5 Point Discussions – Black Clover 68: “Battle To The Death?! Yami Vs. Jack”

The Star Festival continues, while Asta and Noelle try to stop Yami from getting into a dangerous battle against his fellow Magic Knight Captain, ack the Ripper of the Green Mantis! Remember, if you like this article and 5 Point Discussions, please share it on Facebook or Twitter! It really helps. And if you’ve got any comments or questions, please hit me up @SageShinigami.
This is more of a filler episode, and could be literally skipped but I feel bad skipping episodes that aren’t recaps. So, with that in mind this is going to be a bit more fun and breezy, as recaps go.

1. Our “Battle to the Death” begins with Yami and Jack trying to sell foods during the Star Festival. Jack the Ripper has the show’s favorite punching bag, Sekke, working to try and sell his grilled meat, while Asta landed close enough to the area for Yami to have dragged him into trying to sell his squid. A lot of this comes down to filler, but I love how Sekke is seen often enough in this show to be considered as much a supporting cast as everyone else outside of the Black Bulls. At this point I’ve seen him about as much as Asta’s “rival” Yuno. In any case, I thought this was maybe their idea to get extra funding for their guilds, but nope it turns out this is only happening to sub out for an actual fight between the two. Which is good because the two of them are so frightening they deter everyone from buying anything from them.

2. Yami and Jack have seemingly had an adversarial working relationship, up until this episode, when you realize they’re basically Kakashi and Might Guy. They have competitions over stupid things to figure out who’s the “best”.  They seem like they’re constantly at each other’s throats, but that’s likely because they have the most in common of any two members of the Magic Knight Captains. Their respect comes from having been “othered” by the remaining Captains, presumably because of how different they are from the otherwise homogeneous royalty that makes up the Captain squad.

3. No wonder the Midnight Sun keep getting the drop on our heroes–the Wizard King is always screwing off somewhere and never doing his work. Yami and Jack decide to stop trying to sell food and settle things with a battle. So they sneak off to the cave they fought the Midnight Sun in several arcs ago and get down to it, while the Wizard King watches from the sidelines. He’s meant to be working in the festival, but instead of doing his job he’s watching his two pupils in the hopes they’ll show him some cool spells. He also stops them from harming one another seriously, but…there’s no way he doesn’t have more pressing tasks…right?

4. Underrated comedy MVP this episode by far is Noelle. Whether it’s trying to play off her embarrassment by being a “cool” princess, or forcing Finral and Asta to get Captain Yami to stop scaring everyone, leading to them getting attacked and tossed aside, she’s managed to fit in as effortlessly into the Black Bulls’ comedy troupe as everyone else.

5. Next Episode: Get ready to be reintroduced to more of the Captains as the Star Festival continues.  Next episode finally seeks to develop the Blue Rose Maidens beyond being just “The Magic Knight Girls”.