Claymore

When a shapeshifting demon with a thirst for human flesh, known as "youma," arrives in Raki's village, a lone woman with silver eyes walks into town with only a sword upon her back. She is a "Claymore," a being manufactured as half-human and half-youma, for the express purpose of exterminating these monsters. After Raki's family is killed, the Claymore saves his life, but he is subsequently banished from his home. With nowhere else to go, Raki finds the Claymore, known as Clare, and decides to follow her on her journeys.

As the pair travel from town to town, defeating youma along the way, more about Clare's organization and her fellow warriors comes to light. With every town cleansed and every demon destroyed, they come closer to the youma on which Clare has sought vengeance ever since she chose to become a Claymore.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Clare Main

Kuwashima, Houko Japanese

Raki Main

Takagi, Motoki Japanese

Teresa Supporting

Park, Romi Japanese

Miria Supporting

Inoue, Kikuko Japanese

Galatea Supporting

Orikasa, Ai Japanese

Irene Supporting

Takayama, Minami Japanese

Ophelia Supporting

Shinohara, Emi Japanese

Jean Supporting

Mitsuishi, Kotono Japanese

Riful Supporting

Mizuki, Nana Japanese

Helen Supporting

Nagasawa, Miki Japanese

Cook, Justin Producer

Maruyama, Masao Producer

Tamura, Manabu Producer

Nakatani, Toshio Producer

Reviews

Oct 23, 2007

Master10K

Recommended

Claymore is a Shounen, Action, Adventure anime in a Fantasy, Medieval setting. The story basically revolves around a specific Claymore "Clare" and her companion "Raki" as she goes from town to town, slaying monsters known as Yoma.

From the beginning the story is very easy to follow. You have Claymores (strong female warriors) and it is the job of these Claymores to slay the Yoma. The story basically follows Clare as she travels to slay these Yoma, which get increasingly difficult to defeat as the story goes on. As a character Clare is developed so well that your opinion of her will change constantly throughout the ... series. Knowing her past before she became a Claymore and her current self makes it hard to believe that those two are the same person. What's disappointing is that some of the other main characters are not as developed as Clare but at least they produced good enough results. Raki being the main supporting character is really the only annoying character and doesn't really bring much to the story. As the story goes on it changes completely from the original hunt and kill Yoma, onto a more interesting and compelling storyline with amazing battles.

The fight sequences are just amazing and what helps it is the superb animation quality, thanks to "Madhouse" (also producer of "Death Note"). A lot of detail is put into every aspect of animation, with amazing lighting effects, detailed backgrounds and realistic character models. It is great to see all this kept during the bloody fight sequences however I do feel some corners are cut which just loses some of its essence (e.g. when the arms move so fast it does the typical DBZ speed attacking effect).

The music is fantastic with a magnificent orchestral score mixed in with some wicked bass and rockin' tunes. It's perfect in setting the right atmosphere; drama or action, it does well in both however there are times, mostly during fights, that the music can get a little messy.

Overall this ends up becoming an interesting anime that actually brings something new to the saturated shounen anime market. It manages to stay true to the manga storyline throughout however the story ends up moving at a very fast pace but the benefit of this is that every episode counts and there isn't any screen time wasted by: pointless flashback, training episodes, prolong deaths, etc. It's a shame that the anime deviated from the manga slightly near the end, which is bad news to manga fans and it means there's less chance for it continuing.

^_^

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Nov 5, 2014

ktulu007

Mixed Feelings

The Claymore manga was written by Yagi Norihiro from May of 2001 all the way until October 2014. Yes, it just finished. Roughly midway through the manga's run, in 2007, it got an anime adaptation from Madhouse. Now, I have not read a single chapter of the manga, so I'm not going to notice how faithfully they adapted the portion of the manga they adapted. The question is, does the anime manage to be interesting and coherent with what it does use?

Story:

In the world of Claymore, monsters called “Yoma” roam around the land disguising as ordinary humans and eating their guts. In order to combat ... these beings an organization with no name creates warriors that are human-Yoma hybrids, the titular Claymores. Our narrative follows a particular Claymore named Clare as she travels the land, fighting Yoma and completing missions for the organization. You quickly learn that there's a particular Yoma she's chasing after to take revenge for the death of someone she loved. Unfortunately, the one she's chasing is a particularly powerful variety called an awakened being. So, how does the series manage the premise?

Let's start with the problems. The biggest one is the ending. Now, let's be as fair as possible. There's no way they could go through the story of the entire manga, even if you only include the bits that had been released at that point. That being said, the part they do end on is kind of rushed and very much unsatisfying. A lot of the story is also pretty standard action fare. It isn't really bad, but it does nothing new either. Clare goes to a place, fights a thing, gets stronger, lather, rinse and repeat.

Now, there are some good things about the story too. The episodes that deal with Clare's back story are quite brilliant. The series also does build up a world that has a lot of potential intrigue, although it isn't nearly taken full advantage of in the anime. The series is also good about introducing major plot points well in advance of the point in the story that they become really important.

