Neverending battle
What They Say:
“To Help Somebody Someday”, “Light Magic vs. Dark Magic”, and “The Light of Judgment”
Sally’s gel magic is extremely incompatible with Gauche’s mirror magic. She uses her dark magic item and turns Baro into a giant mud monster, which makes Gauche take Marie and flee
After defeating Sally and Baro, Asta and Gauche suddenly end up having to face Licht, the leader of the Eye of the Midnight Sun. Licht’s attacks are too fast for Asta to see, and he gets injured.
Yami and Licht continue their battle and Asta faces off with Valtos. Meanwhile, Finral manages to get all of the kids and Theresa back to the town and Theresa gets treated for her injuries.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Theresa uses her magic to get the kids out of there and Neige is worried and confused that Baro doesn’t recognise him. Sally explains to them what she’s done to Baro that inflated his magic so much. All their attacks against the mud-monster are ineffective and they can’t even attack Sally who is still hiding in her salamander. Gauche is convinced by Marie to go back and help. After some backstory on them and once he drops Marie off outside with the other kids and goes back to help. After a few instances of Asta saving Gauche from attacks and vice versa. Asta finds that Gauche has lent him some magic just as Noelle did back in the fight against Mars. Gauche deduces that they just need to repeatedly attack him so that it can’t regenerate anymore. Doing so engraves a new spell in his grimoire and he reveals a mirror eye from under his hair that helps with the power of the spell that defeats both Sally’s defences and Baro. Neige is sad to lose his brother and says he will pay for the crime he’s committed. Light beams come out of nowhere and strike him, Theresa, Gauche, and Asta. The man that Asta saw with Julius in the Eye of the Midnight Sun hideout appears and turns out to be the leader of the group.
In episode 34 the leader, Licht, brings Sally into his arms and tells Valtos (the special magic user from the city attack arc) to send her back to be healed. Licht cries for her. Hims and Theresa contradict each other about victims – She says they are always the weak but he says they are the strong. Licht has a four-leaf clover grimoire like Yuno and wants to take back Asta’s Five-leaf clover grimoire so he attacks him. Just in the nick of time Yami appears from a portal with Finral and stops the potentially lethal attack on Asta. Licht decides he wants to be the one to fight Yami since they are evenly matched; Yami uses dark magic while Licht uses light, which is rare. Yami commands Finral take Theresa, Gauche, Neige, and the children to safety letting him and Asta deal with this. Yami is the only one fast enough to stop the fast bolts Licht sends off. Yami and Licht fight for a while, barely hitting one another and just deflecting each other’s attacks. We get some origins from both Yami and Licht. Yami was a fisherman’s son who got shipwrecked in the Clover kingdom and fought his way (literally) to notoriety. Licht was part of a “magic loved” village that has possibly been wiped out. Yami gives Asta some pointers on how to counter attacks and how to use Ki (a way to sense things with more than just eyes and ears). Licht gets angry when Asta successfully uses Ki and deflects an attack from Valtos that leaves him prone. He attacks the cave and rocks fall on Yami and Asta. They break through not much later unscathed.
In episode 35 it’s revealed that they both used Ki to protect themselves from the boulder that fell on them. Yami tasks Asta with defeating Valtos while he keeps at it with Licht. While the two powerful mages begin fighting again, Yami tries to get Licht to reveal where he’s from, pointing out that his grimoire is from the Clover kingdom, but to no avail. Asta, watching this fight instead of doing what he’s told, and begins doubting himself and whether he could truly become the Wizard King after all. He and Valtos fight and gets cut here and there. Asta uses Ki to focus on doing it his own way and gets a punch in Valtos’ face. Yami laughs and Licht appears behind him claiming he let his guard down but it was the other way around because Yami knew he was coming. He absorbs the attack and uses it against Licht, finally getting a good hit on him. Yami is the second person who has had the power to defeat him, the first was Julius, the Wizard King, who inflicted a horrible wound on his hand. Licht then Gears up for a massive attack that even Yami is afraid of. Back in the village, the children are back with their families and Gauche is begging Theresa not to die but after a cop-out, she will be fine. She and most of the children, including Marie, lend Gauche their magic so he can go back and help Asta. Finral warns him that he can only teleport one more time but Gauche begs him. He shows up just in the nick of time to reflect Licht’s attack with a powerful mirror spell, finally defeating Licht. Though the master may be defeated, there are more foes for our heroes to face in the episode to come.
Once again, I’m just going to talk about all three episodes in one big section instead of just summary then episode review, etc. There’s an ongoing situation in all three episodes so why not.
First, I have to talk about the mediocre fight in episode 33. It took way too long for Gauche to realize that they needed to attack a regenerating monster multiple times all at once so it won’t have time to regenerate. It took about the whole episode to figure this out after all of the trial and error him and Asta went through trying to defeat the creature and protect the children. It was redundant and way too drawn out. The stakes were high with Sally being hard to his as it was but it just didn’t get much of a reaction out of me. The action was okay despite the continued lackluster quality of the animation that’s a consistent theme in this show.
