‘Black Clover’ Season 2 Release Date: Anime Confirmed For 51 Episodes In 2018 – Can The Manga Keep Up?

Talking about the Black Clover Season 2 release date may seem like putting the magical cart before the flying horse at this point in the anime’s history, but some fans of the Black Clover manga are concerned whether or not Studio Pierrot will faithfully follow the source material. The good news is that everyone is planning for the long haul, so somebody better buy Gakuto Kajiwara, Asta’s voice actor, stock in a throat lozenge company.

Early on, Funimation initially listed the first season as only having 13 episodes, but that disappointment was corrected quickly by the official website for the anime series. There will be five Blu-ray Disc and DVD box sets released in 2018 and 2019, with each box coming with 9 to 12 episodes each. The first edition box set promises to include extras that will be revealed in Weekly Shonen Jump on December 4, 2017.

Here are the release dates for the Black Clover Blu-Ray/DVD box sets.

• Black Clover Chapter I (Volume I): February 23, 2018
• Black Clover Chapter II (Volume 2): May 25, 2018
• Black Clover Chapter III (Volume 3): July 27, 2018
• Black Clover Chapter IV (Volume 4): October 26, 2018
• Black Clover Chapter V (Volume 5): January 25, 2019

The announcement means the Black Clover anime will be at least 51 episodes by the end of 2018. The first season is being divided up into four cours, with each cour receiving its own opening and ending video. No major breaks between the cours have been announced. It’s expected that the season finale episode will air at the end of the summer 2018 anime season. Some fans predict that the season will actually be 50 episodes and that episode 51 will be a Black Clover OVA episode, but that rumor has yet to be confirmed.

Black Clover Manga Currently Enough For Second 2 And 3

Fans are hoping that the Black Clover anime does not diverge dramatically from the story of the manga, which is what happened with Twin Star Exorcists. That anime ended this past summer with 50 episodes and it was produced by TV Tokyo and Studio Pierrot, the same companies producing the Black Clover anime. Fortunately, that’s an apples-to-oranges comparison since the Twin Star Exorcists manga had much less base material available when the anime first started being produced.

The story of Yuki Tabata’s Black Clover manga began releasing in 2015 and immediately became popular with Japanese manga readers. As of the October of 2017, the manga series is up to Chapter 120 as of Volume 12. However, the manga series is up to Chapter 133 in Weekly Shonen Jump, which provides plenty of base material for the anime adaptation.

VIZ Media has already published the English translation of the Black Clover manga up through the ninth volume and they also provide free chapters on the official website. VIZ Media is scheduled to release Black Clover Volume 10 on February 6, 2018, Volume 11 on May 1, 2018, and Volume 12 on August 7, 2018. That means the English manga will be way ahead of the story of Black Clover Season 2 even before it airs in Japan.

Warning: Minor spoilers in this section of the article.

The first season of the anime will probably end somewhere around Chapter 37 of the manga, which is contained in the first half of Volume 5. It’s a logical stopping point since the story concludes with many dramatic events, including an assault by the walking dead in Clover Kingdom’s royal capital, an assassination, and a Magic Knights promotion for Asta. (This article will be updated once the first season’s finale is released.)

How can Studio Pierrot turn 37 chapters into 51 episodes? They have already begun to produce filler episodes for the anime. For example, the third episode was mostly filler and episode 7 was based on events which took place in chapter 5. Assuming the anime’s pacing and filler percentage remain the same, there is currently enough manga chapters for Black Clover Season 3, never mind just the second season.

Black Clover‘s Asta Is A New Voice Actor – Will The Studio Have Him Tone It Down?

For a series that’s being promoted by Crunchyroll as the next big thing in anime, it’s almost surprising that Studio Pierrot went with new voice talent. According to Pash Plus, Gakuto Kajiwara “won an audition to be a voice actor for Asta.” Black Clover‘s Asta is the voice actor’s first major role since he previously voiced single-episode background characters in Elegant Yokai Apartment Life, Eromanga Sensei, and Monster Strike The Anime (ONA 2).

“I’m very excited to enter the world of Black Clover as Asta, because I was dreaming of [a] magical world since I was a child!” he said. “I will aggressively keep moving forward towards the world of ‘Bla-Clo’ with Asta, who is also an aggressive boy!”

And, boy, is Gakuto aggressive, screaming into the mic so shrill that his voice drills into your brain like it’s trying to pierce through to the heavens. The Asta voice actor has been receiving a drubbing on Twitter usually reserved for bad English dubbing. Sakugabooru reporter liborek pretty much summarized the thoughts of many anime fans with the following comment.

“It’s probably been said a thousand times but listening to Asta’s voice should be considered a torture,” liborek tweeted. “Congrats to the brave people who were able to finish Black Clover‘s first episode. I wasn’t that strong.”

Funimation cast Dallas Reid as Asta for the English dub and critics agree that the voice acting is really good. Reid has played many supporting and main roles in the past, including a role in the movie One Piece: Heart Of Gold. Let’s just hope Studio Pierrot listens to the critics and makes the Japanese Asta listenable.

Black Clover Anime Poster pic.twitter.com/Oj7WMWr6yH

— YonkouProductions (@YonkouProd) November 10, 2017

Black Clover Season 2 Release Date

As of this publishing, the anime producer TV Tokyo and animation company Studio Pierrot have not announced anything official about the Black Clover Season 2 release date, although this article will be updated as soon as the anime sequel’s premiere is confirmed. However, there can be reasonable speculation about when, or if, the Black Clover Season 2 air date may occur.

First off, let’s have a terminology discussion since anime seasons can get confusing for English-speaking audiences. Continuously ongoing anime series are often referred to by the starting year. For example, the final chapter of the Fairy Tail anime is already being referred to as Fairy Tail 2018, but some fans refer to it as either Fairy Tail Season 3 or Season 8 depending on how they count. That would mean the first season of the Black Clover anime would be called Black Clover 2017. Assuming the anime takes a small hiatus, Black Clover Season 2 could be called Black Clover 2019, but it could also be referred to as Black Clover 2018 if the series is renewed without a break.

The second issue to note is that Studio Pierrot has already stated their intention to make the Black Clover anime the next Naruto, which they also animated. The similarly-themed Naruto ran its five seasons back-to-back, so if Black Clover Season 2 follows in the ninja’s footsteps then the second season will release in October of 2018, the fall anime season.

The comparisons to Naruto do not end there. The loud-mouthed ninja wannabe worked his up way from a small village to have a MyAnimeList score of 7.85, while his son Boruto pulled off a decent shadow clone with a 7.30 score. So far, the loud-mouthed Wizard King wannabe named Asta is only receiving a 6.65 score and has been criticized for its shonen cliches. Will the anime be popular enough to justify Black Clover Season 2? Stay tuned!

[Featured Image by Studio Pierrot/Black Clover Anime TV Still]