Black Clover

I really, really wanted to like Black Clover. Coming into the season, the trailers and visuals looked great and the story sounded so interesting. I couldn’t wait to watch it. There was even a fairly decent level of hype surrounding it going into October. The manga had been compared to huge hits like Fairy Tail and Bleach. That’s promising, right? However, as soon as the first episode was released, all that hype and excitement disappeared.

For me, a few things immediately turned me off while watching the show. The first and largest is the sheer amount of screaming that happens each episodes. Asta, the show’s stupid yet slightly endearing main character, only has two volume levels: normal speaking and screeching. Almost 90% of the time, though, he’s yelling. It gets really old really fast, leaving you exhausted and just wishing he would shut up, or the show would end.

The other major problem is the show’s slow pace. Now four episodes into the season, a huge majority of who I’m guessing will be important characters only just got introduced. The first three episodes were a lot of backstory that, while important, could have no doubt been condensed into half the time. Yuno, Asta’s adoptive brother and self-proclaimed rival, gets hardly any screen time and, when he does, it’s forgettable moments that don’t really tell much about who he is as a character now.

The focus on always-yelling Asta gets tiring and slows the show to an almost unbearable speed. I’ll probably watch the rest of the season in hopes of it getting at least marginally better, even though it’ll more than likely stay the same.