Black Clover Vol. 3

As a creed it is the thinnest thing in the chapter. It is stock villain doctrine, and the pages give it only one private root: the volume's character page says Mars's magic was artificially boosted through a cruel training method, which suggests where he learned it without making the sentence any sharper. The scene earns its keep through who is listening. Klaus, whom the same page calls extremely proud, has just berated himself for letting the Black Bulls save him (p. 8). Six pages after Mars speaks, Klaus's response to Asta's fighting is that it is impossible for a mere peasant with weak magic (p. 16), and once he learns that Asta has no magic at all he puts it down to luck (p. 19). Mars and the Golden Dawn senior share a premise; only the manners differ. The villain's sentence is flat. Its use is to say out loud a ranking that at least one of the knights he is attacking already lives by.

The volume complicates him before he opens his mouth. Its character page describes Mars as a mage warrior whose magic has been artificially boosted through a cruel training method, so whatever he was born with, the strength he is boasting of was added later. Asta's answer on the spot is a dare ("Then go on and... ...try breaking me!!!"), and Mars says he plans to. Eight pages later, having wrapped himself in crystal armor, Mars asks what he is, and Asta answers that he is a human who was born with zero magic (p. 19). The word comes back from the other side. One man claims a purpose from birth for a power that was trained into him; the other names what he was born without and keeps fighting. Mars's line is only as good as that later answer makes it, and on these pages it reads as set up for exactly that.

The rescue is phrased as a conclusion from an insult. Mimosa, lying inside a cocoon of vines, apologizes: she wishes Noelle hadn't seen this, and admits she is slow, just as Noelle said (p. 8). Noelle agrees. "True. You've always been like that." Then "So...", and only then the promise, with "just" doing the work of making it sound like a chore. The character page has already told the reader what to expect ("really impudent, but can be kind too") and lists Mimosa as Noelle's cousin, which makes the order of the balloons the point. Noelle cannot offer protection without first establishing that she is not being soft. The kindness is real, and it has to be issued as condescension first, and Mimosa's answer in the next panel is a stunned "Miss Noelle..." rather than thanks.

Klaus has a case, and it deserves stating. Noelle herself has just explained that Asta negates magic (p. 16), and nothing on these pages shows him earning that ability; Klaus's retort, that fortune simply blessed a peasant with an unsuitable power, is not absurd on those facts. Noelle's answer is not an argument. It is an appeal to evidence not yet in, offered by someone who has just soaked Klaus with water for whining (p. 16). What arrives first is information, and it moves nothing. Two pages later Asta tells Mars that he was born with zero magic, and Klaus's conclusion is that he really did just luck into his abilities (p. 19). Noelle's line bets that watching will settle the matter; the first thing Klaus sees, he files under luck again. Whether the rest of the fight changes his mind lies past these pages, so for now her line persuades only the reader.