Black Clover volume 36 announcement explains why the upcoming chapter is only 28 pages

Following a nearly four-month absence, the Black Clover manga is finally set to make its return in December 2023. Fans were pleased with the announcement, as they had finally gotten a release date for the same. However, not everyone was pleased because, as per the announcement, the upcoming manga chapter is only set to have 28 pages.

Black Clover manga, written and illustrated by Yuki Tabata, is a Japanese manga series that began its serialization in Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump in February 2015. However, following the release of chapter 368, the manga stopped its serialization in the weekly magazine and is set to resume publishing chapters in the quarterly Jump GIGA magazine.

---

The upcoming Black Clover manga's low page count could be the result of volume 36

Ryuya Ryudo as seen in the manga (Image via Shueisha)

On Thursday, November 30, Black Clover manga finally revealed the release date for the upcoming chapter, which will be released in Jump GIGA 2024 Winter magazine. This chapter will be released on December 25, 2023.

In addition, the manga also revealed that it will be featured on the cover and will also be releasing lead-color pages, posters, and stickers. However, the piece of information that has gotten everyone hooked is that the chapter will only be 28 pages long.

Black Bulls as seen in the manga (Image via Shueisha)

Since this announcement, fans have been disappointed that, even after a wait of over four months, the chapter will feature a low page count. Meanwhile, they had expected the chapter to have about 50 to 60 pages. The thing fans feared the most was whether all upcoming chapters would have a similar page count.

It was when some fans theorized that the low page count might only be an occurrence for the upcoming chapter. As noted by them, the number of chapters yet to be collected into a new volume had a low page count. Hence, it would have become difficult to compile them together for the series' volume 36.

Black Clover characters as seen in the manga (Image via Shueisha)

With 28 pages for the upcoming chapter, the manga's chapters can be compiled properly into a volume. The chapters that have been released up until now have about 140 pages in total. Additionally, it is customary for a volume to have about 20–25 pages of advertisements and bonus illustrations.

Together with the new manga chapter, the series should have the appropriate page count for the next manga volume.

That said, not every fan believed the theory, as they were led to believe that the majority of fans were trying to cope with the bad news. That's when Shueisha's latest announcement confirmed the theory.

Black Clover volume 36 is set to be released on Friday, February 2, 2023. Given that Jump GIGA magazine's next issue won't be released until later, it confirmed that the new chapter set to be released in December 2023 was the missing piece the series required to compile volume 36.

Therefore, fans can likely expect Black Clover manga's future chapters to have a longer page count. However, the same cannot be confirmed until the publisher or the manga creator, Yuki Tabata, announces it. If the same does get announced, fans can expect a chapter page count of 50–60 pages, starting from Black Clover chapter 370.