Anime | Manga Black Clover-Thoughts So Far (Chapter 74)

[The 13th Kenpachi 4,279]

Black Clover is written by Yuuki Tabata, it follows the story of Asta (or Aster) who dreams of becoming the Sorcery Emperor (The equivalent of Pirate King or Hokage). He's got this rival called Juno who one ups him in everything (Juno looks like Sasuke and also Zeref from Fairy Tail). Aster is born without mana (basically chakra) so he sucks at being a wizard. Aster is poor and comes from the bottom of his own society.

 

Wizards/mages form these little guilds and using their grimoires they cast spells. So that's all you need to know about the world for now.

 

Is Black Clover a 'good' shounen battle manga in these 74 chapters so far?

 

Short answer-If you love Naruto and Fairy Tail, you'll eat this up. I recommend you read it.

 

Long answer

 

Most battles are resolved with friendship power ups *vomits but it's done in a decent way that's somewhat believable. It's a notch above how painfully Fairy Tail does it.

 

The artwork reminds me of Bleach a lot, current Bleach not old Bleach. The author uses these huge panels to show off his art style, especially during fights. Unfortunately, the fights aren't very clear and it's hard to see what's going on (The Water Temple Arc is the main example of this problem).

 

However, the panels are spaced out well and unlike Bleach there's a good amount of dialogue and you can get through a chapter in a good amount of time (4-5 minutes). There's a lot of meat to these chapters in short.

 

Story? Like I stated, it's Naruto and Fairy Tail's love child. The main character is a loser who rises his way up through the ranks with willpower, luck and the help of his friends from his guild. Although the friendship power ups were cringy, it's still bearable to an extent.

 

The teamwork aspect is enjoyable and a good method of avoiding random power ups at the last second. But like I said-the friendship power up is still present in this manga.

 

If I were to describe this manga in a single word it would be 'disappointing'. The way the world is established it seems like this vast open world with a bunch of awesome locations! Sounds great doesn't it? Wizards, magic, grimoires, villages, kingdoms and mythical monsters!

 

But so far the manga has just repeated itself. Aster goes on a mission or quest, villains show up out of nowhere, aster and his friends team up and use friendship to kill the bad guy. The last 3 arcs have been this. I'll give the manga a pardon for Aster's first quest since it wasn't repetitive back then.

 

This manga suffers from the same problem that Fairy Tail does.

 

I'll use the Water Temple Arc as an example to express my feelings. We get there and we see this huge temple with all these people and then instantly we're thrown into yet another batch of fights with ZERO build up. No time to explore the temple, meet people and learn their stories or learn about the temple-just a random batch of fights won in the most mediocre way possible.

 

I'll compare this to Land Of Waves in Naruto since these arcs are extremely similar. We get to the village in that manga/anime, but a whole before that we've already met our villain-Zabuza. Naruto and Sauske train together, we learn about that village's past and we meet the young boy and the family of the construction worker. We learn how the boy's father sacrificed himself to save the village (Or something like that). We KNOW the history and the backstory of the place we're in.

 

Black Clover doesn't do that at all. Without build up, how can I possibly care about anything this arc has to offer me? We do learn partial back stories for the main characters but those are thrown in randomly and it's typical shounen shit anyway.

 

Characters? These are actually quite tolerable and entertaining from time to time. A few of the characters have a sort of personal goal they have to reach. Aster wants to be Sorcery Emperor, Noelle wants to prove her family wrong, Grey wants to protect his sister, Leopold and Juno also want to be Sorcery Emperor. It'd be great if we could get inside their minds a little more.

 

I do feel that the main character's development is way to fast. Chapter 1 he's weak as shit and 30 chapters later he's magically strong and taking out all of these different villains. It should be more of a journey to become stronger than a race.

 

The verdict? So far I'd give this manga a 5 which is an average on My Anime List. Very average indeed. Like I've stated, if you love or like Naruto and Fairy Tail then I recommend this manga for you.

 

I know there is a big Fairy Tail fan base on here, so that's why I'm doing this.

 

Of course this manga is nowhere near completion so my opinion will definitely change within the next 100 chapters or so. I'd like to see an anime adaptation of this manga within the next year and I hope the current arc is good!