“Lightning of Rage vs. Friends”
What They Say:
In a world where magic is everything, Asta and Yuno are both found abandoned at a church on the same day. While Yuno is gifted with exceptional magical powers, Asta is the only one in this world without any. At the age of fifteen, both receive grimoires, magic books that amplify their holder’s magic. Asta’s is a rare Grimoire of Anti-Magic that negates and repels his opponent’s spells. Being opposite but good rivals, Yuno and Asta are ready for the hardest of challenges to achieve their common dream: to be the Wizard King. Giving up is never an option!
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Powerful elven magic is emanating from two directions. Agreeing that they should investigate each location, Asta and Yuno split up. Elsewhere, Magna and Vanessa can also sense the powerful elven magic coming from a nearby town. They decide to check it out and discover that the town is being attacked by none other than their own comrade, Luck! They can’t believe that their friend would do this. Much to their chagrin, Luck attacks them instantly without a second thought. Of course, he isn’t really Luck but a reincarnated elf that goes by the name of Rufel. He reveals this truth to the Black Bulls duo and arrogantly proclaims that Luck’s body belongs to him now.
Even though Luck is their friend, they now know that he is being controlled and they must stop him from doing any more harm. You know what that means? Fight! Fight! Fight! If you couldn’t tell, I was pretty excited for it. Without warning, Luck uses his lightning speed to attack Magna and lands a killing blow on him…or so he thought. For some reason, he missed? He missed because of Vanessa’s red string of fate passive spell, also known as Rogue which takes on the form of an adorable red cat. It prevents any harm to come to her comrades…which also includes Luck. Magna tries to attack Luck but he also misses. Magna is clearly peeved and says he just wants to knock some sense into him. He then proceeds to fire off different variations of his Explosive Scattershot spell. Luck is too fast though and easily dodges all of his attacks. Seeing that Magna is struggling, Vanessa decides to provide support for Magna with her thread magic. Even with their combined efforts, they still can’t land a hit on Luck. He’s just too strong and too fast. However, there was one thing that Luck wasn’t expecting…and that was how much of an idiot Magna is. Magna is willing to blow himself up and recklessly does just that, finally managing to deal Luck a major blow and send him to the ground.
I just want to point out that the animation for the fight scenes was superb. Clearly that studio had some animation budget to work with this episode which pleased me greatly. Not to mention, it only got better from here! Magna restrains Luck and yells in his face that he doesn’t know him at all. The real Luck would have known he was an idiot and taken that into account. Magna then declares that he can’t defeat them and demands that he give them back the real Luck. This angers Luck and he proceeds to power up. Now even stronger than before, Luck easily overpowers Magna and sends him flying. He attempts to land killing blow after killing blow on him but he misses every time. Rogue is still active and it won’t let Luck’s attacks hit. Luck correctly guesses that Rogue takes up a lot of mana and all he has to do is make Vanessa use all of hers up. Thus, he unleashes a relentless assault on Magna and doesn’t let up until Vanessa runs out of mana. Eventually, she does and Luck is able to grab Magna by the throat. Rogue can no longer save them!
In a touching little scene, Magna tells the real Luck to take back control of his body. He knows he’s still in there! Vanessa also adds that Luck is an annoying little brat and always causing them trouble, but he’s their family and they want him back. It was a nice way to reaffirm how strong their bond is. Luck is having none of that though and says that their bond means nothing…but has tears in his eyes! Luck crying added yet another layer of emotion to this scene. It shows that Luck is indeed still inside there somewhere and that he feels the same way they do. Luck desperately tries to deny these feelings and attacks Magna once again…only for Asta to block his attack! Just in the nick of time.
Asta makes known that all the members of the Black Bulls are his precious friends and that he won’t let anyone take them away from him! Gotta love their camaraderie. When then get a visually stunning brawl between Asta and Luck. Luck thinks he’s faster than Asta but he soon finds out he was sorely mistaken. Asta is keeping up with him! They both exchange blows for a good while until Luck overpowers him. Realizing he can’t do this alone, Asta asks Magna and Vanessa for assistance. With the help of their distraction, Asta manages to strike down Luck. Asta is about to free the real Luck but Rufel refuses to go down without a fight.
Will they free Luck? Or will Rufel stubbornly fight his way out of this!? All I know is that this episode got me super HYPED for Black Clover again!
In Summary:
After weeks of subpar episodes, Black Clover finally makes a return to form. This entire episode was dedicated to one fight and I couldn’t be happier with how it was executed. The animation quality was consistently good throughout the entire episode as well. All in all, this was a great episode. I know I may be setting myself up for disappointment again, but I do hope that we’ll get more quality episodes like this one. I really do.
Grade: A
Streamed By: Crunchyroll, VRV
