Top Ten Current Problems with Black Clover

Black Clover was a manga that was really hyped up for an anime. However, the anime had so much backlash that I had to investigate. I'm not surprised that people were let down by Black Clover. The manga is better and the anime doesn't do justice. Studio Pierrot (they made Naruto, Bleach, Tokyo Ghoul etc.) are known to have some hits and miss with their work. But they really seemed to miss the mark on this one. I will put down the current problems with Black Clover and let the chips fall where they may. And remember this is just my opinion.
The Top Ten
1 Slow Pacing

This anime has a typical shounen slow pacing where it takes so many episodes before something happens. However, many people have the three episode rule. By episode three of Black Clover, not much happens. It's doing this to keep pace with the slow release of the manga but in the end it ruins the show. Kind of how this happened with the Big Four.

My problem is that this anime is in the hands of Pierrot. I've never been a fan of that studio, primarily because of how poorly they introduce stories. For example, if you read the manga, you're left in the dark. No one tells you what's going on. You can try to figure it out, but you can't be certain. However, Pierrot over-explains everything. In the manga, the Wizard King fights against the wizards who kidnapped Asta. In the anime, you get a clear view of all the characters' faces, and the boss is introduced right away. It feels like they're ruining the plot on purpose because you already know what's going to happen and who is involved. Pierrot has done this multiple times, spoiling the plot. This is also true for Tokyo Ghoul and Bleach.

It's as if the studio thinks we're too dumb to figure things out on our own, or more likely, they want to provide as simple a story as possible. The fight scenes are awful, feeling as though they took screenshots directly from the manga to include in the show. I'll never forget how Pierrot photoshopped Mars' hair behind his head when he was attacked by Asta. It was terrible. Studios like A1 Pictures would have been a better fit for this anime.

Additionally, as many people have pointed out, the long-stretched gum jokes and flashbacks are very poorly executed. I would rather go back to the manga, as I did with Toriko, than watch the show since it doesn't live up to its actual potential.

2 Very Cliche

Black Clover suffers because it's utterly generic. It's a mix of Fairy Tail with it's magic and the characters seemed straight off of Naruto. The main character even has a similar feature like Deku from Boku No Hero Academia. Where he doesn't have any magic but has one super power to stop all other powers. Unlike Boku no Hero Academia which worked off of cliches and improved on what worked, Black Clover doesn't. It feels like someone went out of there way to make Black Clover so generic and it really suffers for it.

3 Filler

The filler they add into this anime is ridiculous. The manga flowed a lot better and made it easy to read. But it seems at every turn of the anime we have to have some lengthy flashback that wasn't even included in the manga. Which had a sixteen minute flashback that lasted only two pages in the manga. Even the beginning of Naruto didn't do that and this was just by episode 2!

4 Studio Pierrot Doesn't Know How to Handle Black Clover Properly

I mentioned how Studio Pierrot has hit or miss works. Well that's because they wanted this to be the next Naruto series. But times have changed and not many people watch television anime. We watch it through seasonal runs. It gives plenty of time to flesh out the story, make the characters interesting and releases a good schedule. They're relying too much on how anime back on the early 2000's worked. Where you can slack on animation and add filler. Instead of waiting for the manga to continue after some time like with Attack on Titan.

5 Asta Yelling

I'm sure everyone knows it by now but Asta's voice is awful. His voice actor had never done anything previously and it really shows. I know voice actors had to start somewhere but does he seriously have to shout every single line?

Honestly, I find his character extremely annoying, I found Naruto annoying and Asta is basically a more exaggerated and less developed version of Naruto.

It was so annoying, the constant yelling and screaming. Reason why I decided to drop the anime and read the manga instead.

6 Long Unfunny Jokes

There's a limit to the childhood crush jokes, and this one is about two decades too late for it. Nothing funny about that and the rivalry going on here? Please even Free! has more of it.

We're supposed to laugh at how Asta is treated by the priest and the nun who he wants to marry. However, these jokes go on for way too long. Which makes watching each episode slow.

Were they supposed to be funny?

7 Animation is Mediocre

There's sometimes when the animation looks very nice but it's very generic when the characters are still. They don't move their body around a lot, the characters in the forefront look frozen, the characters in the back look stiff (even though some of them should be moving) and there's some bad CG in there.

