Netflix has finally dropped the Black Clover: Sword Of The Wizard King on their platform, which previously aired on cinemas in Japan during March this year. Now the story takes place between the anime episodes 157 and 158 and its not to be considered canon, but i have to claim that it actually fits in quite well as a filler story. But lets start with with the actual synopsis and the review… <MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD>
Synopsis – Conrad Leto, once respected in the Clover Kingdom as the predecessor of Julius Novachrono, took an unexpected turn by betraying the kingdom. As a consequence, Julius himself sealed him away. However, Conrad has recently reemerged, wielding the formidable “Imperial Sword,” determined to destroy the Clover Kingdom. His intention is to establish a new era of equality by resurrecting individuals he deems worthy of a place in his envisioned society.
Harnessing the power of the sword, Conrad revives four past wizard kings: Edward Avalaché, Princia Funnybunny, and Jester Garandaros. These individuals share his vision and collaborate with him to accomplish his ultimate objective.
So first of all the movie is actually quite long which surprised me given that the runtime of most shonen movies are always sub ~90 minutes usually. The whole movie is very action packed, so if you are liking fights you are going to see quite many of them through out this film, it won’t take too much time on other stuff or explaining any fundamental lore about Conrad and his companions who are Ex-Wizard Kings.
Yuki Tabata designed all the new characters for this movie and was chief supervisors, however it seems he wasn’t part of writing the scripts here and that’s fine given the fact he’s not a master writer anyways (but still better than Hiro Mashima) and also you don’t need much emphasis on filler anyways in my opinion, did One Piece movies become better because Oda got more involved? Not much i would say…
Whats up with the Animation Quality?
I am usually the last person to talk about the pretty colors and the finesse of the animation quality when it comes Anime, but i do have to raise the question when you have a theatrical release of a movie – we are expecting higher budget and and higher end quality, but why does this feels like more of a OVA quality that we saw with best episodes in the original anime? Compare Dragon Ball Super anime to Broly movie or DBS Superhero for example there is a massive leap in quality – granted this is not Toei doing this movie, but still maybe i was expecting more.
Then again this movie was done by Pierrot, so maybe i was expecting too much from a mediocre animation company.
I am also pretty sure that there wasn’t really lot new music composed for this movie either, everything seemed to be from the OST of the OG anime, which was mediocre at best but they did pick lot of solid Openings and endings which i have to give credit for.
Not Perfect Plot, but works for Action flick
I’m getting bit tired of these villains who want to create an utopia by wiping out certain population and then restart the world and in that sense Conrad isn’t much different from Thanos. Sure it beats the classic idea of just conquering the world, but perhaps some people villains can be just pure sociopaths and not necessarily have grander political narrative, just selfish personal reasons instead. You’re suppose to i guess to understand motives of villains to extent, but too much further moral reasoning makes you empathize with them too much and that’s not core part what makes villains great archetypes.
The three other Wizard Kings – Jester, Princia & Edward Avalanche were there to build more fights, but to me they kinda strike as really odd characters because especially Jester feels like a character who would never get chosen as Wizard King not showing any prominent qualities of a King truly except magical capability. The idea of one of them eventually turning against Conrad would’ve been lot better story development not just for them, but overall story of this movie.
This wasn’t some Edo Tensei jutsu where they were under Conrads command anyways, they could have had more doubts and inner conflict with each other. They lowkey kinda existed here just for sake of existing. Also honestly now that were on subject of side characters, i wanted to see Julius on some actions even though he’s pretty weak at this current state.
I already mentioned earlier that there wasn’t exactly much story to begin with, it starts out with action and ends with action, there aren’t any breaks in between that are major, something is constantly going on in the movie. Another improvement that comes into my mind is to just have bit more longer flashback for Conrad Leto that would’ve brought more reasoning for his beliefs and ultimate points why he fell to the dark side so to speak.
The Final Word
Ironically (For better or worse) this movie is still multitude more entertaining and more higher quality filler than most other Long running shonen movies I’ve watched over the years, only the recent Dragon Ball movies truly top this one from the ones I’ve seen. If anything it seems that more Mangakas are getting involved with the movie production which has lead to more higher quality movies that aren’t just plain cashgrabs from the fanboy audience.
Technically you don’t need to watch the anime before watching the movie (it does help to watch first ~20 though since almost all characters make cameos from main series) however due to all fan favorites returning do make this lot better to watch for more seasoned fans.
