I can't believe how much hate this series is getting on here. YES it has elements from "Naruto". YES it is heavily inspired by "One Piece". BUT it HAS original ideas!! It HAS unexpected plot twists!! It HAS complexity and... why is it bad that it reminds us of our beloved "Naruto" and "One Piece" to begin with??
Let me explain. "Black Clover" is neither a rip-off of "One Piece" nor of "Naruto", although I have to admit that it felt like that to me as well AT THE BEGINNING! For example it has this whole Tenryuubito style discrimination going on, the magic is just like Ninjutsu and Mars' background story was just like Zabuza's but Yuuki Tabata made much more out of it. Actually this sentence sums it up quite well: Yuuki Tabata made much more out of it! It combines the best and ONLY the best parts of "One Piece" and "Naruto" and thus takes the Shonen genre to a whole new level! It feels like a natural evolution as it omits all the flaws its predecessors had. As much as we all like Naruto as a character it is very hard to like Sasuke and Sakura. While the three main protagonists in "Black Clover" share the same character dynamic as team 7 from "Naruto" and are somewhat similar, Noelle is much more likeable than Sakura and Yuno is much more sympathetic than Sasuke.
Let's take a look at "Naruto"'s biggest flaw: He was ALWAYS a loner and had to win his battles all by himself no matter how hard Kishimoto tried to pretend that his friends were also important for the story because... they were not if you are honest to yourself! Team 7 was non-existent for the biggest part of the manga and Naruto and Sasuke take so much screentime that characters like Ino, Tenten, Rock Lee, Kiba and so on lose any relevance by the beginning of "Shippuden" (not to say that Tenten ever had any relevance to the story). So here we have what makes "Black Clover" superior: The members of the Black Bull stick together! They fight together! They live together! They stand together! A lot like the Strawhat pirates from "One Piece". Each of them alone is a loser who can't accomplish anything but together they are undefeatable and their incredible teamwork is what turns the worst squad into the best squad over the course of the series. Thanks to Yami who brought this odd bunch together and Asta who managed to give all of them confidence in themselves. This part already is what makes "One Piece" better than "Dragon Ball" where characters like Yamcha and Chaozu can never catch up to Goku and Vegeta and are therefore left to die over and over again. In "One Piece" there are lots of instances in which the weakest two - Nami and Usopp - save everyone's asses and in a similar way "Black Clover" gives every member of the Black Bull time to shine and I'm pretty sure that by the end of the series everyone of them will surprise the reader at at least one point in the story. In fact most of them already did.
The art style resembles "BLEACH" which is also a big plus as BC's artstyle is outstanding in the same way!
Then there is Julius Novachrono. I just HAVE to mention how great he is. He is everything that the third hokage wasn't and is more like an adult Naruto so you just have to love him as a character and human being.
Because of that his death is so much more painful to me than the death of the third hokage although both die in the same volume (vol.16 of their respective mangas)
So just shut up and continue reading this! While the story of the elves is a bit similar to the Edotensei plot in "Naruto", it is delivered so much better in BC and in that arc the story gets really complex - even similar to something written by CLAMP. I really love "Black Clover" as someone who has read a lot of shonen and so will you if you stop being so biased!
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