Black Clover

Asta and Yuno were abandoned at the same church on the same day. Raised together as children, they came to know of the "Wizard King"—a title given to the strongest mage in the kingdom—and promised that they would compete against each other for the position of the next Wizard King. However, as they grew up, the stark difference between them became evident. While Yuno is able to wield magic with amazing power and control, Asta cannot use magic at all and desperately tries to awaken his powers by training physically.

When they reach the age of 15, Yuno is bestowed a spectacular Grimoire with a four-leaf clover, while Asta receives nothing. However, soon after, Yuno is attacked by a person named Lebuty, whose main purpose is to obtain Yuno's Grimoire. Asta tries to fight Lebuty, but he is outmatched. Though without hope and on the brink of defeat, he finds the strength to continue when he hears Yuno's voice. Unleashing his inner emotions in a rage, Asta receives a five-leaf clover Grimoire, a "Black Clover" giving him enough power to defeat Lebuty. A few days later, the two friends head out into the world, both seeking the same goal—to become the Wizard King!

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Asta Main

Kajiwara, Gakuto Japanese

Silva, Noelle Main

Yuuki, Kana Japanese

Yuno Main

Shimazaki, Nobunaga Japanese

Sukehiro, Yami Supporting

Suwabe, Junichi Japanese

Vermillion, Mereoleona Supporting

Minagawa, Junko Japanese

Voltia, Luck Supporting

Murase, Ayumu Japanese

Nero Supporting

Sasaki, Hitomi Japanese

Novachrono, Julius Supporting

Morikawa, Toshiyuki Japanese

Pappitson, Charmy Supporting

Yasuno, Kiyono Japanese

Ideale, Zora Supporting

Midorikawa, Hikaru Japanese

Cook, Justin Producer

Herek, Samantha Assistant Producer

Yoshihara, Tatsuya Director, Episode Director, Storyboard, Key Animation, In-Between Animation, Animation Director, 2nd Key Animation

Tanemura, Ayataka Director, Episode Director, Storyboard, Assistant Director

Reviews

Jun 15, 2025

goyum2868

Recommended

Black Clover – More Than Just Another “Naruto”

I went into Black Clover expecting it to be another Naruto clone, but it really isn’t. Sure, Asta has that loud, never-give-up energy like Naruto, but beyond that, the show stands on its own and builds something different.

The world of Black Clover is full of magic, lore, and mystery. The concept of grimoires and different types of magic makes the fights creative and intense. Asta’s five-leaf clover grimoire, surrounded by mystery and darkness, adds a cool twist early on. The Eye of the Midnight Sun arc is a major highlight, with strong buildup, surprising twists, and the shocking ... reveal of the devil working behind the scenes. Later arcs like the Spade Kingdom keep up the pace and scale things even bigger.

The fights are one of the best parts of the series. They're fast, flashy, and often carry real emotional weight. Asta’s anti-magic fighting style is fun to watch, especially when paired with his grit and energy. Yuno, on the other hand, brings a calm and skilled contrast with his wind magic. He’s a strong rival who pushes Asta to grow, and his own development is solid. Yami is another standout. His dark magic and calm, “go with the flow” attitude make him one of the coolest characters. His battles, especially against top-tier enemies like Dante, are some of the most intense in the show.

The characters overall are a big strength. Asta can be loud, but he’s surprisingly inspiring and consistent. His never-give-up mindset actually changes people around him, like some of the royal captains who start to see value in effort over status. Noelle’s character arc is especially well done. She grows from arrogant and unsure to powerful and confident, and her magic development reflects her personal journey. Yami adds a great mix of strength and comedy, while still being a reliable leader. Um, and his catchphrase, "surpass your limits," really captures the heart of the show.

Black Clover may not have the flashiest start, but once it picks up, it becomes a fun, emotional, and action-packed story with strong arcs and memorable characters.

Rating: 8/10
Highly recommended for anyone who enjoys a magic-based shonen with heart, growth, and great fights.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Jun 10, 2025

elthreedotcomma

Mixed Feelings

Black Clover was definitely made to teach the anime fandom about the term "subjectivity". Many people swear by the show : it is the anime that brought them back into anime, the best "simple" story written after the era of the big 3. As many people rather despise the show for various different reasons, be it the characters, the plot progression, the pacing, the recurring "power of friendship".

What's this? "It's a Naruto copy"? Well of course, this series' motto is "Good artists copy, great artists steal", after all. Even Cinderella was not spared. Of course it's a "Naruto copy" – not a good look, by ... the way – Asta literally screams in his very first scene, and doesn't seem to stop.

Honestly speaking, the show has great potential. The author actually explores some good stuff, but it comes in WAY too late for any reasonable justification. The first 60 or so episodes are especially conflicting – their pacing is wildly inconsistent (yet somehow still slow for most of it), the characters are very cliched and uninspired, events unfold very conveniently to be even barely believable (Just one example of many – Fanzell's backstory).

Even past this, and the problems up to here are WAY too vast for me to cover in a single writeup (be it copying ideas or just narrative issues), the Royal Knights Exam shines only slightly better than the, for lack of a more nuanced word, mediocrity that precedes it. Don't get me wrong – even the first 60 episodes had some redeemable qualities, that's why I kept watching, after all – but it only picks up the pace past episode 80. Black Clover defies expectations every time, but not necessarily for the better.

