Five and a half years after episode 170, the Magic Knights are back, and the first thing everyone noticed was how good it looks.
Black Clover stopped on March 30, 2021, with episode 170 and a promise that the story would continue. On October 3, 2026, nine years to the day after the series first aired, it did. Season 2, Episode 1, "The Battle Begins," premiered on TV Tokyo and hit Crunchyroll the same morning, with Studio Pierrot back on production and Ayataka Tanemura directing.
Wanima's "Kienai Riyū" opens the season and One or Eight's "Yellow Brick Road" closes it. The episode had already screened at Anime Expo in July and in Crunchyroll's theatrical Anime Nights in September, so the reviews were waiting. The fan reaction was not.
Warning: spoilers for Season 2, Episode 1 below.
Nacht pushes Asta and Liebe to a one-second Devil Union
The premiere opens where episode 170 left off: Asta and his devil Liebe in training with Nacht Faust, the Black Bulls' vice-captain, who wants them to master Devil Union before the raid.
Nacht does not ease them in. He fights them in his own devil-united form, and the sequence is the one everyone is talking about. Large stretches play in near-monochrome, whites and blacks with red cutting through, and with no music under the hits. Anime News Network's Jeremy Tauber called it "tight fight choreography" and "pure eye candy."
Asta and Liebe do get there. Their wills line up and Devil Union holds for a flash, then collapses. Nacht's verdict is blunt: go into the Spade Kingdom like that and you die. So Asta stays behind to keep training while everyone else leaves.
The raid leaves without him
The rest of the episode is the board being set. Yuno trains with Langris Vaude for a rematch with Zenon, the Dark Triad member who beat him and took William Vangeance. In the Spade Kingdom, Dante, Vanica, and Zenon hold Yami and William as fuel for the Qliphoth ritual, with the mage Morris working to open the path to the underworld.
The Clover Kingdom's strike teams move out. The Spade resistance clashes with the Dark Triad's forces. Then an ancient demon breaks loose, and the episode ends on Mereoleona Vermillion arriving in a flash of fire and hitting it first.
That final image is why the episode is a premiere and not a prologue. The war has started; Asta is the only one not in it yet.
"We are so back": fans say Pierrot finally gave Black Clover a budget
The reaction online was about the animation before it was about anything else.
October 3, 2017: 'BLACK CLOVER' aired its first episode October 3, 2026: 'BLACK CLOVER' Season 2 airs its first episode 9 years apart to the exact day. It's finally here.
Black Clover Season 2 Episode 1 Debuts With a 9.4/10 IMDb Rating
On MyAnimeList, where the episode's discussion thread passed 140 replies in its first days, the mood was the same.
OH WE ARE SO BACK!! Black Clover has never looked so good before! All of this is just a massive upgrade from the previous season. I hope they maintain this consistency.
PEAK FICTION IS BACK, and it is like it was never gone. high stakes going on right now
We're so back. All the big hitters are on stage.
Mereoleona's thirty seconds got their own fan club.
Mereoleona 🔥 via Black Clover Season 2 Episode 1
After 5 years it's finally back. It's enough to make me teary eyed. My queen, Mereoleona is here <3333
Not everyone was blown away
The dissent is quieter, and it is about the structure, not the look. CBR's Demi Phillips gave the episode a perfect score but noted that some scenes "function primarily as setup." ScreenRant's J.R. Waugh said the real excitement is "largely withheld ahead of upcoming episodes." On the ANN preview guide, Kennedy landed in the middle, calling the animation "a step up" but the episode itself a familiar primer.
Fans who felt that way said it faster.
pretty mid tbh, while the animation was good the overall episode was pretty mediocre to me
this is just like the calm before the storm, bc will go crazy after ep 5
The other recurring complaint was the opening. Several MyAnimeList posters called Wanima's theme underwhelming next to the show's past openers, while the One or Eight ending drew praise. And at least one returning viewer summed up the five-year gap in three words.
I remember nothing
What's next
Episode 2 streams on Crunchyroll on Saturday, October 10. Asta is still training, the raid teams are inside the Spade Kingdom, and Mereoleona has an ancient demon's full attention.
TalkAbtIT is hosting a public watch party for Episode 2 that evening at 8 PM ET. Open the episode on Crunchyroll with the extension installed, press play at 8, and the comment section runs live with everyone else watching.