Nothing special, considering how good animation can be when done well. Even funny looking animation can be good if it's unique and ties into the setting and chracters. This series fails in that.

8 Yuno is the Only Likable Character

For me he seems to be the only decent character in the show. Which is sad that only one out of thirty characters is interesting. I was afraid he would be just the run of the mill mysterious cool guy like Sasuke, Vegeta, Seto Kaiba etc. But compared to the other character he's alright.

He's the most annoying character. What are you on about?

Yet he never gets any time on screen to flesh out his story.

9 Supporting Characters Aren't Likable

Other than the fact that the Clover Kingdom isn't a very nice place, the people in the kingdom don't seem very nice. The nun who hits Asta all the time has always hit Asta. Even when Asta was a little kid she hit him. The priest constantly shuns Asta and praises Yuno. Yet we're supposed to find this charming?

I found very few if any of the supporting characters likable, there were some good moments and promise for more but that was mostly ignored and they kept them either useless and annoying or made them bloody op.

10 Terrible Animation

Episode 38 literally looks like it was rushed, the animation (especially after watching the captains fight of ep.37) is not good enough for this point in the series? Maybe they had a strike and the sound department drew it instead. It's dissapointing because I'm genuinly enjoying the series otherwise.

"The studio really need to work on their animations. Honestly, if you were to look at the latest episode which is Black Clover animations, it doesn't flow. Basically, stiff and it only has few points of views when looking at it.

The Contenders
11 Gordon Doesn't Get Enough Screentime

He doesn't get enough screen time and he's literally one of the most interesting characters in the whole show.

12 Bad Voice Acting

I agree the voice acting is pretty one noted. Watched a video of the director directing them, and he specifically tells them to do it in a way that is honestly horrible. He tells Asta's VA to scream. And gives horrible direction to the other voice actors making the other characters sound bland and out of place with the animation.

The voice acting in general isn't very good. Seems like most of them just did their lines in one go and didn't bother trying again. I'm sure they'll improve over time but the voice acting left a bad impression on the first few episodes.

13 Asta is Overpowered Like Naruto and Yunno is Underrated Like Sasuke

Yuno is suppoused to be like a living God with his four clover booklet. He isn't. He's good but when you compare his powers and growth to others? It's just sad how his character is handled. They could have told an amazing story using Yuno and Astra and their different stories, but somehow we get the Naruto message again and again: work hard, get lucky/unlucky with some demonic jackpot, make friends and build a unhealthy relationship with your rival.

Asta ALWAYS wins and nothing truly bad or irreversible ever happens to him. Also all the other characters worship him. Asta this Asta that. Like they have nothing else really going for them.

14 Bad CGI

A stable of modern anime that does take away from it.

15 Flawed Magic/Power System

So far in the anime (ep 50) the power system is very generic and almost flawed. New spells just pop up when the plot needs it. Mage just gets emotional or some trigger and boom! New spell! What is with the "types" of magic too. We just saw mosquito magic... like what is that?! I'm all for elemental magic, but seriously... mosquitos? I would have hated to get that grimoire.

Okay, they get nice books, but how does anything else work?

16 Overwhelming amount of flash backs
17 Noelle is annoying

I hated her attidute from the begining and when se started falling for Asta I labelled her with the name: "Female sidekick #1". Too generic, boring and annoying.

18 Bad Character Relationships

Everyone's always up Astas ass. The girls are all boy crazy, no one has any individuality besides one trademark character quirk that defines them the whole show. Other than that it's a worship Asta fest.

19 The Plot is all over the place
20 The Animators Don't Care

One thing I hate is that the studio has resources to improve Black Clover, but they choose to spend it on Boruto instead.Whenever it is time to make black clover the studio just want to get it over with so they can spend their time on Boruto. The Studio tries so hard to stretch episodes out so they can be done with it.Episode 102, we got pointless flashback about what's been happening to Asta so they can waste time.We get 5 minutes of Intro and recap so they can stretch the episode out
to hell with pierrot

21 Try Hard Characterization
22 It's basically every shonen ever
23 Too Many Flashback Episodes
24 Asta Looks Like a Bodybuilder Balloon
25 The Main Character (Asta) is so Weak
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