Black Clover Chapter 188 Review by Emperor SprigganThe latest issue of Black Clover starts with a POV on Henry. Other mages rely on enhancing their own bodies with magic in order to be able to fight, but it's different with Henry. His body is naturally crippled, so he uses magic to retain his natural body functions. He was born into a royal family (Was this necessary? It feels like everyone who gets a backstory these days has to be secret royalty or something similar). Being born with his condition, he was not accepted by his family since they thought he would bring shame on them.
In order to conceal the fact of their deformed child, his family decided to give him the mana reserves from one house in the middle of the forest. That was to keep the victims from Henry's mana depleting condition to a minimum. At some point later on, Henry ended up joining the Black Bulls. This of course led to him meeting his teammates, who he thanks his life for. Charging at Gauche, who is one of the comrades, he vows to save him.
Asta is still in his jet black form, and Gauche realizes it works by chasing after powerful magic. The elf immediately uses his magic to release several mirrors to surround the area around where him and Asta are. This plan works perfectly, since Asta starts darting around the area aimlessly and is able to hit Gauche directly with his sword. Gauche and Marie combine to produce a large mirror, that projects Marie's eye over the entirety of the battlefield. Much like how the Infinite Tsukoyomi in Naruto worked.
This causes the Black Bulls members to retreat back into the base in order to avoid the effects of Marie's ocular powers. Asta muses that he can only use the black form one more time, but he won't be able to maintain it for an extended period of time. Gauche uses his power to encase the base into one of his mirrors, something which means Marie's powers can now work on the people inside it. Have to admit, I do like how clever and creative he is being with his powers.
The Black Bulls try to escape using their base, but Gauche stops them. Immediately, Henry gets out of the base and wants to buy time for the others to escape by taking Gauche on head on. Henry intends on sacrificing himself to stop the elf.
To this effect, he immediately starts sucking away elf Gauche's magic using his body condition. Since Marie's magic would register Henry's magic as Gauche's, that of course means that her ocular powers would have no effect on Henry. The elf immediately realizes what Henry is doing but he says that his mana pool is too large to be affected by Henry's powers. Henry is unfazed by this, saying that the others would take advantage of the opening he created to take down Gauche and Marie.
Asta shouts to Henry that he wont let him die, and afterwards we get a short flashback of how the two met. Asta reassures him that since he has no magic Henry's condition won't really affect him. This makes Henry emotional and he immediately regrets his earlier decision, desiring to live on with his friends. The fact that this took only a page is honestly frustrating and cheap writing. It was obvious Henry wouldn't die but there was no need for the fake bait with teasing his death.
Gordon uses his poison magic to dissolve the mirrors encasing the base. Asta then lunges at Marie and Gauche, while Gray uses transformation magic to save Henry. The main character says that he also wont let Gauche and Marie die as his sword connects with both siblings.
Personal view: Honestly, for a while now I've felt as if the quality of this arc has stagnated considerably. The arc has been dragged out too much at this point honestly, and as such the quality has suffered. Not to mention the constant focus on the Black Bulls which is the least interesting part of the arc. The initial focus on Luck was fine, but imo all the possessed members should have just been saved there. There was really no need to split it into segments. Henry's introduction wasn't really needed in the story imo. This chapter just proves that further.
Chapter rating: 5/10.
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