And honestly, I kind of understand. Considering the second half of the show's run and how good it actually gets, the buildup was necessary. Yes, it could have been done way better, and yes, it could have been paced well, but Pierrot did what they could, and it did actually pay off.

It was incredibly frustrating to see discourse say "it gets better after 80", like 80 episodes worth of content is insufficient to be engaging. However, past this threshold, the show really picks up the pace – by 120, so much has happened that the first few arcs and their flaws seem irrelevant in retrospect. Yami and Mereoleona are actually such likeable characters, and both of them got respectable amounts of screentime in the Elf Arc.

In the Elf Arc, the plot initially progresses a bit slowly, but it is not boring – that distinction is required. Fights are interesting, the initial twist is great, and the lead up to the reveal of what actually happened in the elven land is one of the best usages of unreliable narrators and lost folklore on display. For a hundred episodes, we are fed a certain story repeatedly, regarding both the Wizard King and the Elves, only for the viewer to be told that the retellings only held a part of the actual truth.

Yet what happens? Anime Canon and/or Filler episodes, the bane of the anime community's existence. Almost 30 episodes' worth, even. Does it progress the plot? No. Does it add anything important to the overall story? No. It literally kills immersion.

And AGAIN, in the last 15ish episodes, post-timeskip, the show displays how good it can be. With probably the highest production values of all batches of Black Clover episodes created till date, the climatic showdowns were never this great before. Worth sticking with it, honestly.

This is a very conflicting series. I liked it – for its occasional narrative qualities, for its characters (I warmed up to them with time), and for the heart it showed – but I equally understand if someone dislikes the show. My advice – avoid fillers and the "anime canon" episodes (or don't, if you have the ability to tolerate them).

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Nov 22, 2024

Papitaa

Not Recommended

Funny

Well-written

Black Clover has taken 2 years of my life. Was it worth it? Probably not, but it has yielded some interesting things to think about.

Its biggest crime is that the author can't write characters for shit. Stupid two-dimensional characterisation prevents it from being something greater. Cool moments occasionally make their way through hours of rubbish comedy and boring sequences led by paper-thin characters repeating their one personality trait over and over again. Let me share with you a drinking game I've come up with, where you take a shot everytime one of these things happen:

1. Asta is impressed by something
2. Noelle says a cartoonishly typical ... tsundere phrase
3. Noelle has family issues
4. Luck wants to fight
5. Gordon creepily talks about friendship
6. Vanessa drinks or talks about drinking
7. Charmy eats or talks about eating
8. Charmy is head over heels for Yuno
9. Yuno's fairy is head over heels for him
10. Mimosa is head over heels for Asta
11. Gauche is head over heels for his sister (...)
12. Finral hits on girls or talks about hitting on them
13. Charlotte is head over heels for Yami
14. Sol calls Charlotte "sister", which results in the latter getting annoyed
15. Sol hates men
16. Nero lands on Asta's head

With this, you can actually have some fun, as these things happen so often you can get hammered in the span of a single episode! Well, you get my point now.

While the plot itself does have some intense and fun-to-watch moments — such as the battle between Black Bulls and Vetto, Asta's special powers awakening (vague to avoid spoilers), the climax of the elves' scheme (same here), or Yami's poop jokes (funniest shit I've ever seen) — it is all incredibly infantile and lacks depth. The characters' motivations behind a plot point can be so shallow that at some point I legitimately viewed Black Clover as a collection of over-exaggerated parables, painfully mawkish to allegorically demonstrate the values beneath and make sure that no one misses them. And I almost accepted it because Black Clover's values are really positive and motivating, even if trite.

That's also why for a while I developed another theory that Black Clover's world is like a family - a family in which there are flaws you grow to accept and cherish the ensuing highs. For some time, I had somehow accepted the shitty things and started perceiving even the filler sequences as family time as a result of spending a lot of time with the characters.

But I think I got manipulated by Black Clover into refraining from criticising its repeated flaws, lmao. That's just bad writing. Good moments are placed within hours of either poor humour that oversimplifies the characters to the point of them seeming as caricatures, or tiresome fight scenes consisting of repetitive cant and a random clusterfuck of spells and attacks at which my brain turned off. You also can't accept lack of nuance as an intended measure — as is the case with the LOTR books, for example, where everything is set in stone and the story unfolds like fulfilling a destiny — just because it's long-running. I wonder if that's what the majority of shounen giants suffer from, baiting the audience into forgiving the flaws for an interspersed cool moment or two.

I also want to mention the last arc specifically because I think it needs individual treatment. The build-up to it is literally just one big filler that is justified by "training". Another thing are the plot twists. They have overall been quite random, forcing their way into a previously established landscape and flipping it on its head as a cheap solution to a problem. But the one with the emergence of a new character in the last few episodes is just taking the piss, you know what I'm talking about.

There were moments when I had fun, I can't lie. I also like the core ideas behind a lot of the stuff here. The poor writing is just inexcusable, though. It feels to me as if Black Clover was straight-up disrespectful towards its viewers, even if with good heart all throughout.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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