Being an artist means drawing influence from your favorite artists to create your own style, and being a mangaka is no different. Before a mangaka can serialize their work, tons of research goes into precedents set by famous works as well as the best art styles in the field, and Yuki Tabata is no different.
Black Clover is Yuki Tabata’s masterpiece, but it is also an amalgamation of everything that has inspired the author. And the list includes everything: from the manga he read in his childhood, to the ones he had to compete with as rivals.
Yuki Tabata’s Art in Black Clover Shows Influences from Various Shonen Favorites
As I stated before, Yuki Tabata‘s art has been influenced by various other mangakas who are also masters of their crafts. The first similarity that I found was between Black Clover and Fairy Tail‘s linework. The way Tabata drew his characters in the manga is very similar to Hiro Mashima’s style in Fairy Tail. Even the structure and definition of limbs are similar.
Next is Yoshihiro Togashi, the author of Hunter x Hunter. Togashi uses a lot of lines, and his artwork holds many scratchy details, which can also be found in Black Clover. The narrow eye shapes that Togashi creates in his characters are similar to those found in Black Clover. Eiichiro Oda loves to create double spreads in One Piece, where his artwork gets highlighted over the course of the two pages, and Yuki Tabata has also done the same with Black Clover.
Yuki Tabata has also drawn influence from Bleach, especially when it comes to panel structure. Tite Kubo has some of the most dynamic art as well as panels among Shounen manga, and the same aesthetic sense could be seen in several Black Clover panels.
Yuki Tabata has Openly Talked About What Inspired Him
Yuki Tabata had reminisced that the first anime he ever watched was Dragon Ball and when he learned it was based on a manga, he also decided to be a mangaka. Since then, he has been inspired and influenced by various works, both popular and unpopular. He loves Yu Yu Hakusho by Yoshihiro Togashi, and as a mangaka, he is bound to have borrowed a bit of the artstyle subconsciously to fit into his own series someday.
In a July 2018 article, Tabata also detailed how Berserk by Kentaro Miura left an impact on him. The battles, story, as well as environments of the manga, were an important source of inspiration for Tabata, and he had always wanted to make something in the same spirit but for the Shonen audience. Another 2018 interview showed his library, which contains works like One Piece, Attack on Titan, Dragon Ball. Fullmetal Alchemist, Slam Dunk, Yu Yu Hakusho, Hunter x Hunter, and many others.
Tabata also loves Bleach and has openly admitted to it. He also claimed that Black Clover was influenced by Bleach. Nonetheless, it is only natural for mangakas to be inspired by other great seniors and rivals, and Yuki Tabata is no exception. He has always been open about what influenced him, and if you read Black Clover with an eye for detail, you can also find similarities with Tabata’s favorite manga.
Black Clover manga is available to read on Viz Media, and the anime is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.
