hard to believe in a few months it'll be 3 years since black clover joined the block

[ben0119]

On 9/11/2020 at 6:22 AM, EmpressAngel said:

Hey, he worked very hard on characters, like the hot lady with huge titties and a serious drinking problem.

Wait no, not that one.

Wait no, not that one either.

You can tell she's totally original because her hair isn't blonde.

I thought you were going to compare to her Cana from Fairy Tail. 

Vanessa is a better done character than Cana, though.  Vanessa's arc where she got the cat and told the witch bitch queen to fuck off was great!

Though this all makes me wonder if women get "beer boobs" instead of the beer bellies men get!

Edit - Also, Rangiku's hair is strawberry blonde, or light red.

Edited September 13, 2020 by ben0119

[ben0119]

23 minutes ago, CountFrylock said:

all of this is why I'm surprised there are people here who think black clover is some mediocre series that's comparable to tenchi gxp

It seems like some people never gave the show a chance and had their minds made up before they even watched it.  Then if they do actually watch a good chunk of Black Clover they don't seem to want to give it the credit it deserves.  Not to mention how people always like to jump on a bandwagon and dogpile on a popular target of hate.  Comes off as tryhard to me at times.  Also some of these people seem way too jaded.

[ben0119]

On 9/10/2020 at 12:24 AM, Daos said:

I haven't seen enough of it to say why. But aside from the awful first episodes which really killed any interest I had in seeing more of it... I'd say it was because it just seems like a soulless amalgamation of every other Shonen lumped into one super Shonen. It just seems like every time the author sees something cool in another Shonen he says "OH MAN... that's goin in my anime."

People just didn't have any patience for a mediocre Shonen coming right after MHA.

Supposedly it's gotten better though?

I would put it more as an affectionate semi-parody/best-of other shonen than "soulless amalgamation."  Black Clover definitely has soul and charm.  I see things that remind me of things in other shows and I usually like it, because of the parody comedic twist, and/or actually improving on its inspiration.  Plus the nostalgic aspect.  For one thing, Asta and Yuno are actually convincing and enjoyable as a pair of best friends/brothers/rivals, unlike Naruto and Sasuke.  The women in this show aren't incompetent or weak, like most of the women in Naruto. 

As for MHA, it had a stronger start than Black Clover, but it has disappointed me in some ways over time.  The women have barely done anything in the series and many of the side characters seem pointless.  Deku and Bakugo's development has been done well but it really seems like the author can't multitask and shouldn't have created all those side characters.  Black Clover has done a good job developing the main cast as well as side characters, and the women in the show actually have screen time and battles and do things, and have a role in the plot.

But yes it has improved quite a bit, as in how I've relayed in the thread, and anyone else who has been watching the show could tell you.

[CountFrylock]

if there's one female character in black clover who deserves major respect

it's mereoleona vermillion

 

after all how many women in anime/manga can you name that never showed a sign of fear or worry when the odds were against them like in this case

she was up against 5 elves and still acted like an ultimate badass

at no moment did she start thinking "I'm So Dead!" or "I'm Such An Idiot!!!!"

instead she kept that same fiery attitude of hers as if she wasn't in a handicap match

[Daos]

Yeah Ben there's clearly no similarities between the pic of Meliodas and Asta. Looks exactly like kid Goku there.

The author of MHA didn't invent the concept of powerless kid inherits super awesome power either. This has more to do with the fact that you see a popular anime where something like that happens, and then a year later the same exact thing seems to be happening in Black Clover.

And BC is not a parody. Just because it lifts assloads of stuff from other anime does not make it a parody.

[The1gairon]

Olivier Armstrong.

 

[korosu]

8 hours ago, ben0119 said:

I do like that he is apparently not as oblivious as some other protagonists, as he recently seemed somewhat aware of Noelle's feelings for him, whereas Yami was totally clueless about Charlotte.

What? Are you talking about when he said Noelle "trusts him," when every time they're together she calls him stupid and tosses him into the distance?

[Daos]

6 hours ago, korosu said:

What? Are you talking about when he said Noelle "trusts him," when every time they're together she calls him stupid and tosses him into the distance?

Does she call him Baka?

[ben0119]

On 9/13/2020 at 9:40 AM, Daos said:

Yeah Ben there's clearly no similarities between the pic of Meliodas and Asta. Looks exactly like kid Goku there.

The author of MHA didn't invent the concept of powerless kid inherits super awesome power either. This has more to do with the fact that you see a popular anime where something like that happens, and then a year later the same exact thing seems to be happening in Black Clover.

And BC is not a parody. Just because it lifts assloads of stuff from other anime does not make it a parody.

And yet I could swear I have seen that same sort of design somewhere besides Seven Deadly Sins and Black Clover too.

