored and was looking for an anime that would keep me somewhat entertained for a while.
I'm a woman in her 20s, so I'm not the target audience of this anime, but I found it pretty decent and got hooked on the story. I'm rather picky when it comes to art, story and voices. So if the cover image or trailer of an anime doesn't appeal to me aesthetically, chances are I'll never touch it. Despite BC being a shounen anime I found myself trying it out because I sort of liked the art and the synopsis seemed okay to interesting-ish.
Side note: I didn't watch/read Naruto during my childhood and when I wanted to give it a try a while ago, I just couldn't get into it, so I can't offer comparisons between the two. I think a lot of hate this series receives is due to the people clinging to their childhood "ideal".As this doesn't apply to me, I might be more unbiased.
Pacing & story
While the pacing of the first episodes is pretty horrible because it's so slow and filler-esque you want to fast-forward, it gets better after that. There are still a lot of unnecessary fillers but they're endurable because you want to know where the story is going after that.
To keep this entirely spoiler-free, I'll use a totally different set-up that has nothing to do with BC:
If BC had an episode playing in an amusement park, you'd get to see about 2-3 minutes of background happenings i.e. roller coster action, people lining up to buy food or goodies etc. A good 20 seconds would have sufficed to give the viewer that amusement park feeling and understand where the characters are etc.
That is certainly something that got and still gets on my nerves. I'm not entirely sure why the production company employs this techinique as the anime is nowhere near to catching up to the manga and every animated minute costs a lot of money. On top of that, this practice is certainly not endearing the anime to some viewers and can be considered "shoveling ones own grave" in some cases.The current season is set to get 51 episodes. 46 (i.e. series short the unnecessary, over-long fillers) would have probably sufficed to create the world while toning down the annoying-ness. There's a 30 seconds world-intro at the beginning of every episode and, depending on the episode, a good 2-3 mins recap of the last episode shown. Add an intro and outro and a bunch of over-the-top long filler scenes, you end up with about 15 minutes of actual content (not yet excluding acceptable or necessary fillers). From a business standpoint it just doesn't make sense to waste so much animation time=money. I blame the powers that be of this production.
Anyways.. try to endure it. The core story and world are worth it.
Sound
Character voices (Japanese)
Summarized...they did a great job.
At the beginning of the series, I thought I'd have to start throwing things around every time Asta opened his mouth buuuuut 1) the screaming got a bit less frequent (which is also the same in the manga... so they were just being faithful to the manga in a way) 2) I got used to it and at some point started thinking of the voice to be a pretty good fit for a character like Asta. He is supposed to be a wild child and a bit on the duller/devil may care side of the spectrum.. So having him portrayed with a calm, "reasonable" voice would not be a good choice either. Now, I can't even imagine him being voiced differently. And let's be honest here.. Compared to the DBZ characters, Asta at least manages to shout words occasionally instead of only "Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!" all the time... haha I just accepted this at some point as being part of a shounen anime. If I could get through the DBZ Namek/Frieza saga, I can get through Asta screeching that he's going to become Wizard King.
The other characters are voiced by well-known seiyuus also popular in shoujo anime like Free, Nijiiro Days, Kamisama Hajimemashita, Diabolik Lovers, Shounen Ai anime like Junjou Romantica or Super Lovers or other Shounen Anime females enjoy (Kuroko no Basket, Haikyuu). You'll find one or two of your "favorites" in BC, I can nearly promise you.
The sound effects are always realistic and the background music is nice. The OP and ending are also quite nice for a shounen anime.
Characters
Tropes, tropes all around. But then this is a WSJ anime. What do you expect? WSJ is supposed to cater to the masses with general tropes galore and somewhat catagorizable characters. There's always the nerd, the cool guy, the stoic/stern one, the jokester, the overeager fighter, the tsundere characters and the love/hate interests. Such tropes exist for shoujo magazine mangas/anime as well. Maybe I can endure these tropes better because I got fed up with shoujo tropes before? Who knows..
What always turns me off shounen manga/anime is the blatant fan service that is pretty tasteless at times. While there is fan service in the form of a drunkard D-cup witch lazing around in underwear most of the day and Asta being the love interest of at least 3 girls, it never gets to a point where there are panty/chest shots every episode or the guys actually groping/molesting the women. That really annoyed me in Magi for instance. But that's another review for another time..The women/girls in BC can more or less pull their own weights and have their own strong powers not inferior to guy characters. Sure, some are portrayed as being a bit weaker mentally and needing encouragement from the guys to unleash their whole power but meh... I've seen worse in shounen. While the women are all on the "regular to a bit larger to big scale" when it comes to tatas, so far, none of them has been so disgustingly obvious tata-fanservice and no character has experienced a sudden explosive expansion in the chest region either (I'm looking at you, One Piece) and they wear decent clothing in most cases. Thank god for that.
Enjoyment
Once I caught up on all the episodes, I was eager enough to read the manga, so I guess that is proof enough that there's something going for this anime/story. Since the content aimed at females is very limited and at some point I got sick of indecisive girls spending half the series coyly oogling their guy(s) and stuttering "A-....anoooo......", I searched and found another shounen series that is enjoyable for me. Since it received so much hate previously, I wanted to offer another positive review.
If I could make a wish, it would be for this series to get another season but have someone else responsible for the plot per episode division. Well, Jump Festa is coming up, so there's hope for that.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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