Black Clover
Black Clover is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Yūki Tabata. It started in Shueisha's manga magazine Weekly Shōnen Jump in February 2015. The series ran in the magazine until August 2023, and moved to Jump Giga in December of the same year. Its chapters have been collected in 37 volumes as of September 2025. Set in a world where people are born with the ability to use magic, the story follows Asta, a young boy without any magic power who is given a rare grimoire that grants him anti-magic abilities. With his fellow mages from the Black Bulls, Asta plans to become the next Wizard King.
The manga was first adapted into an original video animation by Xebec Zwei, released in 2017. A 170-episode anime television series adaptation produced by Pierrot aired on TV Tokyo from October 2017 to March 2021; a "second season" is set to premiere in 2026. An anime film, titled Black Clover: Sword of the Wizard King, premiered simultaneously in Japanese theaters and internationally on Netflix in June 2023.
By September 2025, the manga had over 24 million copies in circulation worldwide.
Plot
The series focuses on Asta, a young orphan who is left to be raised in an orphanage in a rural village alongside his fellow orphan, Yuno. While everyone is born with the ability to utilize mana in the form of magical power, Asta, was born without mana and thus has no way to use magic, instead he focuses on physical strength. Conversely, Yuno was born as a prodigy with immense magical power and the talent to control wind magic.Motivated by a desire to become the next Wizard King, an authority figure second to the king of Clover Kingdom, the two youths developed a friendly rivalry. Yuno obtains a legendary four-leaf grimoire held by the kingdom's first Wizard King. The four-leaf grimoire is a rare grimoire, only given to the most immense mages. Asta, despite his lack of magic, obtained an enigmatic five-leaf grimoire that contains mysterious elf swords and a bodiless member of the Devil race who utilizes rare anti-magic. Afterwards, Asta and Yuno each join a Magic Knight squad as the first step to fulfill their ambitions.
Asta joins the Black Bulls under Yami Sukehiro alongside Noelle Silva, while Yuno becomes a member of the Golden Dawn. They embark on various adventures while contending with an extremist group called the Eye of the Midnight Sun, whose leadership is manipulated by a Devil in avenging an injustice committed against the Elves by the Clover Kingdom at the time of its founding. The Magic Knights then face the Dark Triad of the Spade Kingdom, with Asta and Yuno learning of their Devils' influence on their lives and of the Dark Triad's plan to fully manifest the Devils into their world. Then the Magic Knights face the Dark Triad's eldest sibling, Lucius Zogratis, who wants to create his own perfect world.
Production
Manga author Yūki Tabata started in the manga industry at the age of 20 and worked as an assistant for seven years before his science fiction one-shot Hungry Joker was briefly serialized in the Shueisha magazine Weekly Shōnen Jump for 24 chapters from November 12, 2012, to May 13, 2013, before being canceled. Tabata considered this manga a failure which he attributed largely to its quiet and dark-natured main character, who was very unlike the author himself. After its cancellation his friends advised him to develop an energetic, happy-go-lucky protagonist that more closely resembled Tabata and he began working on the fantasy-themed one-shot for Black Clover. After its publication, he was assigned a new editor and Shueisha picked up the series for full serialization.The weekly production process for Black Clover involved Tabata consulting with Katayama for the first few days on the thumbnails of the chapter then spending the remaining days composing the actual art. Tabata credited himself for coming up with a rough outline and ending for the chapter while Katayama aided him in filling in its content and making corrections. Early in the series the artist claimed to only sleep an average of three hours per night due to stress, but after the anime adaptation of Black Clover began airing he was able to increase this to six hours per night. As of at least the seventh volume of Black Clover, he did not utilize digital tools in his drafting, opting for traditional "analog" inking and toning by hand. Tabata stayed motivated during the manga's long run due to his readers looking forward to each week's chapter. Despite the fast pace of most chapters, the author expressed a desire to occasionally create slower yet still satisfying stories. The dark fantasy series Berserk by Kentaro Miura was a heavy influence on Tabata. He wanted to craft a equivalent of Berserk while also taking inspiration from other fantasy properties such as Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai, The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and the films of Guillermo del Toro. Tabata professed to not be a big fan of fantasy role-playing video games like Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy and used the few fantasy movies he did watch as reference material. To give Black Clover
Tabata stated he enjoyed both writing the manga's script and illustrating its battle scenes, particularly in magnifying his characters' movements and making the action more dynamic. For this latter aspect, he took ideas from the fighting manga Dragon Ball by Akira Toriyama. Tabata recounted he was inspired to become a manga artist after seeing the Dragon Ball Z anime series as a child then learning it was an adaptation of Toriyama's work. He stated that he was also a fan of other series, such as YuYu Hakusho by Yoshihiro Togashi and Bleach by Tite Kubo. Tabata wished to create a diverse cast of archetypical characters with opposing attributes. He modeled the characters Asta and Charmy Pappitson after himself and his wife respectively. He admitted in the manga's fourth volume that Charmy was his favorite character to draw. He chose names for characters by looking up words he found interesting in dictionaries of various languages. He found that an important aspect of character design in Black Clover was giving them traits that make them easy to remember for the reader. He also wanted to "feel good" drawing them, would revise the characters if he was getting frustrated, and strived to improve on balancing the attention each one gets during the course of the story. Once the characters were made, Tabata decided on their magic abilities based on their personalities and whatever magic would fit the current events of the plot.
