Claymore

**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.

Reviewing a series from 2007 in 2022 because why not.

As a fellow dark fantasy fan, I'm very disappointed, especially that there are barely any anime of this genre, we have SNK or Berserk...or Berserk... Maybe also Berserk!

Claymore is like the Witcher 3, but without the lore or its' charisma, actually only with the bounties part, or Dark Souls, but without any memorance for world design and boss fights. It's a very cheap, poorly designed souls-like with barely any story at all.

Plot:
I hate describing series as "boring", but Claymore really has barely anything interesting to hold on. Side-plots lack any meaning or bright points, they ... are forgetable, very random and rushed, also somehow repeatable (strong purposeless enemy appears out of nowhere, someone gets hurt or dies, someone gets mad or discovers something about themselves, repeat but with a stronger enemy). The world building revolves around the existence of claymores and yomas (which are not even explained, they just exist without any purpose or something), it feels very one-dimensional, without anything interesting that wants to be digged deeper, it's hard to talk about any lore here.

Art:
It's a complicated matter. On one hand I really like the dark, gloomy colors, also design of some locations and "bosses" with this lovecraftian creepy vibe. On the other hand, human character design is very poor, they all have the same body type, almost the same faces and clothes, somehow they all blend together into one person.
Animation is a mess. It's mostly pure gore without any interesting action, sword fights are silver slashes made by characters who barely move themselves, there are implications that they are moving so fast that an eye can't catch this, but it looks very uninteresting and repeatable.

Characters:
Teresa was the only interesting person here and she had like 3 episodes of screen time, what a shame. The rest is either annoying or forgetable (mostly both), all their personalities revolve around fighting and they all compete who is the strongest one, without any time to explore their insides. There are sometimes some mentions about their pasts, but they feel very meaningless, also there are way too many characters who die in a second just to introduce another group of characters to die an episode later. There are way too many claymores without any personality, it's hard to care when they die or get hurt, but it's very easy to confuse one with another because they're just too similar and barely have anything characteristic in themselves.
Except Teresa and Clare, it's also almost impossible to speak about any bonds between the characters, they just lack anything interesting in their interactions, no fun dynamics, no meaningful relationships.
The dialogues feel like from a very poor, lifeless shounen and it has this annoying for me manner of repeating the same sentences over and over.

So yeah, in conclusion, Claymore may feel tempting for darker themes fans, but it's just not worth a while

I must be having some sort of bad luck, because I keep picking up high rated animes I end up disliking.

The anime is quite bad, I originally wanted to rate it as 5/10, but changed my mind to 4/10 after last few episodes.

At its core, it is a bad shounen/fighting anime, which is cleverly disguised as something good using art style. The story revolves around half-monster-half-human female warriors called "Claymores". In a plenty of scenes you'll watch them being butchered, killed, stabbed, dismembered and tortured. The anime also features incredibly annoying needy clingy boy character whose job as far as I can tell is ... to arrive in the scene, cry, and ask something incredibly obvious or shout moral statement while crying. The high points of the anime is its art style - claymores look beautiful and some of the monster designs are quite interesting. Animation, however, is not that good, and there's a lot of panning/zooming involved. "Panning/zooming" means a scene is animated in 2 or 3 frames, and camera slowly pans along it. The anime also features a lot of "time-saving" techniques ocmmon for shounene anime, namely flashbacks. a LOT of flashbacks, in one episode the same flashback has been shown several times.

Anyway, details:

Story:
The premise and the idea about half-human-half-monster warriors is incredibly interesting/promising (and reminded me of Witcher, Dragon Age 's Gray Wardens, etc), but it is underutilized. Too much of the story revolves around this or that monster killing or torturing Claymores. I would say the story puts way too much attention on mutilation and torture instead of focusing on deeper aspects of character. The world by itself is not very convincing. The abilities of yoma(i.e. monsters) are not very well explained, it is unclear what they are, if they're some sort of creatures, or if it is magic, etc. During the course of the anime I had impression that the anime just invents new powers out of thin air, without any logic applied to them, and this applied to both yomas and claymores. Another bad part of the show is Raki (clingy, whiny, crybaby boy), which apparently supposed to be important, but in reality is just useless/annoying. Basically, there was a great potential in the original idea, but the anime does not reach that potential. The story is prone to flashbacks. After 1st 4 episodes or so, you'll see a LOT of flashbacks of the same event being played over and over, again and again, at every opportunity.

