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The Black Clover manga is finished. Yuki Tabata ended it in May 2026 with chapter 392, eleven years after it started, and the whole run fills 38 volumes in Japan. That means the Black Clover manga reading order finally has an end point. The timing matters, because the anime came back on October 3 with Season 2. A kid who watches episode 171 on Crunchyroll this fall is going to want to know what happens next long before the weekly episodes get there.
I watched the original 170 episodes myself. My kids are 11 and 13, and neither of them has picked Black Clover up yet, so this is me doing the homework before somebody in my house asks. The reading order itself is easy, since it is one manga read straight through. The confusing parts are where the anime stops, why the English volumes trail Japan by one, and whether there is a box set. (There isn’t one in English that I can find.)
Where to start
Two paths. Pick the one that matches your kid.
📺 Starting from zero. Volume 1, chapter 1. There is no English box set, so it is one volume at a time. 📺 Finished the 170 anime episodes, or watching Season 2. Start at volume 27, chapter 270.How many Black Clover manga are there?
Black Clover is 38 volumes and 392 chapters in Japan, and the story is finished. Viz Media has published 37 of those in English, with volume 37 out on August 4, 2026. The last one hasn’t come out in English yet.
The ending took a while to arrive. Black Clover spent about eight years in Weekly Shonen Jump, then moved in 2023 to Jump GIGA, a magazine that only comes out four times a year. That slowed the story to a few chapters per issue. The final arc started in August 2022 and didn’t wrap until the spring 2026 issue printed the last three chapters. Shueisha collected chapters 381 to 392 as volume 38 on August 4, 2026.
Here is the catch for English readers. Viz runs about a year behind Japan on this series. English volume 37 came out the same day as Japanese volume 38, and I couldn’t find an English date for volume 38 yet. So a kid who reads through 37 on paper will be waiting on the ending. Viz and Shueisha’s MANGA Plus both publish the chapters digitally, which gives an impatient reader a legal way to finish now.
Is the manga OK for your kid?
We rate Black Clover 14+, and that goes for the books as well as the show. Tabata draws the same revealing costumes the anime animates, and the fan service builds over the run on the page too. The fighting is fantasy magic with some blood, roughly where Naruto sits. Our Black Clover age rating guide has the full breakdown, with separate calls for 10, 12, and 14.
If your kid is 11 or 12 and wants this exact flavor (a loud kid with no powers who refuses to quit), My Hero Academia is the swap I’d make. It is 12+ in our Anime Finder, and the first box set covers 20 volumes.
Our guide to shonen anime for kids puts both series on the same age ladder as the rest of the genre, if you are weighing a few at once.
Complete Black Clover manga reading order
Black Clover is one continuous manga. Read volume 1 through volume 38 in order and you have the whole story, with no side material required. Fan wikis disagree by a chapter or two on where some arcs begin, so treat the boundaries below as approximate.
| Arc | Volumes | Chapters | In the anime? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Magic Knights Entrance | 1-2 | 1-10 | Yes |
| Dungeon Exploration | 2-3 | 11-21 | Yes |
| Royal Capital Assault | 3-5 | 22-37 | Yes |
| Eye of the Midnight Sun | 5-7 | 38-56 | Yes |
| Seabed Temple | 7-9 | 57-74 | Yes |
| Witches’ Forest | 9-12 | 75-101 | Yes |
| Royal Knights | 12-16 | 102-149 | Yes |
| Elf Reincarnation | 16-23 | 150-228 | Yes |
| Heart Kingdom | 24-26 | 229-260 | Yes |
| Spade Kingdom Raid | 26-33 | 261-331 | The first few chapters. Season 2 is adapting the rest. |
| Final arc | 33-38 | 332-392 | Not yet |
Arc-by-arc breakdown
The early arcs (Volumes 1-12)
Asta and Yuno grow up together in an orphanage in a kingdom where everybody has magic except Asta. Yuno gets a legendary four-leaf grimoire. Asta gets a beat-up five-leaf one with a sword inside that cancels magic. Both join the Magic Knights, Asta lands in the Black Bulls (the squad of misfits), and the first dozen volumes are missions: a dungeon, an attack on the capital, an underwater temple, a forest full of witches.
The start is the most formulaic part of the series. Asta yells, gets knocked down, yells louder, and wins. If your kid isn’t hooked by the end of volume 2, I wouldn’t push. When I watched the anime, this was the stretch I liked least. The cast gets a lot more interesting once the Black Bulls start getting their own fights.
Royal Knights and Elf Reincarnation (Volumes 12-23)
A tournament to pick an elite squad, and then the series turns dark. Elf souls possess Magic Knights your kid has gotten attached to and turn them on their friends, and the backstory involves a massacre. This is the longest arc in the manga and the heaviest stretch for younger readers. It is also where the fan service I describe in the age guide starts creeping up.
Heart Kingdom (Volumes 24-26)
A short training arc. Asta has to learn to fight with the devil living in his grimoire, and the Dark Triad, the three siblings who rule the Spade Kingdom, show up as the next big threat. The original anime ends right after this.
Spade Kingdom Raid (Volumes 26-33)
The Dark Triad kidnap Black Bulls captain Yami and two others, and the Clover and Heart Kingdoms team up to invade the Spade Kingdom and get them back. Devils, new transformations, a lot of backstory for both Asta and Yuno. The old anime only covered the opening chapters of this arc before it stopped in 2021, and Season 2 is adapting the rest now. It runs about 70 chapters, so there is plenty of manga here even for a kid who reads fast.
