Black Clover

The series focuses on Asta, a young orphan who is left to be raised in an orphanage in a rural village alongside his fellow orphan, Yuno. While everyone is born with the ability to utilize mana in the form of magical power, Asta was born without mana, and thus has no way to use magic. Instead, he focuses on physical strength. Conversely, Yuno was born as a prodigy with immense magical power and the talent to control wind magic.

Motivated by a desire to become the next Wizard King, an authority figure second to the king of Clover Kingdom, the two youths developed a friendly rivalry. Yuno obtains a legendary four-leaf grimoire held by the kingdom's first Wizard King. The four-leaf grimoire is a rare grimoire, only given to the most immense mages. Asta, despite his lack of magic, obtained an enigmatic five-leaf grimoire that contains mysterious elf swords and a bodiless member of the Devil race who utilizes rare anti-magic. Afterwards, Asta and Yuno each join a Magic Knight squad as the first step to fulfill their ambitions.

Manga author Yūki Tabata started in the manga industry at the age of 20 and worked as an assistant for seven years before his science fiction one-shot Hungry Joker was briefly serialized in the Shueisha magazine Weekly Shōnen Jump for 24 chapters from November 12, 2012, to May 13, 2013, before being canceled. Tabata considered this manga a failure which he attributed largely to its quiet and dark-natured main character, who was very unlike the author himself. After its cancellation his friends advised him to develop an energetic, happy-go-lucky protagonist that more closely resembled Tabata and he began working on the fantasy-themed one-shot for Black Clover. After its publication, he was assigned a new editor (Tatsuhiko Katayama) and Shueisha picked up the series for full serialization.

The weekly production process for Black Clover involved Tabata consulting with Katayama for the first few days on the thumbnails of the chapter then spending the remaining days composing the actual art. Tabata credited himself for coming up with a rough outline and ending for the chapter while Katayama aided him in filling in its content and making corrections. Early in the series the artist claimed to only sleep an average of three hours per night due to stress, but after the anime adaptation of Black Clover began airing he was able to increase this to six hours per night. As of at least the seventh volume of Black Clover, he did not utilize digital tools in his drafting, opting for traditional "analog" inking and toning by hand.

In 2016, Black Clover ranked ninth on the second Next Manga Award, presented by Kadokawa Corporation's Da Vinci magazine and Niconico streaming website; in the same year, the series ranked third on the "Nationwide Bookstore Employees' Recommended Comics" by the Honya Club website in 2016.

Tokyo-based dispatched labor company Staff Service included the series on a list of three manga series about protagonists who struggle to overcome their own weakness and self-doubt, recommended for low self-confidence people.