Media Thread: Black Clover

I've been keeping up with Black Clover since it started, and I had no idea it would maintain a high quality the entire time.

So as a quick summary for those who haven't read it, Black Clover is a 2015 manga that ran in Shonen Jump for 8 years, then ran in Jump Giga from Christmas 2023 onward for 3 years before ending on May 1, 2026 (for a total of 11 years). It's about a young boy named Asta who wants to become the "Wizard King". The downside is that everybody in this world has access to magic... except for him. In Volume 1, he ends up getting a grimoire that gives him access to an Anti-Magic Sword, allowing him to use his extreme physical strength to counter other types of magic. He then joins an organization called the "Magic Knights" under the worst squad of the nine: The Black Bulls. Now as a Magic Knight, Asta needs to prove his worth as one as well as his worth as the potential Wizard King.

This story has a lot going for it. Obviously, as a Shonen manga, the action is fantastic. Great choreography all-around and the fights always feature fun strategies. One of the strengths that I personally love is the power system. It is one of the best out there: where characters have dominion over a concept or element, but how that manifests depends on the characters themselves. There are multiple Fire Mages in this story, but they all fight differently to one-another. But this just supplements what makes this story a real stand-out, and that's the cast of characters.

This manga features an ensemble cast of the most ragtag bunch of misfits that I've read in a manga in a minute. While lots of manga nowadays are trying to leverage the strength of a big cast, a lot of them don't take advantage of what having such a big cast can do. Demon Slayer had a bunch of 2-note characters who had to sacrifice depth for recognizable personality traits, My Hero Academia ended up focusing on 8 characters at most because a lot of students didn't bring a lot to the table, Food Wars had a cast so big but so inconsequential that they were literally called the "Peanut Gallery" in-universe, and Jujutsu Kaisen built up a whole boat-load of characters but only focused on the main five. Despite the fact that these are all pretty good manga (with a few exceptions), they all struggled to juggle the quantity of characters with the quality of story. Black Clover doesn't have this problem. Like Demon Slayer, each member of the Black Bulls has a defining trait that makes them easy to recognize both at a glance and upon a summary; as well as having chances to shine so we could see their backstory, motivations, and why they are in the situations they're in in-story. Alternatively, while the KnY characters are two-note (having a "defining trait" and a backstory), Black Clover's tend to be more "Three Dimensional", where we get to see them from a huge variety of angles and perspectives. This makes them all feel more real, despite the fact that they're in a fantasy shonen.

Beyond the Black Bulls, though, there's also the side characters like Villains and fellow Royal Knights. This part of the cast has a fun variety of One-Note and Two-Dimensional characters who all serve to help our main cast grow and to fill out the world. A lot of them are pretty recognizable, and even if they aren't "Important", they can at the very least be "Entertaining". But then we get the one character whom I believe stands out amongst the side-cast, and that's Asta's rival, Yuno.

Yuno is a gifted mage who was blessed with a four-leave grimoire, allowing him access to a ridiculous amount of Mana as well as great control over his powers. He's primed to be the next Wizard King by everybody around him, and he's expected to fill a Sasuke-Type Rival Role by everybody in the audience. However, Yuno doesn't see it this way. To Yuno, Asta is a rival who he has to defeat to be the Wizard King, and he's much friendlier to Asta than many rivals are in this role. The two were raised in the same orphanage and they see each other's strengths, so Yuno sees the strength in Asta that nobody else in-universe can see. This dynamic, the Rival being on-par with the MC and being actual friends with the guy, is such a refreshing change compared to the other anime/manga where the rival just sorta hates the MC and they never resolve this issue.

It got kinda weird in the last three years because Jump Giga's release schedule is so different to Weekly Shonen Jump. Instead of getting one chapter a week, we got three chapters once a season. This resulted in battles having an odd sense of pacing where there were perfectly succinct 3-Chapter fights. This culminated in the final wait where the final big-bad was defeated in late 2025, and we were all gripping our seats waiting for the final update so we could wrap everything up in a nice little bow, and we could see how the characters ended up after everything was said-and-done. Without spoiling anything: It was an extremely satisfying ending and I was happy for everybody in the cast.

This was an absolutely excellent manga with a great cast of characters. It's weird to say it but, compared to the other manga of its time, this might just be the best manga of the 2010s era. Despite not garnering as much of a fandom as the other manga surrounding it, it was the most consistently good one of the bunch.

Solid 9/10.