Art:
Art is good, but animation is not. Claymores are quite pretty. Their style is interesting. Backgrounds are detailed. However, the anime tries to avoid animations when possible, and pan looping sequences of 3 frames, zoom, and on occasion resorts to cheap techniques like "movement is too fast to see". Meaning two characters can stand near each other without moving, with camera shaking and only simple "moving sword trail " being animated (in 2 or 3 frames). This is supposed to demonstrate incredibly fast series of stabs, but it happens a lot, and closer to the end there are a LOT of scenes where something moves too fast to be drawn, or someone swings the blade too quickly for the blade to be visible, meaning a lot of fights turn into sequences of mostly static frames and sound effects. This is very, very disappointing, and made me think that the studio might've been on a fairly tight budget.

Sound:
Surprisingly, music does not fit the anime well. There's no common theme or style in background music, and selection on background pieces seems to be quite common. The main "Claymore" theme that appears from time to time is quite interesting - it is an orchestral piece with powerful/fantasy/medieval feeling to it, however for some reason anime features Heavy Metal music and Techno-style composition that does not fit the anime at all. I like heavy metal and death metal, but the tune selected for this anime didn't really fit it.

Characters:
Raki is a bane of this anime. Incredibly annoying, prone to crying over every occasion, cllingy, he can cause facepalm in almost any scene where it appears. He isn't that bad at the very beginning of the show, but later on, it turns into a real annoyance. Completley powerless, lacking strength of claymore, he stilll has some delusional ideas. He's not as bad as Yahiko from Rurouni Kenshin, in the sense that Raki at least has some common sense, but he's incredibly annoying,

Characters of claymores are not well portrayed, and that applies to Claire as well. Usually the anime will explain someone's motivation in a hurry, and then promptly butcher the person in question. The behavior of Claymores is not very convincing either, since they're waaay too interestedi n murdering each other at a drop of the hat every time they meet.


Enjoyment:
Didn't like it. I think I liked few episodes near beginning, but it gets worse closer to the end, focus on torture/dismemberment, lack of quality animation and Raki's whininess ultimately ruin the show.

Overall:
The only good reason to check this anime is its art style. Animation is not good, but claymores and SOME monsters are designed in interesting manner. There are worse shows out there, of course, but either way this one was quite disappointing.

Claymore is an anime made by studio Madhouse in 2007. In this anime, there are female warriors known as "Silver-Eyed Witches" or "Claymores" who fight these monsters known as Yoma. These claymores are always alienated by people as basically "monsters that kill monsters". This story starts off with Raki losing what's precious to him. He meets Clare, another one of our main characters.

Story
The story was really weak. It started off really simple and pretty much stayed that way. Around the last 5 episodes, it felt as it was being dragged out. One of the main characters ruined this show for me. The story could have ... been better. With such a weak story, I was really bored with this anime.
3/10

Art
It was really nothing special, but Claymore had some of the high-quality animation that Madhouse had to offer.
6/10

Sound
I always skipped the OP and END because it didn't really appeal to me. I didn't really care for the background music either. It didn't really do anything for Claymore.
3/10

Characters
Now here is one of the reasons why the story got a 3. First off, we have Clare. She is one of these Claymores. She was hated by the people of society being a Claymore. Clare does get some development as to how and why she became a Claymore. Clare was really the only major character that seemed interesting. We also have another character named Raki. Raki was so annoying, I just wanted him to shut up. He just kept crying and crying. He was such a useless character, he didn't even do shit. Raki said that he was going to get stronger to protect Clare, but guess what? HE DOESN'T DO SHIT. He was such a crybaby. Raki really ruined this anime.
3/10

Enjoyment
I was really bored with Claymore. I kept hearing that it was good, but I was just really disappointed. The characters and story definitely could've been better
2/10

FINAL VERDICT: 3.4/10

Claymore is actually an underrated anime, but I believe that it's just an overrated anime that is underrated
^
Some might be confused with this statement, so let me make this clear. Claymore's anime isn't really that well known, but to the people that have seen it, all I have seen/heard is that Claymore is good. I don't really think it's good. It deserves this underrated status

Just a quick review of this show. I'm by no means a very great critic but I have seen a good amount of anime and this show bothers me. As I was watching it, I was having a rather enjoyable time, there was a few ups and downs about it, but felt fun. But as I looked back on it when I finished and thought about it, this show is boring as hell.

