Classic me, I waited too long to review both volumes apart from each other, and so here we are reviewing them together again. Really they deserve to be reviewed solo, but at this point just read the damn series. It’s one of my favorite current running manga, and while I refuse to watch the show due to the shitty direction the studio picked for it, I still enjoy this manga immensely. It’s the same schtick over and over, and yet it works every volume.
Read More
It’s a complicated feeling every time I read a new volume of Black Clover. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forget that terrible anime adaptation which depicts Asta as a screaming idiot that never stops yelling his shrill, annoying voice. Yet, when I pick up a new volume of the manga, I’m instantly reminded why this is an incredible series that continues to buck the trends of other manga.
Read More
031 - Well I finally got an episode done! I guess that landmark 30th episode was just too much to top right? Huh? Wasn't it? Fucking whatever. After I rant, I do cover some current news that will probably excite some of you! It's about Vertigo Comics so just put on your jizz shorts and get ready! Now, I know I usually cover comics, but I've been reading nothing but manga this week in an effort to clear off my desk... so I'm only talking about manga. Enjoy!
Manga covered in this episode:
It's funny how so many of the manga, and really the anime adaptations of the manga, that I’ve been recommending for a few years are finally catching on. Black Clover’s anime adaptation is extremely popular for some goddamn reason. I wrote about why it’s one of the most terrible things to ever be done to a property (read here) and then I gave it the top spot on my Worst Anime of 2017 list (read here). Still, people are coming around on it, be it an inferior version of this fantastic manga.
Read More
Hey, we got through the Best/Worst of movies for 2017 and here we are on the Worst Anime of 2017. You can see the best here and look out for comic books later today. It was a rough year for anime, there's a lot of shit that could have made this list, but here are my picks!
Read More
At first, it was just the terrible voice selection and direction of the voice actors that made me dislike what I was watching. In all the pages of Black Clover that I’ve read in my head, never once did I imagine the main character constantly yelling like some idiot man-child that had watched a lot of DBZ growing up and suddenly thought yelling like Goku was “cool” to do. Maybe that’s what studio Pierrot wanted though, an instant comparison to one of the longest-running and popular franchises of all time. What could possibly go wrong copying something to such a degree?
Read More
036 - Happy Halloween! Lindsay takes it upon herself to watching nothing but horror this October, with the exception of Welcome to the Ballroom. Which means the Ballroom Beat has returned! That's right episodes 12-14 are covered on this episode of Super S!
Read More
First and foremost, you should read Black Clover vol. 7. I read it before this volume, but I don’t want to combo my review and would rather just jump to eight to stay caught up on the series with my reviews. It’s good stuff though, and worth reading, it would have scored high too.
Read More
You should be reading...
Black Clover
VIZ Media, LLC (VIZ Media), a premier company in the fields of publishing, animation distribution, and global entertainment licensing announces a substantial expansion of its catalog of published manga titles available digitally through OverDrive. An impressive update of 99 new series were made available this month to participating public and school libraries across the United States and Canada that utilize OverDrive.
Read More
Well, I’ve put off reviewing this for far too long, and some of my initial excitement has been lost to time, which is a shame because whatever I would have originally written would have been filled with joy. Probably for the best, but I will say that if I were going to do a wrestling chant for this volume, it would be “Holy Shit, Holy Shit, Holy Shit” and so on and so on until my voice gave out.
Read More
I had every intention of reviewing each volume of Black Clover one at a time, but then suddenly I had read five volumes. In fact, the only reason I’m writing this review now is to get back to reading Black Clover which has been one of the most consistently entertaining and enjoyable manga’s I’ve perhaps ever read.
Read More
You read that right, guys. Yuki Tabata's Black Clover will be getting it's long awaited anime series.
Read MoreI’m going to be the Hokage! Wait, wrong manga. I’m going to be Pirate King! Nope, sorry, still the wrong manga. I’M GOING TO BE THE WIZARD KING! There we go. Welcome to Black Clover, ladies and gentlemen. Yes, Black Clover is your typical shonen manga. Asta, a boy conveniently born without magical powers, wants to become the Wizard King of his Village. He’s an orphan and is being raised at a church. Because he lacks any magical powers, he is often ridiculed, but never phased by it. His rival, Yuna, is also an orphan - they were both left at the church at the same time - and is the complete opposite: loved by all, has great magical powers. Hell, people even claim he’s going to be the next wizard king.
Once a year, a ceremony is held for all the fifteen year olds. At said ceremony, the master of Grimoire Tower awards the teens with a grimoire, a book of magic, so to speak, that increases their magical abilities. Low and behold, everyone BUT Asta receives one. Yuno, in all his glory, received the four leaf clover grimoire, the very same the previous Wizard King had. After the ceremony, Yuno is stopped by someone trying to steal his newly acquired grimoire. A scuffle ensues and of course Asta comes to the rescue; however, as the thief is about to lay the finishing blow on Asta, a grimoire pops out from behind a brick and makes it way to him. The five leaf grimoire, the grimoire of anti-magic: a sword that can repel magic, which is pretty cool if you ask me. It goes without saying that Asta takes care of business and he and Yuno vow to see who becomes the Wizard King. Whew. That was just the first chapter!
Six month pass and all the newly acquired grimoire users are attending the Magic Knights Entrance Exam where they’re pretty much soliciting themselves to the nine squads in hopes of getting recruited. If this doesn’t sound familiar, you must not be acquainted with Fairy Tale: joining a guild,taking on missions, protecting the village/country. Same thing. I will say that this concept is presented a lot better and I’m way more intrigued here than I was with Fairy Tale. That shit got boring, fast. Anyway, our story continues from there after Asta has been recruited, welcomed and accepted by his group the Black Bulls, a lively bunch I might add. A big battle is going down on his first mission and in typical fashion, the volume ends in the middle of it. Damn you!
One aspect that I appreciated was that even though Asta and Yuna are rivals, they’re not of the bitter variety. They actually do care about each other, almost as if they’re brothers or best friends. There have been times when Yuna was in a pickle and Asta came to the rescue, even if it resulted in him getting his ass handed to him. If the opportunity arises, Yuna would do the exact same for Asta. It’s a nice dynamic to see and not your run of the mill forced to work together rivalry.
Enough bashing of the cheesy story (it gets better after chapter 4, I promise!) and let’s get to where this manga is exceptional: the art. Holy shit can Tabata illustrate. His character designs are some of the best I’ve seen. Yes, Asta is doofy looking, but what main character in this type of genre isn’t? There’s even a character, Gordon Agrippa, and he’s a spitting image of Marilyn Manson. Whether that was intentional or not is beyond me, but it just goes to show the diversity in each character and their design. The action sequences in this book are really cool. Action is not something that’s easily to pull off, especially in manga form, but Tabata really knocks it out of the park. It’s something that if translated to anime, would work really well.
Is Black Clover a real game changer? Hardly. Is it bad? Not at all. Although it follows the shonen formula to a T, it’s actually fairly entertaining. And while the storyline is generic, the art is good enough to keep you wanting to dive further into this. If you’re new to the shonen genre, I would definitely recommend you give this a whirl. It’ll take it a step further and say even if you’re not new to this, still check it out.
[su_box title="Score: 3/5" style="glass" box_color="#8955ab" radius="6"]
[/su_box]