- Last OnlineMay 14, 2011 12:50 PM
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- BirthdayJan 25, 1992
- LocationLondon
- JoinedDec 7, 2008
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Jan 15, 2009
Before the main body of my review, there are two things to note:
1. This review represents the opinion of someone with very little knowledge of Japanese history and who didn't read up about it before watching the series. It's not like I actively try not to have a sense of the context, it's just that I believe that I shouldn't have to know all about the historical background of something before I watch an anime about it, as it's essentially fiction and should really be good enough to keep me entertained without that. So this review represents my opinion of this anime as a piece
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of entertainment in its own right. If you did read up on Japanese history before watching this, fair enough, I'm not having a go at you, it's just not something I do.
2. People keep going on about how realistic this series is. It isn't. You get impossibly strong punches, razor-sharp hand swipes, special moves that are somehow unblockable, and more. It does, however, feel fairly real in that people don't go jumping 30m into the air or shrugging off fatal wounds.
Now, onto the review: I watched this series because I wanted to watch a samurai anime that wasn't too stylised, i.e. without superhuman jumping about and ridiculous attacks. Shigurui sounded like it fitted the bill (and close enough did, I suppose), so I watched it. It's told in the form of starting at the chronological end of the series, and showing the events leading up to it in the remainder of the series. More on why I scored its story so badly later.
Shigurui's art was good, albeit fairly bleak. It had some nice scenery, and characters were drawn well. As others have mentioned, very often a scene would be so dark that you literally couldn't see what was going on, which was really rather irritating, necessitating turning down the contrast, leaving fuzzy outlines of figures. The series' animation was also good, with little repetition and smooth movement.
Shigurui had fairly standard voice acting, which stood out in netiher a good nor a bad way: neither was it surprisingly good, nor did it ever detract from the series. The score was very atmospheric and fitted the series well, so as a score it was excellent. As music, it wasn't all that pleasant to listen to, but it fulfilled its function well.
The series as a whole is very well put together in terms of cinematography, art, etc.
Where it all goes wrong is with the story. It's nothing original, which isn't usually a major problem (almost everything follows some sort of template), but here, I think originality is one of the few things that might have saved this series. By the end of the second episode, you can deduce roughly what will happen throughout the rest of the series, meaning that it feels more like atmosphere and build-up than a plot. But this build-up comes to nothing: you might expect there to be some closure for the series, but it just tails off, so you end up wishing that they'd at least covered some new ground. Imagine a version of Reservoir Dogs where you neither find out just how they got to the safehouse, nor are you shown much of what actually happens when they're there. You'd think that they'd show you what happened to Fujiki's arm and Irako's leg, but they don't. You might have some sort of insane idea that they'd show you what the outcome of the battle, to which it all feels like it's moving, was, but you don't see this either. It doesn't end at the place the series began. It doesn't even end anywhere near there. When I watched the end, I was sure I'd missed an ep, but I hadn't. It left me with a horrible mixture of disappointment and emptiness, and the bollocksed up ending made the bits of the series I had enjoyed feel shallow and pointless. I have a bad taste in my mouth when I mention this series.
My overall score of 6/10 reflects the juxtaposition of some really rather good atmosphere and art with a deficient storyline. Almost everything I've watched comes from recommendations from close friends, meaning that I've seen almost exclusively what I would call good stuff, but this is the one series I would not recommend to my friends. Maybe it's someone else's cup of tea, but it's certainly not mine.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Dec 23, 2008
Claymore is not a groundbreaking series. While it's great fun to watch, it does not feel like it's doing anything particularly new. The story is fairly standard, but does the job, excluding the inconclusive and, frankly, disappointing ending, the art style takes some getting used to (before I got used to it, I found that faces looked very odd, but the backgrounds and the Claymores were always excellent), the characters are fairly shallow and, in Raki's case, very annoying in parts (he just won't stop whining and blubbing - even if you don't mind him at first, you'll see what I mean later on).
Despite this,
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Claymore is well worth a watch. It is certainly one of the more compelling anime I have watched, and I got through it in three days (this pace of watching is very rare for me). It never drags, with the possible exception of the three epiosdes or so that flesh out Clare's backstory, and this only slightly drags because I always find flashback sequences a tad boring - this was about as good as they come, and it's nice to see a few episodes devoted to fleshing out the characters, instead of the usual token episode per character.
Claymore's animation is variable. While it sometimes seems jerky (I found that after a few episodes I no longer noticed this), the fights feel very lovingly done, with nice animation. The series avoids excessive repetition of animations, and it happens a lot less than it normally does in anime of this type, especially the classic head-on view of multiple, identical, repeated swordstrokes and constant parrying. Not saying it doesn't happen, just it doesn't happen nearly as often as it does in other sword-heavy anime. Towards the end, the flashbacks of scenes from earlier episodes begins to grate.
The Japanese voice acting neither stood out for nor disappointed me. It does the job. Where Claymore's sound really excels is in its moments of rousing orchestral score. Had it had a bit more variation and slightly better voice acting, I would have given Claymore a 10 for sound.
One of my major gripes, before which I was considering giving Claymore a 9, was the ending. Not only was it inconclusive, but the final fight couldn't hold a candle to the penultimate one. It's hard to describe without spoiling anything, so suffice to say it felt rather formulaic and dull. The ending left me wondering whether there was a second series, of which there is currently no sign.
If you like this sort of series, you should definitely have a look at Claymore, as its faults do not stop it from being a highly enjoyable watch.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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