Can't say I have noticed that.

If you had kept watching the show you would realize it is.  Myself and others explained many times.  How exaggerated and over-the-top some of the characters behave.  Yami making fun of literally everyone and everything in the show.  He made fun of Nozel's hair, a guy who is supposed to be a "cool" character.  I don't think anybody ever made fun of Byakuya's hair!

This isn't the clip I wanted from the meeting.  Where he makes fun of Nozel's hair and the Orca guy's laugh, and flat out asks Vangeance if he uses Light Magic, but still a pretty good one!

[ben0119]

On 9/13/2020 at 1:08 PM, korosu said:

What? Are you talking about when he said Noelle "trusts him," when every time they're together she calls him stupid and tosses him into the distance?

Yeah that part.  Hey, it's not like she does it constantly! 

[ben0119]

On 9/13/2020 at 7:37 PM, Daos said:

Does she call him Baka?

Dork-sta in the dub.  It's probably Baka-sta in the sub. 

Haha, I was right!  If you listen to her she actually says "Baka-sta" in Japanese!  I don't like using "stupid-sta" for the subtitles though.  I much prefer Funimation's "Dork-sta!" as an approximation!

[korosu]

19 hours ago, ben0119 said:

Yeah that part.  Hey, it's not like she does it constantly! 

are we watching the same show?

[Top Gun]

Even if we live in the bizarro-world where Black Clover was meant to be parody, it'd be the sort of fuckawful parody that rises to the level of a Family Guy cutaway gag.  "Let's have every character have only one super-obnoxious character trait that they never stop using! Comedy genius!"

[PokeNirvash]

Hey, while we're on the topic of arguing over whether something's a parody or not, I'd like a little assessment of something I did regarding that argument. Spoilered for potentially unintentional self-promotion.

Spoiler

In the hypothetical anime I wrote up two years ago (links in the sig), one of the two main characters (the self-insert one) starts out the series with his own little lawlharem, generally referred to as his "admirers". The five-girl group consists of your standard harem archetypes. Twin-tailed tsundere, genki girl, bespectacled bookworm, onee-sama with no concept of personal space, and the Rei clone. As is typical in harem series, they all wear their affection for our self-insert MC on their sleeve to varying degrees, almost always in a group. However, MC-kun ignores their advances in favor of his one-itis crush on his cute childhood friend. Pretty standard stuff so far, right?

Well, as I wrote it, MC-kun isn't so much "dense" regarding his admirers' advances, as he is annoyed and downright sick of them. He even treats them with the annoyance that comes with having to deal with that crap on a regular basis. At one point, he correctly theorizes the reason they're all into him, which comes from a common complaint I've heard about anime/manga/LN love interests: that the only reason they give for being into the bland milquetoast human potato protagonist of their respective series is because he's "nice" or "has a kind heart". While pondering that complaint, I concluded that the only reason anyone would use this as a reason would be if everyone else besides the MC at their school were undesirable. So I came to an immediate extreme conclusion, and incorporated that into the story as why these five archetypes are into MC-kun: their school's male student body is filled with violent delinquents, wannabe delinquents, and delinquent enablers, and MC-kun is the only one who ignores all that crap in favor of other stuff, like studying and doing his job as a member of the Going Home Club. He showed basic human kindness to these girls when no one else cared to, and they were smitten. (I even used the "he picked up my eraser once and now I want to have his babies" cliche in the explanatory montage! )

But it doesn't end there. The main story kicks off when MC-kun's childhood friend gets abducted late at night on the day he plans to confess his love to her (another cliche, I know), and is so deeply affected by it that when his admirers tell him to literally forget about her, it feels like a knife to the heart. After a small emotional breakdown and subsequently gaining the resolve to look into his crush's disappearance himself, he eventually reaches the conclusion (through outside help) that his admirers were the ones who did it. They didn't, but that doesn't stop MC-kun from angrily confronting them, demanding to tell him where they're keeping his crush, and even saying that he hates them all. The other main character - the real one, the one who feels like an actual person who you want to root for, and also a detective in a dead-end desk job - reaches the same conclusion through his own internal efforts, and despite approaching the admirers in a much more civil manner than MC-kun, he quickly grows tired of their antics, openly complaining about how they use MC-kun's "niceness" as reason for their love of him, and before that assumes that they're into him because he's "packing down there". (Word of warning, both MC-kun and his admirers are 18, being senior students preparing to graduate in a month.) MC-san's disdain for the admirers' lawlharem hijinks towards MC-kun extends to an outing the next day the both of them are roped into attending, to the point where the former quits associating with them after spending the whole night trapped in yakuza battle-imposed quarantine with them. (Mostly because he and MC-kun find out who the real kidnappers are and work together from there.)