Characters:

Most of the major characters in Claymore are quite interesting. The Claymores are nicely varied and the best character moments in the series are among them. The biggest issue with them is that most of their basic back stories are all very samey, at least the ones you see. Dead family because of Yoma and then she became a Claymore. I suppose it does make sense given the sacrifices they have to make to become Claymores. Doesn't seem like the thing you'd get into if you had a loving and supportive family but it still gets a bit repetitive when the series wants you to feel sorry for a particular character because of her tragic past that happens to be virtually identical to the tragic pasts of all of these other characters. The antagonists do have some depth to them too, which is nice for an action oriented series. The secondary characters are largely under-developed, but most of them serve well enough for what they need to do.

After all that let's get to the big problem the series suffers from in terms of characters, Raki. Just imagine the most obnoxious, useless sidekick character you can think of and you've probably got a character similar to Raki. He's a young boy who gets rescued by Clare and then starts following her around while contributing nothing of value to anything. As a narrative device, he serves two purposes. The first is to give the series an excuse to explain information about the organization. Which could have been done without him if they'd been clever with their dialogue. The other purpose he serves is to give Clare an anchor to her humanity. Although I would argue that they could have easily made her a stronger character by giving her a more introspective anchor, like her memories of Teresa or her own determination, and dispensed with the twit altogether. But instead we had to have this obnoxious brat with no good dialogue or moments. I don't know what ultimately happens to him in the manga, but I hope it involves death by fire.

Art:

There are plenty of positives about the art. The action scenes are magnificent. The backgrounds are vivid and nicely detailed. They also do put effort into making the Claymores look different in spite of them all having the same outfits, hair and eye colours. There are two major problems with the art, though. The first is the way they do blood. This is one of those series where blood frequently spurts from wounds as though it's shooting out of a high pressure hose. Furthermore, the lighting in some scenes makes the Yomas' blood look like a neon purple hue. Which is practically guaranteed to drain the tension given how silly it looks when a liquid that strongly resembles grape kool-aid is spraying into the air. The second problem is the outfit that claymores wear. It's a tight, white bodysuit with a cape and the only armoured bits are around the shoulders, fingerless gloves and making up the skirt. Now, they can regenerate quite a bit of damage but it still makes no sense for them to leave quite literally all of their vitals exposed. Nor does it make sense for them to wear something that's going to ride up in the worst ways into battle.

Sound:

They did get some really good actors. Kuwashima Houko, who also showed up in last week's review as Kita Michiru, voices Clare. Paku Romi, Mizuki Nana, Orikasa Ai, Takayama Minami and Inoue Kikuko all give great performances. The one weakness is Raki's actor, Takagi Motoki. That isn't to say he's a bad actor, I really haven't heard him in enough roles to make a good judgment, but he plays a character who spends the bulk of his dialogue either crying or being vaguely perky. As such, he doesn't get the chance to demonstrate any real range. The music is pretty standard stuff, except when it comes to tragic or intense scenes. The composition work in those is really good.

Ho-yay:

There is a bit of les-yay in this series. Clare's attachment to Teresa comes across as a young girl's first crush. Jean and Clare get some subtext laden moments. Several of the other Claymores get scenes with each other that could be read as having romantic undertones as well. Particularly Helen and Deneve. That being said, the series ultimately does nothing with these relationships that's definitive, so it's ultimately left open to interpretation. So I'm going to give it a ho-yay factor of a 3/10.

Final Thoughts:

Claymore does have quite a bit that's good. A lot of the characters are well done, the premise is interesting, the acting is largely good and the action scenes are awesome. However, it also has a lot of issues. It ends at a bad point, Raki exists, there are questionable art decisions, Raki exists, it draws on quite a few cliches and Raki exists. In the end, the series is still decent enough for what it is but it's certainly not a classic or among the best. My final rating for it is a 6/10. If the premise sounds interesting or you're looking for something relatively quick with some good action, check it out, unless you don't want to deal with an annoying sidekick. Next week I'll look at another request, Welcome to the NHK.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Feb 23, 2014

Link_of_Hyrule

Not Recommended

**SPOILER FREE REVIEW**

Claymore is a perfect example of an anime that tries desperately hard to be dark, but completely and utterly fails. This show demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of what actually makes an anime mature. The result is a series of boring, brainless, deus ex machina-filled, melodramatic fight scenes with a static plot and uninteresting/indistinguishable characters (with the exception of one). Tag on an ugly, almost monochromic animation style (in my opinion), an inconsistent soundtrack, and an unsatisfying ending, and you've got yourself a tremendously overrated anime.

Plot: 3/10
In a world where demonic predators called Yoma exist only to kill and eat humans by ... disguising themselves as other humans, a mysterious organization creates half-human, half-Yoma warriors known as the "Silver Eyed Witches", or more commonly, "Claymores". The story begins with a young boy named Raki who has lost everything in a Yoma attack. He meets Clare, a Claymore, who agrees to let him travel along-side her and experience her Yoma-slaying occupation.

