The Fall 2026 Anime Preview Guide

Black Clover Season 2

As tyranny engulfs the Clover Kingdom, Asta and the Magic Knights launch a desperate raid on the Spade Kingdom to rescue their squad captains from the Dark Triad. But their mission leads them into a brutal battle against forces beyond anything they've ever faced. Now, Asta must rise above impossible odds to protect his friends and honor the promise he made to Yuno.

Black Clover Season 2 is based on the manga series by Yūki Tabata. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Saturdays.

Note: The reviews below are based on an early screener provided by Crunchyroll. The anime series will premiere on October 3.

The original Black Clover's dedication to kicking off almost every single one of its 170 episodes with a brief primer is honestly pretty respectable. It's as though every week, the anime is saying, “Hey, we know you're about to watch episode 100-something. Odds are, this isn't your first time here. But uh, just in case it is, here's what's up.” This is to say that the first episode of season 2, opening with a similar recap-slash-primer, really felt right. Instantly eased us right back to where we left off in spite of the fact that it's been five years since we last saw Asta and co., and it was also an okay recap that reminded us of just how odd the note the first season ended on was—with Yami and Vangeance's lives hanging in the balance, and the Dark Triad on the precipice of ending the world.

To get even more specific, we open with Asta, his newly befriended Liebe, and Nacht all training, and then ultimately, the group sans Asta (who seems to be right behind them) gets on their way into the Spade Kingdom. I'm trying to be fair to this second season, which didn't really have a choice in where it could start. But still, one can't shake the feeling that this is such a weird place to end season 1 and start the second. This episode does what it can, focusing on Asta and Liebe's training, but narratively it's just such an odd spot. Still, the action we got was all things considered in this episode. I'm curious about Liebe, and especially Nacht—whose abilities we got a little taste of, and admittedly, I'm pretty curious to see more. Speaking of which, the general animation quality definitely looks like a step up. It's especially noticeable on everyone's faces. I'm really curious to see how this translates to some of the bigger action scenes once we get there.

I'd consider myself a Black Clover agnostic—neither a particular fan nor hater of the series. It has its highs, its lows. I've seen better, I've seen worse. And fitting right in with the first season, this episode's perfectly middle-of-the-road—especially considering it's how we're kicking off the second season five years later. Still, Black Clover's biggest strength is how well its fight scenes work, and since our protagonists end the episode having just arrived at the Spade Kingdom, some nice, hearty fight scenes seem imminent right out of the gate. Including fight scenes involving Nacht, and one presumes Liebe—meaning we probably won't have to wait long to see them go full force. So for that, at least, I'm excited.

I have watched all of Black Clover in over two short weeks. It's crazy. By all means, this is not a good show. And yet I've developed a strange attachment towards everything about it. Asta's constant shouting. Yami's poop jokes. The overlong fight scenes. The dungeon arc that feels like it was stolen from a generic isekai light novel. The exotic, remote locale of “Arandom Village.” A reincarnation arc that is the corniest take on Invasion of the Body Snatchers I have ever seen. And so on and so on and so on. At this point, I am convinced that for better or worse, Black Clover is cinema. I'm not even that big into shonen, yet I must confess that I found some of Black Clover's fight scenes pretty cool. Don't get me wrong: Black Clover is the slapdash fusion of tired shonen tropes everybody and their great-grandmother has harped and clowned on many times over by now. But I'm sorry. For all of its corny battle shonen melodrama and its many, many, many, many flaws, I simply cannot find it in me to rag on this show. I might not like Black Clover, but damn it, I love it.

The best way I can sum up this new season premiere is this: it is a masterpiece. At least by Black Clover standards. It is the best way a new season of Black Clover can start, giving us great fights backed by impressive art and intriguing moments without music. We're back to where the first season ended, with Asta and his devil Liebe becoming friends before having to fight Nacht, who united with his own devil to become even more powerful. Swords swing, demons get slashed, and Asta yells, like, a lot. It's tight fight choreography. One section of the fight uses just whites, blacks, and reds in its color scheme to give it a violently experimental, minimalistic look that's pure eye candy. There are also a moment or two in this fight devoid of non-diegetic music that I find very effective; it lets us focus on the action without a forced swell of music telling us to feel excited. Similarly, there's a later fight between Mereoleona and a kaiju popping out of nowhere that also rejects non-diegetic music. It's almost like Black Clover is going all No Country for Old Men on us. At least for a few moments. The music does come back to force emotion into its action, and it's a buzzkill whenever it does. Especially when one track plays like the type of saccharine orchestral piece Georges Delerue would compose if he drank six beers while watching Fairy Tail.

The fights are the best part of the episode. Part of me feels I'd like the episode more if it were just fighting. The rest of the episode reintroduces the B-plot of Yuno, the Magic Knights, the Spade Kingdom's resistance fighters, and the ongoing war against the Dark Triad. Minus the kaiju sequence, it's mostly people standing around, blurting out exposition and a few jokes to reintroduce the supporting cast. I get why you need to do this, especially in the first episode of a new season (especially one taking partway through a story arc). But narrative-wise, I'm completely checked out. Maybe it'll get better, but for now I'm just here for the fights. This isn't that original of a take, but for me, this anime basically ended with the Reincarnated Elf arc. Asta basically slew evil incarnate in that one, the very same bad guy whose villainy was the catalyst for the entire series. Where else can you go from there? But okay, Asta just...sigh...has to become Wizard King somehow, and I guess Asta can't simply snag a Planet Fitness membership and do squats to achieve his goal here. He, the Magic Knights, and the Black Bulls have to stop a new group of baddies from taking over the world. Fine. And I guess the show has to give Yuno something to do, since he's a prince now. Great. He's still the same boring, stoic rival character he's been for all one hundred and seventy-one episodes of this show's run, and toppling the Dark Triad won't make him any more interesting.

As you might have guessed by now, this is a solid Black Clover episode. Not great, not bad. It is acting in the typical mode it's operated in since day one: fight scenes punctuated by yelling, a few scoops of unnecessary, awkward comedy, and, for added zest, Naruto-running through the halls because why not. At least it's showing off its better side this time around. Oh Black Clover, you weirdly likable piece of shonenslop. Never change.