Black Clover Season 1 (Blu-ray) Unboxing

Black Clover is a 2017 television anime series based on a manga series written and illustrated by Yūki Tabata. The anime was adapted by studio Pierrot and published by TV Tokyo. The series aired during the Autumn 2017 anime season in October.

Background:

“Asta and Yuno were abandoned together at the same church and have been inseparable since. As children, they promised that they would compete against each other to see who would become the next Emperor Magus. However, as they grew up, some differences between them became plain. Yuno was a genius with magic, with amazing power and control, while Asta could not use magic at all, and tried to make up for his lack by training physically. When they received their Grimoires at age 15, Yuno got a spectacular book with a four-leaf clover (most people receive a three-leaf-clover), while Asta received nothing at all. However, when Yuno was threatened, the truth about Asta’s power was revealed, he received a five-leaf clover Grimoire, a “black clover”! Now the two friends are heading out in the world, both seeking the same goal!”
Plot Synopsis via Manga Entertainment, July 2020.

With Bleach and Naruto concluded, My Hero Academia on-going and Hunter x Hunter on hiatus, there was another series that started to gather attention over the past few years – Black Clover. Honestly when I first heard about the series, it was described as a Naruto clone. Eventually the series started to gather a following and apparently the story gets much better (everyone has their opinions of course).

Studio Pierrot adapted the anime and it basically got the Naruto treatment. That meant the pacing slowed down and there’s filler involved, though fortunately it seems as of July 2020, only 9 episodes are filler of the 136 episodes released so far. They did confirm that the latter half of Season 3 would have a unique filler arc where it’s filler but supervised by the author as it’s set during a time period that was not adapted.

Crunchyroll acquired the English speaking rights for the series and is among the few titles that Funimation will continue to simuldub and release the home video version for. In North America, Funimation released the series across five parts per season with one of the sets having a limited edition box and another set having a booklet. In the UK, we don’t get that due to some complications.

Basically Funimation at a certain period, were distributing select anime under Sony Pictures UK which did not go as planned. Black Clover Season 1 Part 1 got a Blu-ray & DVD combo pack in a fat case, PAL discs and were priced pretty high. Eventually Manga Entertainment became the new distributor for Funimation titles (then later being bought by Funimation themselves) and released Season 1 Part 2 onwards. Fast-forward to present time and Manga Entertainment were finally able to release a complete collection for the first season.

Unlike the part sets, the complete season sets will not come with a slipcover and that’s the same with the North American release.

Regular Edition & On-Disc Contents:

Distributor: Manga Entertainment
Released: 27th July 2020

Black Clover Season 1 contains episodes 1-51 across ten Blu-ray discs using the Funimation author. The audio options available include the main Japanese language with English subtitles and the Crunchyroll English dub. The white subtitles are locked during playback, and the regions are locked to B for Blu-ray.

The discs are the same as the previous part sets, however, Manga Entertainment never released Season 1 Part 1 before. Fortunately Sony Pictures UK simply used the Funimation transfer so there’s no difference in terms of the transfer (however DVD owners will have to deal with PAL discs). The disc itself is basically re-used from the previous release so there will inconsistency in terms of the artwork. Here’s the rundown of the episode count across the ten discs:

Season 1 Part 1	Disc 1: Episodes 1-6 Disc 2: Episodes 7-10
Season 1 Part 2	Disc 3: Episodes 11-17 Disc 4: Episodes 18-19
Season 1 Part 3	Disc 5: Episodes 20-25 Disc 6: Episodes 26-29
Season 1 Part 4	Disc 7: Episodes 30-35 Disc 8: Episodes 36-39
Season 1 Part 5	Disc 9: Episodes 40-46 Disc 10: Episodes 47-51

The episode count is like this because Funimation matched the Japanese Blu-ray volumes design.

Blu-ray Specs:

Languages	English, Japanese
Audio	English Dolby TrueHD 5.1 Japanese Dolby TrueHD 2.0
Video	1080p High Definition Native format 16:9 aspect ratio
Region	B
Subtitles	English
Locked Subtitles	Yes
Discs	10