My main problem with Claymore's plot is that it is based on nothing but classic shounen fighting/screaming and melodrama where whoever screams and grunts the loudest is the winner, but it THINKS that it is also about deep psychological themes and "what makes us human". The later aspects are completely butchered and the former aspects are exactly what they sound like.

To give an example: there is a great story arc in the beginning of the show about a Claymore named Teresa and a little girl named Clare. Clare has lost everything and has nowhere else to turn, so she starts following Teresa around. Teresa, who essentially feels no human emotions due to the fact that she is a Claymore, is indifferent to the girl at first, but they eventually grow to have a very touching relationship. This relationship is clearly supposed to parallel the relationship that Clare and Raki now have with each other; someone who thinks she has lost her humanity is proved wrong by a child who has lost everything and grows to see her as a motherly figure.

At this point, Claymore was shaping up to be a very good anime. However, as soon as that arc ends, we get nothing that comes even remotely close to the character development and good themes that we just saw. The relationship between Rocky and Clare receives no further development and eventually decides to go in a, ummm, "different", direction than the one that preceded it. Let's just say the lines become very blurry when it comes to what Clare and Raki actually are to each other.

Butchering the potential of telling a touching story wouldn't have been as bad if the plot that they DID give us wasn't so generic and boring. In addition to the slow pacing, it's just the classic: "Fight the monsters! Get revenge! Get stronger!" kind of plot that really has nothing to offer that you haven't already seen.

The show thinks it is being dark and mature by not being afraid to kill off pointless side characters, but it completely fails to make us care about those characters or what they are fighting for. They continuously hint at the Organization being secretly evil, but that never leads anywhere. The characters all have either shallow motivations (such as revenge) or no motivations at all and are just working as puppets of "The Organization". The fights are all predictable, the side characters add absolutely nothing (more on them later), and the ending is extremely unsatisfying. Everything that the show was building up to abruptly stops, an archetypical shounen moral is quickly crammed in our face, and then it just sort of… ends. There is certainly nothing special about Claymore's plot.

Art: 4/10
Taste in art is subjective, but I really dislike the dark and boring color palate used in Claymore. It fails to set a good atmosphere, and the blood effects are terrible. The EXACT same effect is used over and over and over again and it doesn't even look good! It just looks like a bunch of red lines coming out of the wound! And don't get me started on the way, way overused trope of two people running past each other, swinging their swords at each other, there is a long pause, and THEN somebody starts bleeding! I'm pretty sure claymore uses that stereotype in every single episode. Once or twice is fine, but come on!

Sound: 5/10
The soundtrack sometimes works and sometimes does not. Average OP and ED. The voice acting is average. The sound effects were really below average though. I kid you not: they use the Star Wars gun sound effect in this anime, on multiple occasions! It feels so random and out of place.

Characters: 4/10
Before I talk about the personalities of the characters, let me just say one thing: Claymore might win the award for worst character design in anime history. News flash guys! You can only have so many characters with blonde hair, silver eyes, and the exact same outfit before it becomes impossible tell them apart! Good luck trying to remember the name of the characters in this anime, I mean seriously! I was happy whenever one of them died because that was one less to keep track of.

Anyway, the characters in Claymore are certainly nothing special. Clare is the same as any other stereotypical shounen protagonist, except she is a girl. She is motivated almost solely by revenge and the only thing different about her is her relationship with Raki, but I already touched on how that was botched. As the protagonist, she is constantly busting out deus ex machina after deus ex machina to the point that it just becomes unbearable.

I have mixed feelings about Raki. He is a genuine character, clearly expressing his feelings at all times, but he is also very annoying, particularly towards the end. He starts out as someone who is easy to feel sympathy for; he has nothing left and the way he latches on to Clare is touching at first, but since that plot element receives no development, it just becomes stale and irritating. He ends up getting in the way more often then he helps anyone.

With the exception of one, the side characters are worthless. Occasionally one of them might receive 3 minutes of development, but the only purpose they serve is death fodder. I can't remember the names of more then 3 of them, and there were dozens.

The only character I truly liked was Teresa. She is the only character who we really get to see go through a change; she goes from a cold emotionless tool who mindlessly kills for the sake of "The Organization" to a loving person who realizes that she is still human. If Teresa had gotten a LOT more screen time, I would have probably enjoyed Claymore.

Overall: 4/10
As a relatively highly rated shounen, I must say that Claymore fails to live up to it's hype. It simply doesn't differentiate itself from the rest of the genre in any meaningful way (a female-dominated cast is unique but poorly written). The plot is static , uninteresting, and peaks after the first real storyarc, the animation is not appealing, and the characters are nothing special. If you are looking for a unique shounen, you won't find it here. If you are a fan of shounen in general though, I could see how you could enjoy it. Personally, it wasn't my cup of tea.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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