OK, So all the characters have the same backstory and all revolve around the main character in some way, who by the way the MC's ... motivation is just revenge which is rather boring but they don't even take it anywhere, it just kinda...........gets forgotten. Which only makes the rest of the cast even more shallow. There is no sense of originality here, with any of its ideas. Every idea or theme in this show I have seen done some else better, which would be fine if it could at least try something interesting, but they don't. And even the art is boring and trite. the animation is flat and the fight scenes in the later episodes just devolve into sword lasers and still frames with some screen shake. I felt like I was watching The Asterisk War with these fight scenes. Even the color palate is non-existent. Most of what you see is white and gray because all of the characters look the same and wear the same uniforms All sense of a character having originality is gone, they all have the same reason to fight(for the most part), the same look and the same backstory, it becomes extremely noticeable in the final arks. The plot is somewhat OK towards the start as it revolves around Clare, who is the only good character but, towards the end is just terrible, it is just fight scene after terrible fight scene and focuses less on her. This is about when you realize how boring the cast is(especially Raki). The ending feels rushed, it has little meaning and they pull a deus-ex-machina out of their ass. This is a series that has over 20 volumes and they tried to fit most of the important scenes in there, the pacing of this show is very strange and it has little to no build-up to big scenes.

All in all I just can't think of just about anything I enjoyed about this show, but if you you enjoy it, more power to you. Art is subjective and I am open to hear what you enjoyed. I am always open to opinion and don't mind changing my mind, if I can be convinced otherwise. I did not cover everything that I wold like to here but I wanted to make this short.

Well, that will be my first review.

I guess people rather speak about things they don't like rather than the opposite. Which is why I'm picking by far the worst anime I've watched for my first review.

Let the rant begin. Note that I probably wouldn't be writing this review if Claymore had a score of 5 on MAL, but it's near 8. How can people stomach it - and more so, consider it good - is just beyond me.

Art. It's just horrendous. I know Claymore is an old anime. I know the drawing style changed a lot over the years. But I don't think ... Claymore's art was ever considered at least mediocre. I'm not even going to mention Hiyazaki's movies, since movies are movies, but there are plenty shows from the same period which trump Claymore in the art department. The animations are pain to watch, the whole world is coloured with shades of grey with some red spatters on top, and the characters and backgrounds are just god damned UGLY. It's not like I've ever actively searched for one, but I can't say I've ever seen an anime with art style worse than that of Claymore.

I'd like to say that sound was the only saving grace of this anime, but I only recall the opening and ending, which were decent, but 2 songs don't make the whole soundtrack. I can't remember any of the themes in the actual show, which means they either didn't exist or were very forgettable. OST probably was just mediocre and not worth the brain power to remember. However, considering how bad the anime generally is, sound is probably the best part of it anyway.

Story and characters. Yeah, this is just Dragon Ball with an almost exclusively female cast. I vaguely noticed the poor attempts at storytelling Claymore was making, but they were immediately trumped by retarded shouting, last second saves and ridiculous LEVEL UP moments that make 90% of the show. It actually starts off decently, the pace is quite nice, and though Raki is extremely annoying since he first appears on screen, it's bearable, though filled with cliches. Unfortunately, the further it goes, the worse it gets. It culminates in the last 6 or so episodes, in which the storytelling simply ceases to exist. They are just a huge avalanche of shounen bullshit (that is, again, LEVEL UPs, shouting etc.) that only 11 yo kids could find interesting.

There's a total of 2 possible schemes for each episodes. Both start off with Claire getting roflstomped by whatever opponent, some Terese flashbacks, and then either Claire goes Youma mode or she's saved by a stronger Claymore. Oh, make that 3 - Claire goes Youma mode and overdoses, a stronger Claymore appears and intends to whack Claire, at which point Raki appears, hugs Claire and she reverts to normal. It gets boring after a while, but there's literally nothing the writers try to surprise the viewers with. It's like watching a Rocky movie turned anime, only if it was made by first year cinematography students.

There is no enjoyment to be had when watching this anime, but there's a serious risk of a critical brain shutdown. So, unless you want that, stay the hell away from it. Don't believe the high score Claymore has on MAL, remember that the masses once thought the Earth is flat - they can be wrong. They definitely are in case of Claymore.

It has a good setup and feels intriguing but the story barely develops.
In the end, it feels like you just got introduced to the world.

The characters are bland and unmemorable. I had trouble keeping up with so many pawns.
Many times they make a big fuss about a character's death but the show doesn't do a good job of making me care.

Power levels are inconsistent, it goes all over the place and fights don't make sense because of it. They don't use the powers properly and many attacks are " big sword go fast".

