Ever since its release in 2015, Black Clover has been accused of plagiarizing from the famous shonen anime, Naruto. While fans debate that the similarities between the two are superficial, as both have different settings, it is evident that this debate is not going to come to an end soon.
Did Black Clover Copy Naruto’s Sharingan?
In February this year, before the release of Black Clover chapter 352, there was a leak of raw scans of the same chapter which sparked another war between the two fandoms.
The raw scan revealed a character using an ocular ability which felt awfully like how the Sharingan looks in Naruto. This led to a series of tweets between users on Twitter where while some accused Yuki Tabata, the creator of Black Clover of copying Kishimoto‘s work, others defended the series.
In response, Black Clover fans have asserted that Tomoe has been a part of Japanese culture and mythology and obviously goes way back than Kishimoto using it for the first time.
A Long History Of Copying
Tabata has been under fire a lot in the past with the allegations of basing his entire series on the traits of Naruto. One such major example would be Captain Yami having a similar backstory to that of Itachi from Naruto. He has also been blamed for straight-up duplicating the ocular powers to the ones from Naruto.
A Twitter user has even created a thread of 16 times when Black Clover has inspired or plagiarized from Naruto.
What Are The Differences?
While it can be said that a lot was inspired by Naruto in the making of Black Clover, it is still important to understand that this is a whole other anime with its own unique setting, characters and magic system.
While the world of this series is based on European medieval fantasy, the world of Naruto is instead based on Japanese Mythology. It can also be said the magic system in Black Clover is more complex than the chakra system of Naruto.
Author’s Response And Impacts Of The Allegations
When Black Clover came out for the first time in 2015, it faced quite the backlash from Naruto fans for being way too similar, and Tabata was under fire as he was the writer for the series. In a 2016 interview with weekly Shonen Jump, he denied copying anything from Naruto, “I’ve never copied anything from Naruto. I’ve been inspired by a lot of different things, but I’ve never taken anything directly from another series.“, he said.
Despite the controversy being over 7+ years old now, it has failed to impact the popularity of either anime as Black Clover and Naruto both remain two of the most popular anime series in the world.
Source : Anime Senpai
