Warning! Spoilers ahead for Black Clover chapter 328!
A flashback of Asta’s mother Licita and his current devil partner Liebe disproves a theory from a much older Black Clover chapter that suggested Asta could have been born with magical powers.
In the unofficial fan translation of chapter 328, Licita tells Liebe about her son Asta, saying she had no choice but to give him away because of her inherent power that sucks the life force and mana of those around her. While Licita’s confession makes her situation all the more tragic, as she clearly loved Asta, what’s particularly telling in this translation is that she fails to mention that keeping Asta in her life would have resulted in him losing mana. She just says that he would have lost his life force.
It’s also crucial to realize that she uses the word “eventually” to explain the amount of time it would have taken her to suck away Asta’s life force. This creates the impression that the same would have happened to his mana if he had any to begin with. In other words, if Asta were born with mana, then he wouldn’t have lost them immediately. So, it can be assumed that, seeing as Asta obviously didn’t lose his life force, he wouldn’t have lost all of his mana had he been born with any. What this means is that it’s now highly unlikely that Asta could have either been conceived or born with magic. Fans first began speculating at this possibility when Black Clover first revealed way back in chapter 268 that Licita had been driven from her village because she sucked the mana and life force of those around her. It therefore made sense that Asta could have had powers but lost them because of his mother’s ability.
Although this would have made Licita’s life even more tragic, there are undoubtedly a few fans – if not more – who would prefer that Black Clover didn’t explain the reason why Asta was born magicless. Sometimes, it’s better to just leave some mysteries unsolved. The prospect that Licita stripped Asta of his powers was actually one of the few ways in which Black Clover’s Asta wasn’t as effective as My Hero Academia’s Deku, both of whom were born powerless. Until recently, My Hero Academia never hinted that Deku could have been born with powers, which just made it more special that All Might just so happened to have been born the same way and that this made Deku the perfect inheritor of One For All since he could also wield all of the previous users’ own quirks. Though, My Hero Academia did recently hint that All For One may be the one to blame.
That said, there would be some poetic justice in Licita being what connected her son Asta with Liebe. Like Asta, Liebe was born powerless, and the only reason why he could generate anti-magic was because of the hatred that spawned from Lucifero killing Licita. Since Asta can only wield anti-magic since he doesn’t have any powers of his own, in essence, that would have meant that Licita brought the two of them together. Licita may have stripped her son of his magic, but this allowed him to partner with Liebe who empowered Asta through magic he gained because of what had happened to the same woman. Of course, this could still very much be the case if the official translation differs that much from how fans translated chapter 268. Read Shonen Jump’s official installment of Black Clover this Sunday to find out.