The third part of the show is hella cringe so much so that ... I almost dropped it altogether.
Raki is such a bad character and with no doubt the worst part of the show.

I don't usually review anime so take this with a grain of salt. This show was very disappointing and felt like a waste of time. Bad*** women with big swords, how can you f*** this up so bad?

I will not recommend it to anyone nor will I watch it again.

--Contains some spoilers, also note that I have not read the manga--

Well that was a huge dissapointment. When I first started watching Claymore I thought it was pretty cool, and it seemed like it might be really good. However it quickly becomes a huge mess that isn't worth watching.

Story:
The story is your typical revenge story. The main character has lost a person she loves and is now out for blood, and that's about it. At first it seems like the story might be interesting, but there are so many things that are introduced but never properly explained. There are so many times that you're ... thinking "what the hell is that, and what the heck is going on?". Characters are quickly introduced one episode just to be killed in the next one. The organization is never really explained either, and so many more things that the story just makes no sense and you have no idea what's going on or what's important. It's a shame, because what could have been an interesting story just becomes an incoherent mess. It feels like the production team got bored after 10 episodes and just said "screw it, just make some filler episodes and end it". The ending is also terrible and stupid.

Art:
The art is decent, not much more to say about that. It's nothing special but not bad either.

Sound:
Pretty 'meh' as well. It's the same 'cling clang' sounds and the flash bomb sound from Monster Hunter played over and over in pretty much every fight. The soundtrack is your generic "badass" metal soundtrack which is boring as hell.

Characters:
Totally uninteresting and bland as hell. There's 'short haired claymore', 'tomboy claymore', 'long haired claymore', 'pigtail claymore' etc. They have no real personality and that's because they are never properly introudced. Instead we''re just told their name and what rank they have so we know how powerful they are. You're never able to form any real connection to the characters and there's no point either since many are just killed off and never mentioned again. The main character is also boring, but the worst one is FUCKING RAKI. Holy crap did this guy piss me off. He's annoying, whiny and just pathetic. He does one good thing the entire series and spends the rest of his time crying and complaining. He's like Lin from Fist of the north star, but instead of her screaming "KEEEEEEEEEEEEEEN" all the time we have Raki screaming "CLARE!!!" while crying like a bitch. The enemies are also stupid and lame (one even being so stupid as to tell the main character what her weak spot is).

Overall:
I wanted to like Claymore, but I just can't. There are too many things that are never explained so you have no idea what's really going, and the characters are so boring and soulless. Unless all you want to do is watch 26 episodes of chicks in armor killing demons then I suggest you stay away from Claymore because that's pretty much all there is to it.

3/10

Thinking about this one was tough for me. It’s somewhat interesting but at the same time boring.

The world seems to be quite interesting and unique. It’s not set in a school like so many other shounen anime. Some things that could be interesting but we don’t know that much about are the organisation, the black dude with the sunglasses, the main villain and more. To learn more about these could possibly be interesting. The duality between claymore and yoma is also interesting.

I feel that there are a few problems with it though, superficial as they may be. The first one is that everyone looks ... the same. This is different to many others in which everyone looks completely different and quirky, which also most of the time makes them look like clowns. But when everyone looks the same it makes it dull instead. The middleground is definitely where you want to be.

The second, and bigger, problem I have is the fight scenes, which are so incredibly boring. It’s all about power and speed. Sure the different claymores have different abilities but most of it just comes down to the two previously mentioned aspects. Prepare to be bored out of your mind.

The ending (although it’s anime only) is also terrible, which can be summed up as: the main character gets a huge power boost from wanting revenge.

So interesting but unexplored world and characters with utterly boring fights. Maybe the manga is better?

I was interested during the initial lure of the " secret organisation" and Teresa. By the end of e26 none of my questions are ever answered.

Rocky is an absolutely frustrating and bland character, his only roles are to cower, wine, hug, and completely ruin every episode with his bs.

How many times are we told once you revert there is no going back... uh huh... sureeeeee.

How many times do we watch flash backs of a certain someones head flying through the air.

How many times does Priscilla wine about her family.

Guys this is like 5+ times per episode each episode. The material is redundant. Even ... the scenes of someone going to the rescue repeat over and over.

I've never seen an anime this bad in my life. It gets pretty bad about 10-15 episodes in. I'm not really sure which episode triggered me to start slitting my wrists, but it got to the point where I could predict what everyone would say, which cut scenes would be displayed, and when it was all done.. they couldn't even answer a single question about anything.

