Title: Black Clover Vol. 25
Author: Yuki Tabata
Publisher: Viz Media
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 187
Genre: Shounen, Battle
Publication Date: May 2, 2021
The Story
Volume 25 of Black Clover begins the battle against the Dark Triad and right away we are placed into the penultimate battle involving Asta and Dante! Dante is fearsome with his gravity magic. So much so that even when Asta goes into his devil form, he cannot take him down. The tables turn when Captain Yami shows up which delights Dante for some reason. As the two of them battle, we learn of the Dark Triad’s true plan… to open the link between the real world and the underworld and allow all of the demons to invade and take over the planet.
Seems like an evil plan to me!
Apparently, Dante has been keeping his eye on both Yami and Vangeance this entire time because their magic types are the two needed to open the gate and since both of them are considered arcane-stage level, they are the top two candidates to get the job done.
Before we see the conclusion of this fight, the back half of the manga focuses on one on one fights against other members of the Dark Triad. We are treated to Luck vs Svenkin, Leopold vs Siovir, and Charmy vs Halbet. Sadly, these battles only lasted the length of a chapter and were over pretty quickly. I was hoping for some deeper battles; however, these match-ups seem to be against lackeys of the Dark Triad and not the actual upper echelon so quick battles can be forgiven here.
There’s no real cliffhanger ending for the volume. Once the Charmy vs Halbet fight is over, the volume just ends. Guess more battles are to come in Vol. 26!
Characters
One of the things I dislike are obviously fake and false misdirections and we get one here with Gauche. During the battle with Dante, Gauche is fatally injured. It then goes into a flashback for a few pages, hyping up the fact that Gauche is going to die when, suddenly, plot device happens and he ends up being just fine. In fact, I know this counts as a spoiler but when you’ve seen this tactic used over and over and over again, it’s very hard to take any “death” scene in a shonen manga seriously. As soon as I saw Gauche get impaled, I said “He’ll be fine,” and I was right. It’s actually pretty sad when you can’t feel anything for a character when something like that happens to them because you know that they’re just going to get saved by a plot device.
Final Thoughts
Well… one thing I can say is that my prediction of Yuno going rogue didn’t happen. In fact, Yuno wasn’t even in this volume! I can understand why Yuki Tabata wanted to shift into the battle portion of this arc and when you do that, there is little room for character continuity but it would have been nice to see a little more progression on that aspect of the story.
Other than that, what can I say? This was an action-based volume and we received nearly 190 pages of it. The fights were a little short and underwhelming but it seems as if Asta/Yami vs Dante is far from over. Seeing as how they are battling the leader of the Dark Triad, I don’t think that this fight is going to be won by either side. There will be a “to be continued” moment to be had here as the plot will thicken. Then again, maybe this is the final battle of this arc and like the previous elf arc, it will span across multiple volumes?
Only time will tell but if you like action, Vol. 25 of Black Clover will give it to you…. *puts shades on* … in SPADES.
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This item was provided for review by Viz Media