Media
Manga
Written and illustrated by Yūki Tabata, Black Clover has been serialized in Shueisha's manga anthology Weekly Shōnen Jump from February 16, 2015, to August 21, 2023. In April 2022, it was announced that the series would enter a three-month hiatus to prepare it for its final arc. The series finished its run in Weekly Shōnen Jump on August 21, 2023, and resumed in Jump Giga on December 25 of the same year. Shueisha has collected its chapters into individual volumes. The first volume was published on June 4, 2015. As of September 4, 2025, 37 volumes have been released.On February 9, 2015, Viz Media announced that they would publish the first three chapters of the series in their Weekly Shonen Jump digital magazine as part of their "Jump Start" program in North America. On March 30, 2015, they announced that the series would join their weekly lineup, beginning with the fourth chapter on April 6, and publishing at an accelerated rate until the chapters were current with Japan. Plans to release the series in print were announced during their panel at New York Comic Con on October 9, 2015. Shueisha began to simulpublish the series in English on the app and website Manga Plus in February 2019.
Spin-offs
A gag manga spin-off by Setta Kobayashi, titled, was serialized in Shueisha's Saikyō Jump from February 2, 2018, to April 1, 2021. Shueisha collected its chapters in three volume, released from January 4, 2019, to July 2, 2021.On September 30, 2018, a manga based on the video game Black Clover: Quartet Knights, illustrated by Yumiya Tashiro, launched on the Shōnen Jump+ app on October 7, 2018, and finished on April 12, 2020. Its chapters were collected in six volumes, released from January 4, 2019, to October 2, 2020.
Novels
Three novels written by Johnny Onda have been released under the Jump J-Books imprint. The first, Black Clover: Abareushi no Sho, was released on August 4, 2016; the second, Black Clover: Kishidan no Sho, was released on October 4, 2017; and the third, Black Clover: Yuno no Sho, was released on October 4, 2019. A novel adaptation of the film Black Clover: Sword of the Wizard King, authored by Atarō Kuma with Johnny Onda in charge of the scenario, was released on June 9, 2023.Anime
Original video animation
An original video animation produced by Xebec Zwei that is based on the series was shown at the 2016 Jump Festa between November 27 and December 18, 2016. It was bundled with the 11th volume of the manga, which was released on May 2, 2017. A second original video animation was shown at the 2018 Jump Festa. It was later released on DVD releases alongside My Hero Academia and Food Wars!: Shokugeki no Soma bundled with the future volumes of their respective manga, as it was announced at Jump Special Anime Festa event.Television series
At the Black Clover Jump Festa event on December 18, 2016, an anime television series adaptation by Pierrot was announced. It was directed by Tatsuya Yoshihara, with Kazuyuki Fudeyasu writing scripts, Itsuko Takeda doing character designs, and Minako Seki composing the music. The series premiered on TV Tokyo on October 3, 2017. with the first two seasons each consisting of 51 episodes. The third seasons premiered on October 1, 2019. The series was broadcast without any major interruption until late April 2020, when it was announced that future episodes would be postponed based on studio production delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The broadcasting and distribution of episode 133 onward were delayed and in its place, the first episode of the series was rebroadcast on May 5, 2020; the series resumed on July 7 of the same year, and finished at episode 170 on March 30, 2021.Crunchyroll has simulcast the series, while Funimation produced an English dub as part of its SimulDub program as it aired. Adult Swim's Toonami programming block premiered the English dub on December 2, 2017. The series was added to the Hulu streaming service. Sony Pictures UK and Funimation released the first part of the series on home video in the United Kingdom and Ireland, with subsequent parts released by Manga Entertainment. Universal Sony classified the first part of the series for release in Australia and New Zealand, on behalf of Funimation, with Madman Entertainment releasing subsequent parts. The first of Black Clover became available on Netflix India with Japanese audio and English subtitles on February 23, 2021.
In July 2025, at Anime Expo, it was announced that the series will receive a new season, which will be also produced by Pierrot. It is set to premiere in 2026.