Avoid this trash. No clue who would ever rate this an 8.

BTW all the Claymores are white, blond hair, silver eyes, and pretty much wear the exact same armor. Pay attention to their names or you will get lost in a sea of bland characters. By the end of it.

Teresa is the only decent character in this series. I would watch it up to her part and then cut and run after.

Seriously fuck this anime.

This was one of my favorite manga ever to read.
But, I don't feel like the anime does any justice to how emotionally provoking the manga.

I felt like the creators fell short in edging the internal dialogues that all the characters had.
It felt like they made them more simple, compared the to the intense complexity these amazing creatures really were.

Seeing the battles and watching the manga come to life was really awesome, but truth be told, I would re-read the manga a hundred times before I re-watched this anime.

PS. I'm referring to the English dub, as I spend too much time ... adulting to be able to watch anime 100% all the way through and read subtitles.

First of all, let me state that I absolutely love the original manga Claymore written by Norihiro Yagi. In my opinion, it's one of the best and most drilling shonen manga of our generation, with great, deep characters, a fantastic story with good twists and so on. Well, several years ago, it was decided to make an anime out of it, when 'Claymore' wasn't finished yet. Did it pay off? Hell no, it didn't.

'Claymore' is, and let me underline this twice, one of the worst manga-adaptions I've ever seen, an abominable example of what can go wrong if an adaption doesn't stick to the ... original or does focus on the wrong points.


Story

The Anime follows the path of the manga for a while, until it breaks on a certain point and goes for his alternative ending. The Problem is, the Story of the anime lacks impact. It doesn't manage to hit the viewer in certain scenes (Theresa, North, Riful, ...) like the manga did, instead the narration mostly feels like mediocre-fantasy. Scenes get rushed more than in the manga and some characters are even pictured differently, if not entirely weaker. And eventuelly, there are the last episodes who are all fanfiction. They're so bad and repetitive written I really got angry how terrible the sourcematerial was burned. In two or three episodes you basically get the same scene four or five times, containing the same message, a girl crying for her family for example. Also, the plot goes in circles for the last episodes, as the writters clearly didn't know how to let things end. What you get on the final is an expectable Fantasy-climax who makes no sense in the context of the original and who abandons several side-plots and important characters (Riful?). Let's just never mention them again. And of course you get lots of melodrama. The Claymore-Anime-Ending is surely one of the worst you'll see in this genre, especially if comparised to the manga.

Characters

Llike the manga-versions, only more shallow, stupid and annoying, clares personality changed quite a bit, especially to the ending, and while awesome characters from the original at least appear (some of the great four) they quickly disappear and have no valuable point in the narration of the anime. Overall, I didn't really feel with the anime-claymores, and I would descripe them as a weaker version of their originals. And dont let me start about Raki. His character got shredded completely.

Art

While the manga-art is a bit strange at first, it gets better and better as the story goes on to the point where its unique and iconic. Unfortunately, the anime skipped that development and sticked to the strange-part. Unfortunately the second, they didn't adapt the original-art, but tried to make a style who resembles him in his strangeness but ultimately, comes out as ugly. This is just my opinion, but the art of claymore is ugly and cheap. The characters models, especially in the later parts of the story, are by far more elaborated and nicer-to-look, while the anime seems to have a kit for shallow Claymore-characters with funny-blonde hair. The awalened beaings mostly look cheapy-monstrous and are shitty colorized, the eyes dont have the sharpeness of the manga. And the mouths... aren't well-drawn at all.

Sound

The Soundtrack tries to be all-medieval over the times. Sometimes, it manages, most of the time it doesn't. I really think Claymore would have deserved a better soundtrack. It's such an epic story with lots of fantasy, perfectly fitting for great choirs and quick action-beats, but all you get are exchangeable low-fantasy-beats you would heard in every other anime too. The OP and ED are of course exchangeable too, nothing memorable that sticks in your head more then five minutes.

Overall

here's my honest and safe suggestion: Read the manga. It does everything better than the anime, and I mean everything. While the anime-story goes completely down at the end, the manga only starts, the characters aren't well-pictured at all and overall, the anime just feels like a experience worse than the original, forced low-fantasy where thrilling fights should take place. I cant recommend Claymore to anyone, not the anime. There wont ever be a continuation, of course, thanks to the ending. Fortunately.

Claymore is pretty awful and I'm going to use this review to defend that statement.

