Black Clover is the latest anime to crash Fortnite’s Halloween event. Epic Games announced on Saturday, October 3, that the Black Clover anime is appearing in Fortnite Battle Royale for the annual Fortnitemares event, with Asta, Yuno and Noelle added to the game as player cosmetic skins.
The announcement carried the tagline “Don’t lose hope in the nightmare,” and the three characters are now in the Fortnite Shop. Epic had teased the collaboration in the Fortnitemares trailer on September 29, which briefly showed an Asta cosmetic in his Devil Form. In the Shop, the game tells players, “Take on the Island’s curses with the help and magic of your friends!”
What is in the bundle
The Black Clover set is larger than a simple skin drop. It includes the Asta, Yuno and Noelle skins; back bling in the form of Asta’s Grimoire, Asta’s Devils Wings, Yuno’s Grimoire and Noelle’s Grimoire; pickaxes including Asta’s Demon-Slayer Sword, Spirit of Boreas and Noelle’s Wand; and an Anti-Magic weapon wrap. A Nissan GT-R Nismo with a Black Clover car body and two Anti-Magic tires is also available for players to buy.
Fortnitemares is Fortnite’s long-running autumn event, and Epic has used it for anime crossovers before. Pairing the collaboration with the show’s new season gives it a clear promotional logic: the game reaches players who may not follow seasonal anime, while the anime reaches viewers who may not play Fortnite.
The new season, and where the manga ended
The timing is not a coincidence. A new season of the Black Clover anime debuted on Saturday, with Studio Pierrot returning to animate and Crunchyroll streaming it. That season follows a long gap for the series, and we covered its new visual ahead of the October 3 premiere.
The source manga, created by Yūki Tabata, launched in 2015 in Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump before moving to the quarterly Jump Giga in 2023, where it eventually concluded this past spring. Viz Media released the manga in print and digitally, and Shueisha’s MANGA Plus service released it digitally as well.
The anime itself premiered in Japan in October 2017. It was originally listed with 51 episodes but continued into new seasons in October 2018 and October 2019, and its 170th episode aired in March 2021. The feature film Black Clover: Sword of the Wizard King opened in 2023, and Netflix debuted it on June 16, 2023. Crunchyroll streamed the series with subtitles while Funimation handled the English dub, and the show also ran on Adult Swim’s Toonami block.
Why it matters
Video game crossovers have become one of the more effective ways for anime franchises to stay visible between seasons, and Fortnite is the biggest stage for that. For Black Clover, which spent years between anime installments, the combination of a returning season and a mass-market game event is a strong one-two push.
Whether the collaboration extends to other Epic titles or to additional Black Clover characters has not been announced. The skins are live in the Fortnite Shop now.
Source: Anime News Network
Featured image: Black Clover’s Fortnitemares collaboration art, via Anime News Network.
