After 11 years, Black Clover has at last handed Asta the ending fans have been waiting for — but was the wait worth it?
Scans from Yuki Tabata’s new guidebook, Perfect Grimoire, are making the rounds online, and they appear to finally show what the manga itself never did: Asta standing in the Wizard King’s robe at his coronation. It’s the image fans waited years to see, now tucked into a companion book due out in Japan next week.
Perfect Grimoire is scheduled to publish in Japan on August 4.
Black Clover ran in Weekly Shonen Jump from February 2015 through this April, an 11-year sprint that moved more than 24 million copies in print. Even as one of the magazine’s top sellers, its finale stopped short of crowning Asta on the page, making this guidebook leak feel like long-promised closure.
The moment lands because of the grind that got him there. Asta started with no magic at all, pushed constantly by rival-turned-ally Yuno, and kept climbing through some of the series’ biggest crises:
- Eye of the Midnight Sun plotline
- The elf possession arc
- The Spade Kingdom war
- Back-to-back showdowns with Lucifero and Lucius Zogratis
There’s also the symbolism: much like Naruto finally being named Hokage, seeing the Clover Kingdom’s nobles — the same people who once dismissed Asta — now answer to him gives the story a sense of payoff the main run skipped.
Loose threads
According to the leaked pages, Perfect Grimoire focuses on the ceremony itself, and several long-running mysteries still aren’t resolved. Among the open questions:
- Asta’s father remains unnamed
- Charmy’s dwarven background goes unexplained
- Yuno’s deeper ties to the Spade Kingdom get only a brief nod
- Whether Asta’s rule changes life for commoners or stays a noble title is left unclear
The official book lands in Japan on August 4. Separately, the Black Clover anime is slated to return this October.