Black Clover Episode 36

With Licht "defeated" for the time being, the Eye of the Midnight Sun needs to mix things up by bringing in the new batch of villains teased at the end of last week. A portion of this episode feels like the denouement for this arc, with all the kids being saved and the heroes taking a breather, but the conflict keeps rolling in. I interpret Licht as the main baddie of this series, so it's a little strange to me that we're conquering him so easily and for the "next big thing" in the story to just be more of his henchmen.

The henchmen in question this week are the group referred to as the "Third Eye." They're the Midnight Eye's strongest fighters who surpass Licht and supposedly the Magic Knight squad captains as well. Their names are Raia the Disloyal, Vetto the Despair, and Fana the Hateful. It's kind of amusing to hear that Licht went out of his way to give them the edgiest titles he could think of, just to spite the values that the Clover Kingdom espouses. Personally, I think these new guys' designs leave a lot to be desired. For our strongest enemies yet, they look like total scrubs—especially compared to Licht, who nails the "ultimate bad guy" look.

It's dawning on me how little actually happened this week. This is the plodding kind of episode where the heroes are mostly standing around waiting for the cliffhanger to happen. That said, before the Third Eye shows up, Licht makes an interesting note of Gauche, implying that he let his attack be deflected last week because he recognized Gauche as one of his people and didn't want to hurt him. Gauche doesn't know what that means, but the plot thickens nonetheless. After the Third Eye shows up, I got really excited when Yami made his big claim of "Watch me surpass my limits, right here and now!" but that beat gets interrupted once the other captains arrive as reinforcements. The idea that this show is such raw, unfiltered shonen that breaking your own limits is now comically streamlined was a concept I was completely ready for. But alas, it's mere smack talk.

For as bad as it started out, this Midnight Sun arc has been working for me best out of all the arcs so far. The Royal Capital arc started strong, but meandered way too much. By contrast this arc began poorly, but by virtue of sticking to a straightforward sense of escalation, where the villains keep getting swapped out for stronger villains who require the hero team to step up in response, it feels much more in the spirit of what these kinds of shows aim to be. I'm still buzzing from last week's stellar episode, and while this is ultimately an action-lite week, the art has yet to derail back into the half-measures we were seeing before.

I appreciate that the story wants to keep pushing our heroes by having a constant string of obstacles revving up in intensity, though these new villains are likely my absolute limit. Now that the kids have been saved and the main villain has stepped out of the fight, any glimmer of emotional investment has faded. It's a bizarre enough development that I'm prepared to learn there's a storytelling reason for it, but we're making the heroes' obstacles more difficult while minimizing the personal stakes. There's a risk of losing the audience at that point.

Rating: B

Black Clover is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.