The final arc (Volumes 33-38)
I’ll keep this one spoiler-free. A new enemy comes for the whole kingdom, Asta spends part of it in a different country entirely, and the last chapters settle the question the series opened with, which of the two boys becomes Wizard King. Nothing here is animated yet. Volumes 33 to 37 are out in English, and volume 38 is still Japanese only.
Where the anime ends, and where Season 2 picks up
The original Black Clover anime ends at episode 170, which adapts chapters 268 to 270 and stops partway through chapter 270. To continue in the manga, start at chapter 270 in volume 27. You will reread a few pages, which beats missing any.
The first anime ran from October 2017 to March 2021 and then went quiet for five years while the manga kept going. Season 2 premiered on October 3, 2026, on Crunchyroll, and its first episode is episode 171 overall. It opens right where 170 left off, in the middle of the Spade Kingdom Raid.
So volume 27 is the right book for two different kids: the one who finished the old episodes and the one who just started Season 2 and wants to read ahead. One more wrinkle. Netflix splits the original 170 episodes into four seasons of its own, so a kid who says they finished “Season 4” on Netflix is at the same spot, chapter 270.
A word on reading ahead. The manga is years in front of the anime now, and a kid who reads to volume 33 will know how the whole Season 2 war ends before it airs. Some kids love that. Others would rather watch it fresh, so ask before you buy six volumes ahead.
Buying guide
There is no official English Black Clover box set. I searched Viz’s releases and Amazon, and everything I found was single volumes or used bundles from resellers. That makes this series pricier to start than Naruto or Bleach, where the box sets bring each volume down to around $4 or $5. Single Black Clover volumes run around $9 to $12, so all 37 English volumes at once comes to roughly $350 to $400.
If they are starting from zero
Buy volume 1. It is seven chapters: the orphanage, the entrance exam, and Asta getting picked by the Black Bulls. If they finish it in a day and ask for volume 2, buy two or three at a time from there. I wouldn’t buy ten up front for a series nobody in the house has tested yet.
If they finished the anime or are watching Season 2
Buy volume 27 and tell them to flip to chapter 270. Volumes 28 through 33 finish the Spade Kingdom Raid, and 33 through 37 carry the final arc as far as English goes right now. Volume 38, the ending, has no English date yet that I could find.
Black Clover manga vs anime
| Manga | Anime | |
|---|---|---|
| Filler | None. | Some filler episodes, though far fewer than Naruto or Bleach. |
| Pacing | Fast once the fights start. | Faithful to the manga, with slow stretches early on. |
| Art | Dense, busy pages. Big fights can be hard to follow. | Easier to follow in the big battles. |
| Asta | You hear him in your own head, at whatever volume you like. | He yells a lot, in both the English and Japanese versions. |
| Complete? | Yes. 392 chapters (38 volumes in Japan, 37 in English). | Not yet. Episode 170 stops at chapter 270, and Season 2 is airing now. |
For Black Clover I lean manga, mostly because the story is finished and the anime is not. The one real knock on the books is the art in the big fights. Tabata crams a lot onto a page, and when several spells go off at once it can be hard to tell who hit who. If your kid struggles with that, watching an arc and then reading it is a perfectly good way to do it.
Spin-offs, novels, and the movie
- Black Clover: Sword of the Wizard King (2023 movie, on Netflix). An anime-original story that is not in the manga. Optional. I would watch it after the original 170 episodes.
- Black Clover Gaiden: Quartet Knights (manga, 6 volumes, 2018 to 2020). A side story based on the Quartet Knights video game. I can’t find an English edition.
- Light novels (Shueisha’s Jump J-Books). Side stories about the squads and Yuno. Japanese only, as far as I can tell.
- Black Clover: Perfect Grimoire (official guidebook, Japan, August 2026). Released alongside volume 38 and reported to include 15 new pages from Tabata. For die-hard fans.
None of these are required. The 38 volumes are the whole story.
What’s next
If Black Clover clicks, the Big Three are the natural next stop, and each of them has English box sets, which makes the second series a lot cheaper than this one. Bleach is closest in tone. Naruto is the easiest yes for a 12-year-old.
Start with volume 1, or volume 27 if they already know Asta. If they ask for the next one within a week, you have your answer.
About These Recommendations
I’m George. I read to my kids for 10+ years before they started reading on their own. My wife’s a therapist who helped pick books that actually matter for development. Everything on this site got tested on our family first.
FAQ
Black Clover has 38 volumes and 392 chapters in Japan, and the story is complete. Viz Media has published 37 volumes in English so far, with volume 37 released on August 4, 2026. The final volume, 38, came out in Japan the same day and has no English release date yet.
Episode 170, the last episode of the original anime, stops partway through chapter 270. Start reading at chapter 270 in volume 27, which collects chapters 262 to 272. You will reread a few pages, and you will not miss anything.
Yes. The manga moved from Weekly Shonen Jump to the quarterly Jump GIGA in 2023 and ended with chapter 392 in the spring 2026 issue, released around May 1, 2026. The final chapters are collected in volume 38, released in Japan on August 4, 2026.
Season 2 premiered on October 3, 2026, on Crunchyroll with episode 171, which picks up directly after episode 170. That puts it at chapter 270 in volume 27, in the middle of the Spade Kingdom Raid arc, which runs to about chapter 331 in volume 33.
Not in English, as far as I can find. Viz sells Black Clover as single volumes, at around $9 to $12 each. Naruto, One Piece, and Bleach all have official English box sets, which is one reason Black Clover costs more to collect.
No. Black Clover: Sword of the Wizard King is a 2023 anime-original movie streaming on Netflix. Its story is not in the manga, so it is optional. Watching it after the original 170 episodes keeps things simple.