It’s not as bad as Yami and Licht’s fight since it was too evenly matched for there to be enough stakes to establish any suspense. These men are both very powerful mages and all they did, three times in a row in the span of two episodes, just duke it out with the same attacks; Yami with his sword and Licht with his whip. It just didn’t do it for me and felt so useless because it did nothing for the episode. The worst part for me, was when Licht’s whip attack was absorbed by Yami’s dark magic on his sword. It surprised Licht like he didn’t understand that darkness absorbs light when he controls light magic and seemingly knows its weaknesses. It just baffled me and I lost any respect I might have had for this character. I honestly think that he should have known this and it bugs me that he didn’t.
Asta had a bit of a potential character developing moment in this episode during the fight when he doubted himself and felt powerless in his limitations. He found himself overwhelmed with the sheer power he saw before him coming from the most difficult foe to date and his squad captain. He wasn’t sure if he would ever be able to surpass them to become the Wizard King if at all. It didn’t really do anything since Asta was his same-old self for the rest of the fight as he cheered on his Captain and eagerly learned from him. It was a wasted opportunity, I think.
Another thing is Valtos not attacking Asta at all while he has that moment of doubt or even when he’s just watching Yami and Licht go at it. Asta was wide open and Valtos did nothing. It felt unrealistic and weird and it was definitely done on purpose to give off the awe conveyed by the fight of the two powerful mages, but come on, not even one attack?
The backstories of both Licht and Yami were interesting, though we got nothing too personal from our villain. Yami’s was my favourite and I loved the little cinematic they had going while he told the story and how there was small commentary from the Yami in the cinematic. It’s interesting that they have a version of Japan in this universe that’s basically Japan in a fantasy world. I get why they would have done this since this anime is, of course, Japanese, but it felt a bit weird considering this is a fantasy world where no other culture that exists there exists in our world. In fact, I’m not even sure the kind of world this is, since it just seems like a medieval setting where things like motorcycle brooms exist; we might never know. Licht’s story was the totally original broody-villain-trying-to destroy-the-kingdom-that-did-him-wrong cliché but there was just enough not said to warrant at least a little mystery. I’m personally wondering what Julius did to Licht’s hand and why he did so, what happened to make them fight or was it a punishment? I must know more about this…
The backstory of Gauche and Marie, though mostly Gauche’s point of view of it, was fine and gave us the information we could have gauged from what we already know about them. Family abandonment, in turn, motivating Gauche to focus more on Marie’s feelings and making her happy and safe over his own existence. My main problem with it is that it was very out of place and it didn’t flow with the narrative of the episode. It was just “hey look, Marie and Gauche are together talking about her safety, didn’t you want to know how he got this way?” when it could have been implied and explained later in a different, more fitting context.
This leads me to my next gripe, the tone of these episodes. A lot of the time it’s not even sure what it wants to be, a suspenseful action or an action comedy. To be perfectly honest, the glaring problem of jokes at dramatic moments rampant in most Marvel movies these days; the difference being that Marvel has actually been trying to get out of that rut. An example of this is when Theresa, Gauche, and Neige have been struck by light beams from Licht and they throw in one last line from Sally where she reminds Asta that he “belongs” to her triggering a humorous reaction from Asta who is freaked out. This was a bit funny but this was the introduction of a new villain that we have seen before but are just meeting who has hurt his friends. Asta can be creeped out a little less humorously, even though that is in character for him. It just felt weird for that kind of tone to be present in a dramatic moment.
It was kind of cool to see the master-student dynamic between Yami and Asta. It did feel a bit forced but also in the style we would expect from Yami. It was a very Yami way to teach Asta some moves. It gave him some time to shine as a bit of a leader and as a powerful magic user. He is, after all, the captain of a magic knight squad and I loved seeing him in action.
Going on to the end of episode 35, I didn’t fully understand how transferring magic between other people works. All of the kids and Theresa decide to give Gauche some of their magic so he can have enough Mana to help Asta and Yami defeat Licht which was pretty straightforward, but it could have been explained beforehand. Gauche then teleports in with Finral’s portal and stops Licht’s massive attack and reflects it right back at him, in turn defeating him. This threw away any suspense I had surrounding Licht’s large attack and felt like a cop-out. Once again, defeat was too easy once they figured out the best solution.
The reveal of Gauche’s eye was random and very out of place. There was not a prexisting mystery about why he covered his eye with his hair so it made no sense.
In Summary:
The fights were still mediocre but showed some new elements like Yami’s magic and unique fighting style. It was cool learning more about him as well. Licht was an okay villain up until the end where he was easily beaten. Solutions were too simple but took too much wasted time to figure out. I get the feeling a lot of filler would have needed to be used to make that happen. Asta had a tiny bit of character development but I doubt it will mean too much. The mystery around the five-leaf clover grimoire Asta possesses is very mysterious indeed and for some reason, Licht “wanted it back”. Gauche had some history revealed about him that was pretty vague but explained a little about why he cares so much for Marie, but did not justify the creep factor. This whole sequence of events felt like it went on way too long considering the situation and it could have been solved a lot sooner.
Grade: C-
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
