Is ‘Black Clover’ Copying ‘The Walking Dead’ With Its New Baddies?

Black Clover recently put a bookend on its second big story arc, Dungeon Exploration, and has made the first step into its third arc, Royal Capital. As teased by the new opening for the series, Black Clover introduced a new set of villains for this arc.

But those villains brought something new with them, something that copies AMC’s popular The Walking Dead and many other horror stories, zombies. The latest episode of Black Clover introduced zombies into its magical world.

In the latest episode of the series, the Royal Capital was attacked by a unknown group of terrorists. At the forefront of this attack is this mysterious Wizard with an eyepatch named Rades. He’s got a big grudge against the Clover Kingdom for an unknown reason, and he’s challenging the Clover Kingdom’s Magic Knights with a scary new ability.

His magic ability allows him to summon zombies, which have ravaged the people of the Clover Kingdom. Even after being hit by the magic of the Magic Knights, they do not stop advancing. Much like zombies in The Walking Dead, these zombies do not stop even if they lose limbs, take hits to the chest, or cut in half. The only way to stop them is destroying them completely.

Black Clover introduced zombies out of pretty much nowhere, and it paints the series in an exciting light as anything can happen in this world now. Whether or not this is copying The Walking Dead, it is taking the idea of zombie in general and putting a magic spin on it.

If you are unfamiliar with Black Clover, the series debuted in Shonen Jump back in 2015 from creator Yuki Tabata. The since popular series follows two young boys named Asta and Yuno who are growing up in a world where magic is everything. Asta, unfortunately, seems to have been born without magical powers while Yuno is a young prodigy whose magical powers rival that of the strongest magic users in the Clover Kingdom, the Magic Knights. The story then follows the two young boys as they strive to become the strongest wizard in the Clover Kingdom, The Wizard King.

Studio Pierrot‘s Black Clover adaptation premiered in Japan on October 3 and is currently slated for a hefty 51 episodes. You can currently find the Japanese language version with English subtitles on Crunchyroll, and the English language dub on FunimationNow and Saturday evenings on Adult Swim’s Toonami block.

The Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9 pm ET on AMC. Fear the Walking Dead will debut its fourth season after The Walking Dead concludes its eighth, at 10 pm ET on April 15.