I wasn’t a big fan of the Rock Lee manga when it came out and I can’t say that this one was any better. With a series like Black Clover it’s always hard to picture anything short of pure brilliance but this series manages to go under my expectations time and time again. I dare say it has even more constant crude humor jokes than Pac Man which is absolutely crazy. You can barely go a page without something sad happening here. Yeah this is definitely a series to avoid at all costs.

The basic plot is the same as the main series. Basically Asta wants to become the Wizard King at all costs and he will do whatever it takes in order to achieve his dream. Along the way he has met up with many allies and has made a name for himself. Can he really become the king though or is that just a pipe dream? With only 13 chapters at the ready the series is over quickly at least which is really the only positive thing I can say about it. Otherwise it’s definitely brutal so lets dive into this.

The main negative of course is the comic relief as I mentioned. There are constant poop jokes in every chapter, the characters can’t seem to keep their pants up and the whole thing’s sad. The worst part about this is really just that it isn’t funny. At no point will you be cracking a smile or anything like that. You’ll just be wincing the whole time and I won’t even be able to blame you. That’s how sad this got after a while. A chibi spinoff or any comedic title needs to be able to generate laughs and this one just couldn’t pull it off.

The art itself isn’t even that bad. Technically speaking I think you could do some fun things with this style but the series never had any intention of being good. I feel like even fans of crude humor would probably get bored quickly since it is just the same joke on repeat for the entire series. Realistically who is going to have a good time with that? It’s also abridged enough where you will only really be following along if you’re a fan of the original Black Clover series so that narrows the audience (slightly) more. I’d have preferred a clever spinoff with fun references.

Think about Dragon Ball Sd for example. That was a really fun series because it actually throws in a lot of fun references and callbacks. You should be able to easily do that in any kind of homage because there are a lot of things to reference. Or give us some quality fight scenes for fun. I’ll always take that and maybe switch the timelines around so you can do matchups that we didn’t see in the main series. Basically any direction instead of the one that this story went in would have been a good idea.

None of the characters are remotely likable and basically they are all just one note versions of themselves anyway. It’s not like you’re reading this series for character development and depth anyway but at least give the characters some dignity. Without any character to like then there is little point in reading the series. You’re not going to get invested with any of the characters or what’s happening. I mean there’s barely a plot anyway but having good characters would have done a whole lot to get around that negative.

Because this is a gag manga there also just isn’t a whole lot to talk about. If there were funny jokes I could talk about that but there really isn’t. So after covering the crude humor which is 90% of the series anyway, and the art then that’s about it. This is absolutely a story that should be forgotten to time and I feel bad for the author who had to waste his time with this. This title only beats very few manga that I’ve ever read like Black Bird and Black Butler but otherwise this has to be in the runnings for the worst manga out there.

It stings even deeper when you consider how amazing Black Clover is. The Sd series should have been treated with respect like Chopperman and Vongola GP. Now those were chibi titles that really made the most of their runs time and time again. At least we got Quartet Knights a while back so the series had at least one good spinoff. I have to be grateful for that at least but then a part of me still just wanted so much more. I don’t think it’s too much to ask for.

Overall, Black Clover Sd is awful. Truly horrendous on all sides and you should absolutely skip this one. It makes for a very hard read because you’ll be cringing the whole time which can’t be good for your face. At least the series wastes no time in wasting your time because it starts off rough right from the very first chapter. It’s not a bait and switch where it started out good or anything like that so I can’t even say that it fell off. This was probably the worst route it could have gone with but the series decided to go through with it anyway. It’s a shame but sometimes that’s just how it goes.

Overall 1/10