Zogratis Siblings Still ALIVE??? Black Clover FUTURE SEQUEL VILLAINS?? Black Clover Volume 38 Extra Content Explained

The final volume of Black Clover, Volume 38, releases on August 4th, alongside the guidebook and a 15-paged extra manga.

However, this final volume comes with a rather controversial draft that could explain the final chapter’s conclusion.

Birthday Celebration

The release of Volume 38 coincidees with Yuki Tabata’s 42nd birthday today on July 30, 1984.

Zogratis Siblings Are ALIVE???

From the rubble of Clover Kingdom after the Last Judgment, the final battle against Lucius Zogratis, we see Vanica and Zenon emerge, somehow alive.

Their bodies were stored in orbs behind Lucius’ throne in Chapter 344: “Writhing Sacred Pulse” so that Lucius could use his siblings’ Magic, fusing Body, Blood, Bone, and Soul to create new bodies.

Their Devils, Megicula and Beelzebub, are also alive and back within them, which is troublesome.

Now they are alive, but somehow, Dante is just…a head, which is funny and fitting due to his Body Magic enabling him to survive as just a head.

What if the Zogratis siblings are the leaders of the new faction with the airship trying to attack the Clover Kingdom during Asta’s reign as Wizard King?

Too Long; Didn’t Read

Tabata’s Stories: The summer tale talks about Tabata’s interests in beetles, which he shares with his daughter. She just started primary school and Tabata dreams of playing Pokemon games with her.

Tabata’s Life: Tabata and Asta share the same height because he stopped growing by junior high school. He struggled when he moved to Tokyo and his worst six months involved his first serialization, Hungry Joker, getting cancelled.

Tabata’s Marriage:  Tabata also shares another similarity with Asta; even when he got rejected, he never gave up and kept proving himself until he won his wife’s heart.  Tabata’s wife, who is three years older than him, is confirmed to be the inspiration behind Charmy. He made the Black Clover one-shot prior to his wedding Also, Tabata’s wife is strong due to her being a camerawoman and having a grip strength of 40kg.

Sketches

We see young Asta and Yuno sketched here, as well as Licita, Asta’s mother, napping.

Tabata’s Stories

We have a number of stories about Tabata’s life, two short ones about a summer night and of his daughter, and his autobiography at the end.

A SUMMER NIGHT’S TALE

Late one night last summer: I was working in my room when, from the direction of the corridor, an odd noise: “migi… migya migya…”

“Eh…? What was that just now?” “Migya… migigi…”

“Huh? What is it, what is it, scary, scary. …Ah, is Ameri (our dog) up to something…!?” I nervously opened the door: “…Ameri isn’t even in here…”

“Migigigi…” “!? No, really, what IS that noise!?” I had a proper look around.

“…sliiide.” “!!?”

…Yes. A Sumatran giant flat stag beetle.

As you all know: a Sumatran giant flat stag beetle.

A ridiculously huge foreign stag beetle that an acquaintance had given my daughter had smashed through the plastic grille at the top of its case with its jaws, and was making its escape at that very moment.

If I’d still been a child this would have been the most thrilling thing in the world, but seeing it as a grown adult in the dark, it was more of a “that’s massive…! terrifyiiiing…!”

Since it had gone to all that trouble to break out, I watched it swagger about for a while, then quietly put it back in its case.

That year for her birthday, my daughter bought a Hercules beetle.

Oh, young Tabata of years gone by… when you grow up, you’re going to buy that Hercules beetle you always longed for…

And an Atlas beetle, and a Lacordaire’s stag beetle, and a golden ogre stag beetle, and a rainbow stag beetle, and a Papuan golden stag beetle, and a Japanese giant stag beetle, and the larvae of all sorts of others besides…

Oh, and there are the goldfish we scooped by the netful at goldfish scooping, and the medaka my wife has been breeding like mad…

Tabata’s Daughter’s Story

“My daughter started primary school.

I’m a doting parent, but she really is just adorable!!

The things she’s into lean a bit boyish, though.

