I won’t talk year off about the usual things for this landmark. Instead, I’m going to celebrate hitting the big 3-0-0 by talking about another of the blog’s roots. The second subject that I had wanted to talk about before the blog took form.
Black Clover.
In case you’re new here (or in case you don’t read the anime posts, which is fine) let me set the stage really quick. I love Shounen battle anime. It’s the genre I turn to the most when I’m in the mood for something simple and fun. Dragon Ball, My Hero Academia, Yu Yu Hakusho, HunterxHunter, Naruto and One Piece (the manga, the shows for each of those suck) are some of my favorite anime/manga ever.
So naturally, when Crunchyroll’s marketing hyped up Black Clover as, quote, “The New King of Shounen” (which is not supposed to make you laugh out loud), my interest was peaked. Plus, the first trailer for the series looked pretty good. It had a magical setting, some action that looked pretty cool and some interesting character designs. All in all, it seemed very promising at the time. What could go wrong?
Apparantley everything.
I could only make it about four episodes in before I dropped this show. Everything about it was just painful to watch. The pacing was so slow it made the snails on my sidewalk look like Sonic the fucking Hedgehog! Asta’s voice is the single most grating thing I’ve ever listened to, and this is coming from someone who used to work the drive through at a McDonald’s. Every five minutes or less, some character would just tell the audience that ‘Magic is everything in this world!’ in a way remiscent of Obi-Wan and Anakin talking about how they’re such good friends: a whole lot of tell, not a lot of show. And of course, the biggest criticism leveled at this series: it is so completely unoriginal and poorly executed that it hurts.
Also that animation is really bad. Sure, it has it’s moments, but 10% is still a failing grade. I also know that this is still the case, because I’ve seen a few clips via the Crunchyroll Twitter, and it still looks like shit.
I’ve heard everything under the sun in defense of this series. “The manga is way better”, “The anime gets better later on”, “You get used to his voice in time”. And I’m sure that they’re true. I’ve heard that the show gets better once the ensemble cast is assembled, and the lightning fast pacing helps with the unoriginality, as it doesn’t waste your time reintroducing you to things you already know about the genre. But at this point, I have no interest whatsoever to go back to it. I’ve simply stopped caring.
But when I did care, I had a lot to say. I remember writing down a multiple page long list of my complaints, drafting a script and then immediately scrapping it. Then, when I started the original blog, I almost wrote the whole thing out again. But in the end, that post never came to be.
Though I can’t say I regret it. It honestly wasn’t worth talking about, since every other anime blogger and YouTuber had beaten me to the punch. And I’d probably just have echoed their same sentiments.
But now, much like the Cursed Child before it, I have an odd relationship with this series. I hate it, but it’s one of the first things I ever wanted to blog about. It’s an odd love-hate relationship.
It’s mostly hate, but there is love there somewhere.
I feel like it says something about me that the most important pieces of media to this blog’s existence were things I hated. Back in the day, I didn’t want to talk about what I loved and why I do. Rather, I wanted to stand here and be a voice of pure negativity.
Don’t get me wrong, I still talk about things that I despise. But I have far more fun rambling about things that I think are great. That’s something I never would have thought way back in the day.
It’s funny how 300 days can change a man, isn’t it?
Jonah's Daily Rants 