After four years, Black Clover is finally back with an exciting announcement hyping up the anime’s next season, but there’s a big problem. The returning anime’s upcoming season has been announced and promoted as “Black Clover Season 2,” which already exists. Despite fan expectations that the new installation of the series would be labeled Black Clover Season 5, Studio Pierrot’s upcoming project went a different direction.
A mistake like this highlights the divide between the Japanese animation studios that create anime and the international audiences that consume them, and it’s already killing Black Clover’s comeback. As one of the most beloved shonen anime series of the modern era fights to find its footing again, Black Clover desperately needs damage control to make up for what boils down to a completely avoidable mistake.
Black Clover’s New Season Failed Its First Real Test
Black Clover fans never demanded perfection from this beloved yet flawed series, but some flaws are too damaging to overlook. Immediately after Studio Pierrot announced the new Black Clover season back in July at Los Angeles’ Anime Expo 2025, confusion erupted inside the fandom and reverberated throughout the entire industry. Much like One-Punch Man Season 3’s most egregious animation fail so far, in which the male character King the Ripper was accidentally animated using a female body model, Black Clover has now also invented a new mistake for the anime industry to avoid: naming seasons in the wrong sequential order.
What veteran anime fans and even casual audiences assumed would be titled Black Clover Season 5 is being promoted as Black Clover Season 2, and nobody has a good answer for why. Every episode of the Black Clover anime released to date is generally broken down into four seasons, meaning that Black Clover Season 2 is already taken as a title. Even if this widely accepted version of the seasonal breakdown isn’t officially recognized, it’s certainly in Black Clover’s best interest to adapt to the terms audiences have applied to the series for years instead of insisting on a title that doesn’t make sense to fans and breaks the pre-established logic of the industry.
Black Clover Seasons, Episodes & Release Dates
Season
Episodes
Episode Count
Release Dates
Black Clover Season 1
1–51
51
October 3, 2017 – September 25, 2018
Black Clover Season 2
52–102
51
October 2, 2018 – September 24, 2019
Black Clover Season 3
103–154
52
October 1, 2019 – December 1, 2020
Black Clover Season 4
155–170
16
December 8, 2020 – March 30, 2021
Fortunately, Studio Pierrot can still fix this mistake by simply renaming the new Black Clover season, and there are plenty of creative options to explore in this regard. Admittedly, it’s already too late to rename the new season to Black Clover Season 5 without causing another storm of confusion now that it’s been introduced as Black Clover Season 2. On the bright side, it’s an easy choice to look to Black Clover’s manga for the answer.
Black Clover’s next season will presumably pick up where the series left off with what manga fans know as the Spade Kingdom Raid Arc, creating the perfect opportunity for a rebrand as “Black Clover: Spade Kingdom Raid Arc.” The creative forces behind Black Clover have a big decision to make, and following in Bleach’s footsteps by giving this reboot a name akin to Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War or the franchise’s 2023 film, Black Clover: Sword of the Wizard King, is far from the worst or most confusing alternative.
Black Clover Should’ve Been 2025’s Biggest Anime Comeback
The fatal flaw of Black Clover’s highly anticipated announcement is that calling the new season “Black Clover Season 2” just isn’t going to catch on. Black Clover’s 4-year hiatus has built up an incredible amount of anticipation for the new season, but the anime landscape has also significantly evolved since then. Although Black Clover: Sword of the Wizard King has maintained a 100% Rotten Tomatoes score since the film’s debut in 2023, one movie isn’t enough for a franchise to coast by on in the new era of anime greatness.
Black Clover is up against some of the most robust modern anime ever created, many of which didn’t even exist before the 2020s. Chainsaw Man and Cyberpunk: Edgerunners rewired anime fans with intensely cinematic appeal in 2022, Apothecary Diaries and Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End brought bold femininity to the forefront of anime in 2023, Dandadan and Solo Leveling stunned screens with striking visuals and breathtaking action in 2024, and Gachiakuta and To Be Hero X have consistently surprised fans at every turn in 2025.
Black Clover’s anime momentum is practically limping across the finish line at this point. However, fans’ love for the story and the ongoing manga are two strong pillars upholding the legacy of the series until the new season can speak for itself. That said, even Black Clover’s manga struggles with delays that also contribute to slowing down the anime’s momentum. It’s clear that shonen anime fans still have a lot of love for Black Clover after all this time, but that’s not enough on its own to make the series a success.
With a 4.8 out of 5 rating on Crunchyroll from 242.2 thousand reviews, Black Clover is within striking distance of series as beloved as Dandadan and That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime (both sitting at 4.9 with just over 260 thousand Crunchyroll ratings). To be a success, the next Black Clover season desperately needs to capitalize on everything that the manga, anime, and the fandom have built together — and that all starts with a new name.
Black Clover is streaming now on Crunchyroll.