Black Clover

Episode 145

With the twist at the end of this episode, what I was concerned about with the trajectory of this arc finally happened, just not quite in the direction I was expecting.

What I suspected might happen is that this whole business with the Devil Banishers would prove to be an infiltration by an outside power that was conning some innocent dupes into doing the infiltrator's dirty work. Turns out the process was right but which direction it is coming from, and who seem to be doing the duping, is wrong. I figured that Damnatio's underlings would prove to be the dupes, as they were too easy to be taken advantage of, but all indications are now pointing toward the villagers being the ones duping them, rather than outside forces. Furthermore, the villagers are apparently devil cultists, or at least ones who seek to obtain the power of devils for themselves. Nero and Marie were just covers for their real objective: to get ahold of Asta's grimoire under the presumption that they could make a contract with a devil (or at least draw upon a devil's power) by using it.

Honestly, I don't care much for this twist. How the civilians might get into such a thing can be logically reasoned – seize the power that hurt us and use it for ourselves – but it still seems a stretch. Further, it undercuts the strong, bold storyline that the series had going about citizens taking justice into their own hands, which could have been plenty compelling enough on its own. Instead the story is taking the easy way out by passing the root of the problem off as a scheme of another evil group (or perhaps one that turned evil as a result of earlier events). The writing might still be able to salvage this if they manage to make a convincing case that these are still desperate people, but the story is teetering on the edge of turning a potentially extraordinary story into an ordinary one.

Up to that point everything was beautifully well-executed. The Devil Banishers are shown as being smart, well-led, and having done their research, especially in getting Vanessa (whose powers are potentially most unpredictable) out of the scene. All of the Magic Knight squads are taking this seriously and playing their roles, there are very real senses of threats to Nero, and Asta isn't allowed to just bull his way through things. Grey shows how effective she can be by convincingly playing Asta, and Gauche is even somewhat respectful about Asta saving Marie. Yuno and crew showing up to get involved was also a welcome appearance, and he is taking this matter seriously as well. His line near the end of that scene was a great and well-timed one: “you still have magic that you can use even if you don't have your grimoire.” Nobody knows Asta better than Yuno does, after all.

So where does this all leave Nero, then? They clearly didn't want Nero killed in the street scene, so they may actually regard her favorably because of her horns. Regardless, the staging, the execution, and the use of music here were all notches above the norm for the series, making this one of the better-produced of recent episodes. And despite me not being crazy about the twist, it still ends on a strong note of anticipation.

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Black Clover is currently streaming on Crunchyroll and FUNimation.