We see that the main character, Clare, does grow throughout the series so far, which means in each episode something happens and she is changed by it, and through out the story arcs, she is either benefited by the events or suffers the consequences whether she wants or not. I can talk about this character as if she were a real life person precisely because the balance of things that happen to her - I don\'t mean that she gets exactly half good and half bad as she journeys, but I mean she has her good days; she has her awesome days; she has her awful days, and she has her almost dying days. She grows through it all.
She has suffered a ton in her life time, and as a woman, she\'s seen a lot of dark side in men. Yet she\'s still on the job, partially because she doesn\'t want to quit. There are rules bounding her but we can assume that she can leave and go in hiding if she desired. But she doesn\'t quit her job. Why is that?
I think she has a sense that the rules of the game are to be followed, maybe not completely to the T, as sometimes she goes out and bend some of them, but not breaking them. There are priorities over organizational rules, after all, especially when it comes to saving a life and nurturing it. She learns that from her previous experience when she was in the position of being nurtured. However, at the same time, she nurtured the person who was supposedly the strong one (this happen when she was young and wasn\'t a Claymore). Something within Clare made her a strong person even before she grew up to become a Claymore - she recognized pain and suffering similar to hers.
Despite all the things happened to her, she\'s still going strong. She risks her life and being discovered (she\'s currently hiding) when she sees her comrades desperately need help; even though she\'s not quite powerful yet and her opponents-would-be are extremely powerful - a classic component of shonen anime. Here, I\'ll go into the shonen stereotypes.
Claymore is a shonen show with its classic plots - revenge, skilling up/powering up, mentors who train, and someone that comes out and help during the most desperate-to-the-urgency-of-death situation (hopefully only one). The biggest and the most obvious twist here is that all the strong characters are women - all the roles that would\'ve been filled by men in the classic shonen (Saint Seiya comes to mind) are filled by women in this case. What marks it apart from a lot of other shonen is the fact that it doesn\'t drag on and on and give out mindless battles or tournaments. That means everyone that the main character has to fight has a good reason to be there, and some of them do indeed come back later, like many shonen shows, but not because they just do, or they have some simple reason like they just want to come back for another round, but these characters all have their reasons, some forced, some by choices, and some by both.
What happens earlier definitely affects what happens later. Friends and enemies are made later because of earlier events and encounters (this anime would make a great RPG).
Because the plot doesn\'t drag - the anime came out when the manga is already on vol. 13 or 14 (I can\'t remember), which means they have a wealth of materials to work with, the arcs are well developed and I don\'t see any unnecessary fillers (at least not yet, I can\'t remember if this is slated to be a 26 eps series), each episode does something to move the story forward. That\'s what a good storyteller should do. In addition to that, the important characters are distinctive and form deep impressions, the unimportant characters mark their short impression and then they\'re forgotten and don\'t take too much of the viewer\'s attention for too long. All these are important to a good storytelling.
This show only suffers a little bit of cliches from shonen anime - one occurrence of ex deus machina. It also has other classic shonen characters like mentor that takes the disciple for training when the disciple has been badly defeated, sociopath characters, sidekicks, and a couple other smaller ones. But these traits get developed the right way, pile those with good character developments and an intriguing overall plot with good small arcs and you\'ve got an awesome storying that retells the classic revenge in its own way.
As for the other elements such as Art, animation, sound - it\'s production I.G. and I\'ll leave those for others to review, because...
this review is too freakin\' long! I commend you for reading this far. Good job! =D
P.S. I obviously like it. For the reason see above! =D
