Black Clover: How to Get Started With the Anime & Manga

One of the biggest current shonen series is Yuki Tabata's Black Clover. The series follows Asta, an orphan born without any magical powers in a world full of magic. Despite this limitation, he aims to become the Wizard King, joining his magically gifted friend Yuno and the Black Bull squad of Magic Knights on adventures throughout the Clover Kingdom.

The outgoing but long-running anime is bested only by its even longer manga, both of which are readily available for fans outside of Japan -- in fact, it's one of the biggest anime in the world. From streaming and reading digitally to purchasing physical copies of the books and Blu-Rays, there are tons of options that allow fans both new and old to legally support the series.

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Asta and Mars butting heads - Black Clover
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Where to Read the Black Clover Manga

The original Black Clover manga began publication in Weekly Shonen Jump back in 2015 and has since released nearly 300 chapters. These have so far been collected into 27 volumes. There are also two spinoffs, Asta's Journey to Wizard King and Black Clover: Quartet Knights, but neither have been released outside of Japan yet. There are several options for those who want to read Black Clover in its original manga form, especially if they prefer a physical book.

The series can be purchased digitally through VIZ Media's website, where the first and last few chapters are available for free. The entire series can be read digitally through the Shonen Jump app, which updates with new chapters weekly, on the same day as Japan. The app requires a subscription of $1.99 a month and has a massive library of Jump titles, both old and ongoing. Digital volumes are also available on Kindle.

The manga is also available in print on Amazon, Books-A-Million, Barnes & Noble or any other retailer that typically carries manga. As one of the most popular shonen franchises in the world and thanks to the accessibility of the Shonen Jump app, it's never been easier to catch up with Black Clover's manga.

Where to Watch the Black Clover Anime

Asta and Mars butting heads - Black Clover

The Black Clover anime ran from 2017 until this very month, for a total of 170 episodes. Due to the show's popularity, there are plenty of ways for fans to enjoy the series. For the streaming route, there are several services that offer the show. These include Hulu, Crunchyroll, VRV and Funimation. Crunchyroll in particular offers several international dubs for the many viewers around the world that don't speak English or Japanese. Users who have certain cable packages can also stream it on different devices via Adult Swim. The individual episodes and seasons are available for purchase on Amazon Prime Video. Crunchyroll also hosts the original net animation Squishy! Black Clover, which was a comedic mini-series that ran for 8 episodes.

Likewise, Funimation and Amazon also offer the Blu-Ray collections for each season, which range from $30 to $40 each and collect each season in multiple parts, along with a few extras. There were also two OVAs produced for the series for the 2016 and 2018 Jump Festa conventions, with the former essentially being a proof of concept for the resulting anime series. Unfortunately, neither of these are widely available internationally, though fans could easily watch the series without them.

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