She likes football and baseball.

She puts on a Barcelona kit, tears about the place and practises her batting.

She likes insects too.

At home, butterflies are forever hatching, emerging and flying off.

In the little wood near us, which is really more of a park that’s practically a forest, she is always turning up stag beetles.

She finds them even in October.

No sooner have I said “there’s no way there are stag beetles about in October!” than she finds one.

I’m genuinely impressed by the parks in Tokyo. Our house is full of insects. It struck me that this is karma coming back for the way I caught every insect I possibly could as a boy and left all the looking after to my parents. I’m dreading this summer.

She’s good at drawing and at writing, too.

She plays the piano as well.

Her piano teacher told us “she has a real feel for it!”, and when I, hopeless with any instrument, laughed and said “a feel for it??”, I got a mild telling-off: “This is no laughing matter!”

She’s also somehow lucky. She’s forever winning figures on the Ichiban Kuji draws.

She gave me a Vegeta figure from Dragon Ball.

And she loves Pokemon. She knows more Pokemon names than I do, and I’ve known Pokemon since secondary school. She buys Pokemon cards by the armful.

It struck me that this, too, is karma coming back for all the Dragon Ball cards I bought as a boy.

My dream of one day playing Pokemon games together with my own child looks like it’s about to come true.

Thank you, daughter!!”

Tabata’s Autobiography

“What an opening line, I know, but the younger me was a seriously romance-minded person. I always wanted someone to like, someone to make my heart race. And I wanted to hurry up and find the person I could love for the rest of my life, share the good and the bad with, marry, and stay beside forever.

I was the kind of young guy who makes me cringe just writing it down.

It’s not much to brag about, but in elementary school I could draw, I was fast, and I was decent at sports, so I was popular.

But an elementary school boy is a creature who can’t do anything with being popular. And I was an idiot who understood nothing.

Then I hit junior high and puberty exploded. Still clueless about everything, I wanted a romance so badly I couldn’t stand it. I’d watch the dating show Ainori that was on back then and roll around in agony on my bed. And right around junior high, I stopped growing. (About Asta’s height.)

Well, no luck!! A clueless little shrimp with his hormones exploding gets nowhere!! No luck in junior high or high school!! No luck in my part-time job years!! No luck after I moved to Tokyo!!

A loud little shrimp who still understood nothing, aiming to be a manga artist… yeah, of course nobody was interested!!

Then, at a drinking party my manga artist friends invited me to, I met the woman who is now my wife.

(Part 2)

My wife is a former camerawoman who came to Tokyo around the same time I did.

She has brothers, so there was always shonen manga around her family home, and she’d read more Weekly Shonen Jump than I had.

A bright, easygoing person. (Charmy is modelled on my wife. My wife is a lot more sensible, though.)

At the drinking party we were seated next to each other, the conversation took off, and I got carried away. Really that was only because she’s a great listener, a great talker, great at keeping a table lively, and friendly like that with absolutely everyone.

But I, who nobody ever paid any attention to, fell for her completely and asked her out to a meal again right away.

Apparently she had no particular interest in me at first, but she came along anyway, on a “well, this guy doesn’t seem like a bad person” sort of level.

We ate together a few times, and then made plans to meet on New Year’s Eve that year.

Giddy, romance-minded me went in floating on air, figuring that if the mood was good I’d confess… My wife was furious.

After dinner at an izakaya, she calmly explained why she was angry.

At other drinking parties I had been going around asking her acquaintances things like, “I’m in love with C-san (my now-wife), what do you think?”

She found out about it, and told me off: it was embarrassing, so quit taking that to her friends.

I’d been on cloud nine a minute earlier, and now I went pale and apologised my head off.

We saw in the New Year on an unbelievable note.

(Part 3)

Having seen in the New Year in that unbelievable fashion, I sank into despair, thinking “it’s over…”, and stood there with my head hanging in front of the ticket gates at Shinjuku Station on New Year’s Day.

Nobody has ever been sorrier about anything.

My wife took one look and was appalled.

