Black Clover‘s anime was quickly approaching a big issue as Yuki Tabata’s current chapters of the manga aren’t actually that far ahead. It was because Tabata had decided to keep the brisk pace of the manga going strong by having a six month long timeskip that was completely skipped over in the manga. It was here that Asta and a few other Magic Knights underwent some training in order to better handle the devilish new threats of the Spade Kingdom. While fans didn’t mind this at first, it’s becoming clear that the series is dealing with all new kind of power system that should be better explained.
It seems like both Tabata and the team behind the anime felt the same way as Black Clover announced its very first original anime arc filling in that six month training gap from the manga. Now while “filler” might make fans cringe considering how many other Shonen Jump anime series have abused it, this isn’t that bad of an idea. In fact, it could be quite good for the anime series.
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Black Clover’s anime is not devoid of original anime material, mind you, as the series most recently debuted a two part long flashback reliving the events of the anime thus far, but it’s not the worst when it comes to handling original material. The first real example came from when it adapted material seen only in a side novel story featuring Asta’s sword master. This story was also skipped over in the manga, but the anime took time to note how important Fanzell Kruger was to the story overall before he made a bigger appearance during the Witches’ Forest arc.
Seeing the anime entering an original anime arc shouldn’t scare you off, however, as the training arc will most likely give fans of the manga a better grasp of its current events. When Asta and the others reach the Heart Kingdom, they’re introduced to a new power scaling system never mentioned before with magic divided into various Stages — with Stage 0 being the strongest and Stage 9 being the weakest.
Taking place in between Chapter 228 and 229 of the series, this training period has Asta working with the princess of the Heart Kingdom and learning more about these Stages. They also all get a big power boost, and while that was great to see in the manga fans of action anime series know that sometimes showing is better than telling. We don’t know how long this new training arc will be, but it probably won’t be a bad thing to see Asta working to reach his new level of power.
What do you think? Is Black Clover‘s anime taking some time to show Asta’s training a bad idea? Would you rather it skip right to the where the manga is an fill out time that way? If not now, when could the series add in some filler content? Should it just take a break instead? Let us know your thoughts in the comments or talk to me directly about all things anime and other cool things @Valdezology on Twitter!