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, after which it moved to Jump Giga in December of that same year and finished in May 2026. Its chapters were collected in 38 volumes. 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 (OVA) 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 premiered in October 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 2026, the manga had over 25 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 (Tatsuhiko Katayama) 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's world a European look, Tabata researched photograph books for sets and locations and documented various weapons, clothing, and buildings.
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 started its serialization in Shueisha's manga anthology Weekly Shōnen Jump on February 16, 2015. 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. The series finished with three chapters published in Jump Giga on May 1, 2026. Shueisha collected its chapters in 38 volumes, released from June 4, 2015, to August 4, 2026.
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, , was released on August 4, 2016; the second, , was released on October 4, 2017; and the third, , 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 (OVA) adaptation, produced by Xebec Zwei, premiered at the 2016 Jump Festa on November 27, 2016. It was later released on DVD on May 2, 2017, bundled with a limited edition of the manga's eleventh volume.
Television series
A 170-episode anime television series adaptation, produced by Studio Pierrot, was broadcast on TV Tokyo from October 3, 2017 to March 30, 2021.
In July 2025, at Anime Expo, it was announced that the series would receive a second season, also produced by Pierrot. It premiered on October 3, 2026.
Film
An anime film, titled Black Clover: Sword of the Wizard King, premiered on June 16, 2023.
Video games At Jump Festa 2017, a video game, titled Black Clover: Quartet Knights, was announced for a 2018 release on PlayStation 4 and PC. It was developed by Ilinx and published by Bandai Namco. It was released in Japan on September 13, 2018, while the western release was on September 14 of the same year.
On April 22, 2018, a mobile game called was announced. It was released in Japan on November 14, 2018. On December 6, 2019, Bandai Namco Entertainment announced that the game would be released on January 16, 2020. On December 9, 2020, Bandai Namco Entertainment closed its servers and removed the game from all iOS and Android mobile app stores worldwide.
Asta is featured as a playable character in the Weekly Shōnen Jump crossover game Jump Force.
On December 19, 2021, during Jump Festa 2022, a mobile game was announced. Titled and developed by Vic Game Studios, it was originally announced to be released sometime in 2022; however, it was ultimately released on May 25, 2023; it is set to end service globally on August 21, 2025. The band Glay contributed two songs to the game; and "Pianista".
Another mobile game, , developed by South Korean company Vic Game Studios, was released on May 25, 2023. The game has made roughly $2 million on iOS devices, and $800,000 on Android devices, across both Japanese and Korean servers.
Stage play A stage play adaptation was announced in June 2023. It starred Keisuke Ueda as Asta, Naoki Takeshi as Yuno, and Arisa Komiya as Noelle Silva. The stage play ran through September 14–18, 2023, at Theatre 1010 in Tokyo and through September 22–24 at Kanagawa Arts Theatre.
Reception In 2016, Black Clover ranked ninth on the second Next Manga Award, presented by Kadokawa Corporation's Da Vinci magazine and Niconico streaming website; in the same year, the series ranked third on the "Nationwide Bookstore Employees' Recommended Comics" by the Honya Club website in 2016.
Tokyo-based dispatched labor company included the series on a list of three manga series about protagonists who struggle to overcome their own weakness and self-doubt, recommended for low self-confidence people.
Sales