Top Ten Current Problems with Black Clover

This anime has the typical shounen slow pacing, where it takes many episodes for something significant to happen. However, many people follow the three-episode rule. By episode three of Black Clover, not much has occurred. It seems like the pacing is designed to keep up with the slow release of the manga, but in the end, it drags down the show - similar to what 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.

Black Clover suffers because it's utterly generic. It's a mix of Fairy Tail with its magic, and the characters seem straight out of Naruto. The main character even has a similar feature to Deku from Boku No Hero Academia - where he doesn't have any magic but has one superpower to stop all other powers.

Unlike Boku no Hero Academia, which worked off of clichés and improved on what worked, Black Clover doesn't. It feels like someone went out of their way to make Black Clover so generic, and it really suffers for it.

The filler they add to this anime is ridiculous. The manga flowed a lot better and made it easy to read, but it seems like at every turn in the anime, we get some lengthy flashback that wasn't even included in the manga.

For example, we 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!

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 release a good schedule.

They're relying too much on how anime worked back in the early 2000s, where you could slack on animation and add filler. Instead of waiting for the manga to continue after some time, like with Attack on Titan, they're pushing episodes out without much care.

I'm sure everyone knows it by now, but Asta's voice is awful. His voice actor had never done anything prior to this role, and it really shows. I understand that voice actors have 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.

The constant yelling and screaming was so annoying. That's why I decided to drop the anime and just read the manga instead.

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

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

Were these jokes supposed to be funny?

There are moments when the animation looks quite nice, but it's very generic when the characters are still. They don't move their bodies much, the characters in the foreground look frozen, and the ones in the background appear stiff (even though some should be moving). Plus, there's some bad CGI in there.

Nothing special, especially considering how good animation can be when done well. Even quirky animation can work if it's unique and ties into the setting and characters, but this series fails to deliver on that.

To me, he seems like the only decent character in the show, which is sad considering that only one out of thirty characters is interesting. I was worried he'd be another run-of-the-mill mysterious cool guy like Sasuke, Vegeta, or Seto Kaiba, but compared to the other characters, he's alright.

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

Aside from the fact that the Clover Kingdom isn't a pleasant place, the people there don't seem very likable. The nun who hits Asta has always done so, even when he was a little kid. The priest constantly shuns Asta while praising Yuno. Are we really 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. The characters were either left useless and annoying or made ridiculously overpowered.

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

I agree that the voice acting is pretty one-note. I watched a video of the director working with the actors, and he specifically instructs them to perform in a way that honestly sounds terrible. He tells Asta's voice actor to scream, and gives poor direction to the other actors, making the characters sound bland and out of sync with the animation.

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

I hated her attitude from the beginning, and when she started falling for Asta, I labeled her "Female Sidekick #1." She's too generic, boring, and annoying.