While MC-san's interactions with the admirers stop there, MC-kun has two more episodes/chapters with them. At this point, the admirers are well aware of MC-kun's dislike of them, though some of them continue to approach him in the same way they have before. While on break from the investigation, MC-kun joins their study group for their high school's exit exams, where they actually get along! MC-kun's still somewhat uncomfortable about it, but progress is still made. With their six-person efforts allowing them all to pass the exit exams, it looks like they're going to leave graduation on good terms... and then the main antagonists of the story (a trio of kunoichi, as you might've guessed) kidnap the admirers and leave them bound and gagged on the school stage the morning of graduation, with a message warning MC-kun not to interfere with their kidnappings any further. Having spent enough time with them to potentially understand them beyond their one-dimensional outer appearances, MC-kun feels bad about them being abducted as they were, claiming they didn't deserve that sort of fate, for as much as they bugged him in the past. His last scene with them is a week after that incident: the admirers find MC-kun at the yakiniku restaurant they went to with MC-san three episodes/chapters prior, and unlike most lawlharems I've witnessed, they all decide to let MC-kun go, and ultimately give him their blessing to see the rescue of his childhood friend to the finish. With that, the harem aspect of the series disappears, and it goes full investigative drama with yakuza and ninja elements from there.

Now, for those of you who read the entirety of my spiel in the tab above, tell me: is this a parody or a deconstruction? Is it both? Or is it neither, and just me doing something different with the whole deal that could be mistaken for parody or deconstruction, like what Ben thinks Tabata and Pierrot are doing with Black Clover when it's really just "the ultimate generic shonen battle manga"?

[Daos]

Sounds like a a deconstruction followed by a complete genre change.

[PokeNirvash]

Well, the harem was never the focus of the story to begin with, so you're about half-right on that last part. 7.5/10 assessment.

[Daos]

Yes but anyone who saw an anime like that would assume it was a harem anime. It's kind of a bait and switch with a harem anime that becomes something completely different. I can't really think of any anime off the top of my head that do a complete genre shift like that.

[PokeNirvash]

You do have a point there, but in this case, the investigative drama elements were always there from the beginning. I can understand the belief behind your line of thinking though, since I only mentioned the lawlharem portion of Kunoichi and not the fact that the second episode is completely done in the style of the novelized animated J-drama semi-vigilante procedural that it is at its core.

But enough about my written works. We should let the others get back to bashing Black Clover.

[ben0119]

On 9/21/2020 at 8:39 PM, Top Gun said:

Even if we live in the bizarro-world where Black Clover was meant to be parody, it'd be the sort of fuckawful parody that rises to the level of a Family Guy cutaway gag.  "Let's have every character have only one super-obnoxious character trait that they never stop using! Comedy genius!"

You're over-simplifying things and not giving the show enough credit.  Think about this.  Charmy fell in love with Yuno because he saved her food from falling.  Does this really seem like a show that should be taken 100% seriously?  Even then, at the times it does get serious, it can be pretty good.  Lots of touching and powerful moments. 

You complain about over the top character gimmicks being spammed, but you love One Piece?  Sanji could have had character development, but it was decided his character gimmick that has been run into the ground for 100s of episodes was more important, so he gets his ass kicked because he wouldn't fight a woman.  It was stupid.

[ben0119]

On 9/21/2020 at 8:25 PM, korosu said:

are we watching the same show?

There are a lot of other moments in between the tsundere launchings of Asta lol.

[CountFrylock]

I've heard the anime goes more than a bit overboard with the character quirks in comparison to how things play out in the manga

[ben0119]

On 9/28/2020 at 11:56 PM, CountFrylock said:

I've heard the anime goes more than a bit overboard with the character quirks in comparison to how things play out in the manga

I remember reading that too.  About Noelle at least.  Someone said the anime makes her more tsundere than the manga.

[CountFrylock]

after the initial appearance of the black bulls in the manga I've heard the odd quirks they have aren't really shown off like they are in the anime where it's basically used to fill time

even charlotte's love for yami isn't as crazy as it is in the anime

[ben0119]

Maybe I ought to read the manga one of these days.  Just so much stuff to watch/read/play!  I do know that the scene with Noelle freaking out about Sally wearing Asta's clothes and saying she could do whatever she wanted with his body was in the manga, since I have seen that part.  So I would say the tsundere-ness and jealousy is not completely gone.

[CountFrylock]

1 hour ago, ben0119 said:

Maybe I ought to read the manga one of these days.  Just so much stuff to watch/read/play!  I do know that the scene with Noelle freaking out about Sally wearing Asta's clothes and saying she could do whatever she wanted with his body was in the manga, since I have seen that part.  So I would say the tsundere-ness and jealousy is not completely gone.

it's not but i don't think the manga bashes you over the head with it like the anime does