Black Clover Comeback Crosses a Rare Milestone That Has Us Excited For the Series Finale (2024)

Black Clover has reached a milestone few shōnen can claim. The series has never gotten a fair rap from the anime community. From its first issue, the deeply underappreciated shonen has been denigrated for being derivative, uninspired, and held up by its heavy use of familiar tropes.

However, ahead of its series finale, Black Clover is finally getting recognition from anime fans writ large. The manga has impressively broken into the top five on Shueisha's MangaPlus platform after its three-chapter comeback in Jump GIGA's Autumn 2024 issue. To some extent, this rise in popularity is intuitive—but there's more to the story than just that.

Black Clover Has Several Explanations Behind Its Success

There Are Many Ways To Rationalize Black Clover's Growth

There are two main explanations for Black Clover's success at the eleventh hour—or, more precisely, during its yet-unnamed eleventh arc. The first is generally true for any long-running franchise: manga readership tends to grow significantly during a final arc. The second is relevant to Black Clover specifically: after years of a weekly release schedule, Black Clover has moved to a quarterly release under GIGA. Intuitively, 4 chapters per year are much easier to follow than 52.

Looking outside Black Clover, two motivations could easily drive more traffic toward the manga. On one hand, there's Netflix's release of Black Clover: Sword of the Wizard King, which presently holds a 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. On the other hand, there's the very simple motivation underlying the film's success and hype: people are starved for more animated Black Clover content. Black Clover's fifth season is taking forever, with no end in sight.

In that situation, it's only natural to start reading the manga instead, especially if it's nearing its end. Anime adaptations are generally intended to advertise their source material, after all, especially if the franchise is nearing its end. However, all of these explanations risk undercutting the fact that Black Clover is simply a good series, and only getting better. The last couple of years have seen Black Clover coming into its own as a series and obliterating the claims fans would make to argue that it doesn't deserve special attention. The road to its finale has been wild.

Black Clover's Success Was Long In The Making, And The Finale Is The Payoff

Black Clover Has Been Misunderstood For So Long, But It's Getting The Last Laugh

From the very first issue, Black Clover has consistently caught comparisons to other series—most notably, Naruto. Even Black Clover fans will grant this comparison. But Black Clover is doing so well because it's always had bigger ambitions than copying the stories, themes, and ideas of other shōnen. Now that it approaches its finale, those ambitions are starting to fully take shape, and it's enthralling.

Black Clover never really copied Naruto, or any other shōnen for that matter. It was always an open love letter to shōnen as a genre, but it was also always in the business of building on and subverting ideas from other shōnen. When a character or scenario is compared to a more popular shonen, Black Clover always has a plan to do more with it—even if it's not immediately apparent. Consider how Yami was considered a ripoff of Itachi and Kakashi for years, only for the manga to finally slap it back at those detractors by showing just how different Yami is.

This isn't a reach, either. Black Clover's mangaka is fully aware that many only see it in terms of other "better" series, and he laughs in the face of that fact by writing it into the story itself. This chaotic joy at the heart of Black Clover's storytelling has always been there, but as the story develops, it enables such unexpected twists and turns—which become all the more unexpected, by virtue of the fact they seem so familiar at first.

No Naruto fan reasonably thought the Wizard King would deviate from the conceptual mold cast by the Hokage; at worst, they would suspect a few bad apples in power, just like there were (supposedly) only a few bad apples among the Hokage and Konoha's high-ranking shinobi. But Black Cloverintentionally uses the Wizard King to undermine the very foundations of its setting, with far-reaching implications for the social fabric so far established.

With every twist, it becomes clear that for hundreds of chapters, Black Clover has been a mirage within a smokescreen only just starting to clear. Every page is a premeditated effort to write a story so faithful to its inspirations that it undermines them from within—a clever, but risky, approach. Where many series try (and often fail) to rewrite the book on shōnen storytelling, Black Clover instead recites it, mispronouncing and substituting words to make a point. Much of the fanbase is only just now starting to catch on.

Getting A Read On Black Clover's Finale Is Rough

The Trick All Along Was That It's A Good Thing

This revelation of the fact that Black Clover had always intended to distort the tropes of its inspirations layers the wait for new chapters with suspense, anxiety, and impatience. Broadly speaking, moving to Jump GIGA during its final arc is the best decision Black Clover could have made. With four months between releases, the battle choreography is now tighter, the dialogue is more considered, and the presentation is immaculate.

But then, sitting on top, there's also the inherent to Black Clover's masterful game of subversion. Black Clover was among the first to introduce many traits definitive of modern shonen, like Jujutsu Kaisen and Demon Slayer, because of its ability to regularly execute unexpected, highly creative ideas with total proficiency. The result is the most creative, hype-propelled shōnen to never be called either of those things by most anime lovers—including Black Clover fans themselves.

This raw, chaotic creativity and deft execution permeates throughout the entire series. Not every twist or tweaked trope in Black Clover is great, but it's very hard to think of one that isn't at least good. This is why it's important not to deflate the MangaPlus milestone by saying it's because Black Clover is ending. It's because Black Clover deserves it.

Firstly, Black Clover's anime-to-manga pipeline is incredibly good. Viewers were brought on board with the comfort of a battle shōnen that, while fun, seems a tad cliché. Then, with one clever innovation or tweak at a time, the whole feeling of comfort unravels. This thrilling quality is perfectly evident in the anime, and the suspense almost certainly makes for a high conversion rate from anime to manga.

Secondly, the aforementioned quality is what makes it so that, presently, the wait between new chapters is more excruciatingly seductive than ever. It's no wonder that so many people are keyed into its finale. The present manga release schedule takes advantage of its beautiful deceptions with equally beautiful results.

Black Clover is finally getting its day in the sun as it builds to its ending because it's spent a very long time making itself a mystery.

Let Yami's unexpected transformation in Autumn 2024's Jump GIGA be a final example, and get hyped. There's a great chance Black Clover's ending will be unexpected. That means there's an even better chance it will be jaw-dropping.

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Black Clover

TV-PG

Action

Adventure

Animation

Asta and Yuno, orphans with a shared dream of becoming the Wizard King, follow distinct paths: Yuno with natural magic abilities, and Asta through determination despite his lack of powers.

Cast

Dallas Reid , Jill Harris , Cris George , Christopher R. Sabat , Micah Solusod , Brandon McInnis , Justin Briner , Sarah Wiedenheft , Bryn Apprill , Lydia MacKay

Release Date

October 3, 2017

Seasons

4

Streaming Service(s)

Crunchyroll , Hulu , Netflix

Franchise(s)

Black Clover

Writers

Kazuyuki Fudeyasu , Kanichi Katou

Directors

Tatsuya Yoshihara , Ayataka Tanemura

Main Genre

Action

Creator(s)

Yūki Tabata