Black Clover

Black Clover (Japanese: ブラッククローバー, Hepburn: Burakku Kurōbā) is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Yūki Tabata. It started in Shueisha's shōnen 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 tankōbon 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 (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" 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.

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.

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 seinen series Berserk by Kentaro Miura was a heavy influence on Tabata. He wanted to craft a shōnen 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.