Black Clover: Sword of the Wizard King (2023)

🔥🔥🔥 Extremely good, felt like the show was back, except with some of the best animation I’ve seen in an anime. Choreography went crazy, hype moments made you hyped, and it gave every character their time to shine, just like the main show (except my girl Dorothy 😭😭 please she needs more screen time please) Will very easily watch again, we’ll see if rating goes up or down on rewatch. Also, I’m the one who made most of the edits for the letterboxd page for this movie so I’m proud of that 😎 Overall, 9/10, but that's coming from someone who loves the seriesas well.

Having watched the series before and cancelled my Crunchyroll subscription some time ago, I was pleasantly surprised to find this movie on Netflix. I wanted something to kill time with, and thought this would be perfect. Well, it was okay, but certainly not perfect. The okay bits: got to see/hear the familiar cast, even if some supporting characters only appeared on screen for a split second. Also, the battle scenes were okay (even great, according to some reviewers). Now onto the not-so-good stuff. At first, I felt like the CGI fit this anime kinda awkwardly. For example, the arena where the initial tournament happens just felt out of place, because it felt too 3D-ish (or perhaps too clean/too detailed) compared to most other stuff. Then later, I figured the story was a total cliché. The villain was that super typical "misguided" dude who has a somewhat sad backstory (which is very shortly summarized in passing) and wants to create a utopia world where "everybody respects each other and laughs with each other" at the (very miniscule) expense of killing off whoever opposes him on the way. So dumb, so shallow, so déjà vu. But I'd say even that wasn't executed very well, because in some scenes he seems to enjoy just wreaking havoc and/or inflicting pain on others a little too much (which seems rather out of character for someone so dedicated to the idea of universal love and respect). Of course, the good guys win at the end, and the villain gets some "character development" in the form of realizing how mistaken he was at the very end. That's just... dull. So again, I'd say this film is okay to watch, but it's far from masterpiece.