Well, yes, of course you’d be appalled. You don’t often meet a grown adult that pathetic.

What she was thinking at that moment, apparently, was: “What do I do? If I leave this bloke like this, he might die.” …As if anyone would ever fancy a guy like thaaaaat!!!

But even so, I did not give up!!!

After that I asked her out to a meal again!

My wife was astonished, she says, because she’d meant that to be the finishing blow! And yet, somehow, she said yes!

“This guy… he’s got guts…!” she thought!

And also: “If he ever tried anything, with the arms I built up in my mad camerawoman years, I could knock him flat!” (Grip strength: 40kg)

From there I pushed on with pure guts, and she agreed to go out with me.

I was 27 at the time, my wife three years older, and I was absolutely set on marriage.

Thanks to my own foolishness I was getting knocked about by my wife, and knocked about by my editor at the time, Robo Koike, all while I kept drawing storyboards for a serialisation.

One day, while my wife and I were enjoying our first ever trip to DisneySea, Koike-san rang.

With all the noise around us I could barely make out a word he said, but it was the news that my previous work, Hungry Joker, had been picked up for serialisation.

My wife and I were delighted, but after that I was so distracted that I couldn’t enjoy DisneySea any more, and she got cross with me.

(Part 4)

I lived through the worst six months of my life, mentally and physically, and my first weekly serialisation ended in cancellation.

I was utterly wrecked, but, still absolutely certain I was going to make it, I proposed to the wife who had supported me and we married. (The surprise was a failure.)

“I think you’ll make it, but if you don’t, I’ll go out to work and support us,” said my rather dashing wife.

Next I’d draw whatever I loved, no matter what!

So I drew the Black Clover one-shot, held the wedding, and set about building the serialisation storyboards for Black Clover.

It was a now-or-never moment for landing a serialisation, and on the day the storyboards were due they still weren’t done.

I was drawing right up to the last possible second in a meeting room at Shueisha, which rather put off Katayama-san, who had only just taken over as my editor.

Then we enjoyed our honeymoon, and at the airport on the way home I heard the news that Black Clover had been greenlit.

The two of us celebrated together, and that brings us to today.

Later on, hearing an editor say to an author who’d made it big, “From now on, every woman who comes on to you is after your money,”

I think how glad I am that I managed to marry before I was successful.

Me, unpopular, howling and groaning and thoroughly putting off everyone at the studios I assisted at: you’re happy now! Good for you!

Later your wife will tell you, “Early on I turned you down about three times, in a roundabout way,” and you’ll be gobsmacked! Lucky you never noticed! And that wife of mine is now extremely fond of an idiot like me. That is
the thing I am proudest of!”

Tabata’s Story: The End

AFTERWORD

” I really came to feel that manga gets made through the strength of all kinds of people and that it was through meeting all kinds of people that I was able to draw Black Clover.

To all the editors who took charge of the series over the years — I’m truly sorry for dragging every single one of you through hell. Thank you for making manga together with me!

To all the staff over the years – I’m sorry for running you ragged.

Thank you for drawing the pages alongside me!

To everyone in charge of the collected volumes, and to the designers- I’m sorry for always keeping you waiting. Thank you!

To everyone on the media side — thank you for spreading Black Clover far and wide!

To everyone at the printers – I’m truly sorry for all the trouble I’ve always caused you. Thank you!

To the sensei who drew wonderful manga and sent it out into the world – thank you for the dreams, and for something to aspire to!

To all my fellow manga artists – thank you for the inspiration!

To my friends — thank you for my youth!

Mom, thank you for giving birth to me and raising me!

To my wife, thank you for supporting me and being by my side!

To my daughter, thank you for being born and for letting me watch you grow!

Ameri, thank you for watching over me!

To all my readers — thank you for reading, and for cheering me on!”

– Yuki Tabata

Final Message

Tabata’s final message with a pic of his wife, daughter & dog:

“To everyone who read it and cheered me on – thank you so very much!!!

Thanks to you all, I somehow managed to finish drawing it. Never giving up is my manga!!!”

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