Black Clover: Mahou Tei no Ken

The art is amazing to be honest

The story is a great Black Clover story, if you liked the anime you'll like this movie.

It's not life-changing by any means, but it was a really good anime movie with great art direction and fun moments. Asta is more buff than he has been previously it seems, might be because of the art direction. The crew is showing of their powers and abilities more than the anime due to the action scenes. We see previous legendary characters popping up all over, it's just fun. Fun story to be honest. I liked it

No spoilers!
O boy, this was one hot mess. I loved the TV series but just like a lot of other anime movies, I was considering stopping midway. Let me explain.

Let's start with the positive things. The animation was great! The creators seem to have put a lot of work into this movie and it's sure to say that it payed off. Of course it can't be compared to something like the Demon Slayer animation but it is great compared to the fights and the dialog scenes in the TV series. There is a lot less still animated scenes and alot more movement, special effects and ... contrast. This is the reason I rated this movie a 6 and not a 5.

The TV series didn't have great animation but it did have some good points that seemed to be missing in the movie. As a viewer, I couldn't care less about the random antagonists that didn't get any kind of story and were just thrown in there with the excuse of, let's destroy the kingdom for no reason at all.

Next to that, the entire movie was just one big fight scene, with little to no interesting dialog. Because of that, the amazing looking fight scenes became boring. The dialog was a lot more cringe than the dialog in the TV series, because of the repeating lines and power of friendship kind of vibe.

To conclude this review on a positive note, I have to admit that the voice acting, and pacing within the fight scenes was great!

(PS. Sorry for my bad grammar. This is not a personal attack, just my opinion)

The villains in this movie all have a point. They were all victims of the ruling class (royalty, nobility) who killed innocent people close to them, like family, friends, and partners. They all tried to change, reform, and revolutionize the kingdom to eliminate class differences, prejudices, poverty, and discrimination, and they all fell victim to betrayal, punishment, imprisonment, and condemnation.

Just like in the series, the heroes need motivation to fight against these villains and maintain the power structures. This is where Black Clover fails miserably. All the antagonists are portrayed as uncontrolled monsters who want to destroy everything, as terrorists, without any judgment of what ... is right or wrong, but only an absolute desire for revenge at any cost.

It's a reactionary fantasy in which all the evil caused by the ruling class is normalized and considered natural because it follows the law of the strongest, while any reaction, revolution, or rebellion is seen as a violent crime that must be immediately contained and judged.

It's pure fascism.