#the databooks are far from infallible

[spatio-rift]

the way this is straight up wrong

[loosesodamarble]

The Truth About Marx's Magic

Tagging @luminouslion because Melissa is the resident Marx lover.

Memory Magic or Communication Magic? That is the question.

Now because Marx is a character that's pretty far into the background most of the time, he doesn't get many chances to appearance use his magic. Let's review what we know of Marx's Magic.

Marx can read/project the memories of others as well as force them to speak truthfully.

Marx's memory reading is infallible. (Do take the statement with a grain of salt since we've only seen this spell used to its fullest twice[-ish]. And the spell was only used on people who had their memories protected/sealed and not altered in some way.)

One of Marx's spell can erase the most recent memories of an individual (although the spell never successfully landed on the intended target [Yami] so we never actually saw it used).

Marx's magic can be used to project his visual image and his voice to others (primarily Julius!) in order to perform long distance communication without the use of a magic tool.

The image and sound projection isn't limited to one-on-one either. In episode 151 of the anime, it's called out that it's thanks to Marx's magic specifically that allows the whole kingdom to view the captains' battle. (Note: this is an anime original event and will be coming up later.)

So Marx's magic deals both with memories and communicating with others. It's been referred to as Memory and Communication (to most people's recollection from what I've gathered). But which is it exactly?

The answer?

NEITHER! It's neither Memory nor Communication Magic.

Let me explain.

The first place to look for information about Marx's magic attribute was the original manga. Luckily for me, I have both the original Japanese volumes as well as the English translations of the manga (up to volume 35 in JPN and up to 32 in ENG as of the writing of this post).

However... Looking through both the Japanese and English, I found out that while explanations and references to the powers of Marx's magic were made, there was never any instance of Marx calling out a spell name and with it his magic attribute (as is customary when a spell is written in the manga).

But then I remembered an ace I had.

Volume 16.5: Marque-page de Grimoire. It's essentially a databook for the series up to volume 16 (thus being 16.5). And in this volume we get profiles and information about various characters in Black Clover, which includes their place of origin, their likes, their ability parameters, and of course their magic attribute. And what is Marx's attribute listed as in his profile?

記憶交信。(pronounced ki-oku kou-shin)

Okay, I know most people on my blog don't understand Japanese so this means nothing to you.

記憶交信 isn't a singular word unto itself but two words put together. 記憶 means "memory, recollection, remembrance." 交信 means "telecommunication, correspondence." So essentially it's "memory correspondence" magic. And that tracks with what Marx's magic is capable of: it effects and interacts with memories as well as allows for long distance correspondence.

Or perhaps a better way to put it is that Marx's magic allows memories to be communicated. Memories are communicated when he uses the spell that reads them. So when Marx projects image and sound, it's as though he's sharing his immediate, in-the-making memories. If that makes sense...

Anyways.

I can further back this up with content from the anime. Specifically the movie. Remember how Conrad stole Marx's magic? Well look at what Conrad says about it.

記憶交信。

But that's in Japanese. So what's the actual English translation?

In the English subtitles, Marx's magic is referred to as Memory Exchange Magic.

See again the movie.

Or we can look to episode 38 of the anime.

As for why it's called "Memory Exchange" and not "Memory Correspondence" or "Memory Communication" Magic, it's simply a matter of some translation liberties. "Exchange" is a synonym for "conversation." You have an exchange when you talk with someone. And when you have a conversation, you communicate your thoughts with that other person. Thus the use of "exchange" rather than "correspondence/communication" in Marx's magic attribute to convey what it does.

But if it was always Memory Exchange Magic, why do people recall Marx's magic being just "Memory" or "Communication" Magic?

Is it a case of the subtitles saying "Memory Exchange" but the dub saying only "Memory"? No actually. If you listen to the dub of episode 38 and the movie, they will say "Memory Exchange" directly. (I'd share the sound clip myself but I have zero idea how to isolate a snippet of video and all that so anyone reading this will have to go see for themselves that I'm not making this up.) I think the "just Memory" recollection of the fandom is a result of the human mind making things easy on itself. Why remember two words when you could remember one and still get the same idea essentially? Thus, the fandom remembers only "Memory Magic" rather than "Memory Exchange Magic."

As for "Communication Magic"... Remember episode 151? Well within that episode, Julius refers to Marx's magic as 通信 (tsuu-shin) magic. Which is translated as "Communication Magic."

What created this discrepancy in the anime though?

The timing of releases.

Where was Marx's magic first named? In the 16.5 volume. Which was released on May 2 of 2018.

The next thing to be released was episode 38 of the anime. And when did it originally air? June 26 of 2018.

Episode 151 didn't air until November 10, 2020.

Now I don't know how far in advance Studio Piero was making episode 38 to the original air date. And since I'm not doing an in-depth research paper on this topic, I only took a cursory glance online to see that a general estimate is 2 months minimum. Could’ve been a longer period, can’t say for certain.

So... It's possible that Tabata was in the process of putting together the information for volume 16.5 while Studio Piero was in the midst of working on episode 38 and when it came to scripting the episode, they wanted to use proper names for Marx’s Magic rather than silently skipping over it like the manga. While Tabata isn't normally involved in the anime's production, the production team might've consulted him on the matter since they had nothing to go off of in the manga. And that's when Tabata could've shared the intended name for Marx's magic.

Then, later on, when episode 151 was being made, the content was an anime original. Tabata wasn't directly involved and the production team might not have consulted with Tabata during that time. Leading to the name of Marx's magic attribute being called the wrong thing.

And earlier this year, we got the Black Clover movie. And the movie does correctly call Marx's magic Memory Exchange. See, unlike the TV anime where Tabata wasn't really involved, he was the chief supervisor of the film. So while not directly in charge of the script, he likely would've been able to review it and make sure that Marx's magic was referred to by the right name.

With that, the post is over. I've officially explained the truth about Marx Francois' magic!

Sorry to make this so long and rambly. I just had a bit of fun solving this kinda sorta fandom mystery. But now we all know the truth.

Marx has Memory Exchange Magic~!

[barondraxum]

i just finished drawing this comic w/ him and i keep thinking about how kakuzu could have had such a cool arc

like with the betrayal he went through after he survived a suicide mission at the hands of his village, the torture that likely went along with it, the rightful revenge he made against the village elders after these events made him realize they saw him as nothing but a pawn, the fact this that ostracized him and hardened him as a result, embracing the monster that people branded him through his actions and appearance with his no-nonsense attitude and intimidating, unwarm nature, all while not being cruel and still having some sort of care for others in his own weird way that comes through criticism that he does with h*dan a bit, clinging to money as a constant after the village proved itself to be far from infallible, that “mutilates himself in compensation” line from the third databook about his whole organ steal thing, the fact he really relates to naruto in regards being abandoned by the village that was supposed to protect you which would have been a GREAT set up for naruto’s whole swing set flashback “you’re just like me” speech, cause really if you think about it kakuzu just went the path gaara did when it came to rejection but the difference is that gaara’s able to smile now while kakuzu’s dead

we could have had a redeemed, happy kakuzu if he wasn’t treated as just a static villain and kishi saw the potential his character had that was RIGHT there but instead i just gotta cry about it at 3 am every once in awhile