It's unfortunate that this show was done by Madhouse because I tend to enjoy a lot of Madhouse shows. But I guess not every show a studio creates can be excellent. This happens to be one of the worst I've watched Madhouse pump out.

The aesthetic is completely bland. The story follows Clare, a Claymore. Claymores are 6 foot tall Scandanavian blonde women in this world, apparently. And they wear grey to hammer home the fact that the show is completely stuck in the doldrums. Also, there's a lot of Claymores, and ... given their design it's hard to tell them apart. Madhouse had to run through the entire gamut of hairstyles for women in this show just to differentiate them.

There's no character development in this show. What I learned is that there's 2 leads, Clare and Raki. They're listed as "mains." This is a revenge based narrative where the female lead Claire is going after someone, but there's no time for development at all. Clare develops via various deus ex machinas throughout the series as a typical "power-up" for no real reason or effort put into it. She gets the power-ups on demand most of the time. This is why there's a real lack of empathy for Clare in this series. It's hard to be motivated to root for someone when they're continually fighting enemies that at first seem to be hopeless no-win scenarios just to have the hero triumph cuz of plot armor. Let's speak about Raki. He's useless. He doesn't do anything except follow Clare. If Clare is written in the active voice, then Raki would definitely have been written entirely in the passive voice. However, Claymore lacks any real depth to use any literary devices.

The monsters that the Claymores battle are also unimaginative generic copy pasta garbage.

The sound is pretty unremarkable as well. There's some Scottish bagpipes played in the earlier episodes for some unknown reason. I'm not sure how there's a link between bagpipe playing and this world other than the reason it bears the name Claymore. I guess because all the girls wield the same giant phallic worshipping swords. The tracks do switch to some heavy metal tunes later on around episode 20, but it's a little too late. the heavy metal fits the show more, but it's more of a shrug when it comes in.

And the battles in Claymore are simply awful. They're the worst parts of Dragonball Z, the repeated frames. In Claymore, however, it's even worse as most characters bodies are completely stationary except for a flurry of incomprehensible garbage that's repeated over and over as she flails her sword about repeatedly.

Stay away from Claymore. Maybe the manga is better, I don't know, but this adaptation is just soul-crushing.

It's a very shonen/action-focused anime. There really isn't much story nor anything meaningful explored beyond a series of mindless fights between various combinations of claymore warrior women and human-eating demon monsters. It never actually goes anywhere and just sort of reaches the end of the season still climbing that ladder as bait for the manga.
The characters are barely allowed to have any presence beyond rehashing brain-damaging exposition/narration/peptalks and their 1-note character traits. The closest it comes to having actual characters in an arc gets unceremoniously cut through extreme contrivance. The plot armor is everywhere with pretty much every fight being nonsensical asspulls of more and ... more powers being thrown in on top of the power of tryharding/friendship/love/etc to win from start to finish.
To be fair, as far as generic action-shonen go you could do much worse. At least this has some grittiness to it.

3/10 (where 5/10 is average)

Mannnnnnn... I LOVE LOVE LOVE super dark, gory, messed up stuff and Claymore is definitely that, so I really, really wanted to like this anime and for the first third or so of it I did. But, ultimately, it's just a pretty damn bad show and has too many flaws and problems to justify its positives.

Art-

The visuals in Claymore are so so I suppose. I'm not sure if this was an artistic choice or merely laziness, but the anime generally lacked color and felt drab and dreary. This may have been intentional, as this is a dark and less than happy show as an in ... general, but it was meh to look at after a while. The art is not the biggest issue with the show by any means.

Sound-

The sound was pretty bad overall. There were one or two themes I liked and the sound effects were pretty good, but that's where the positives end. One of the important characters has some of the absolute worst and most obnoxious voice acting I've ever seen in any anime and even reliable veterans like Brina Palencia, Caitlin Glass and Monica Rial could not save it because the writing, discussed in a later section, was abhorrent. The problem, even for these very talented and accomplished voice actresses, wasn't how the lines were delivered- it's that the lines themselves were so unbelievably cheesy and bad that NO ONE could have made them not stupid.

Character-

The characters in this show are all complete idiots. Every single enemy in the show after the first few episodes does the least logical, dumbest possible thing in their situation. COUNTLESS TIMES enemies have the good guys in a position where they could kill them and end the fight but they stop, chit chat, hesitate, chit chat some more and basically intentionally wait for the good guys to recover and kill them. Likewise, later in the anime there is a scene where the good guys are in a battle against a mini army and the good guys are already losing. So what does the super powerful general of that army do? DISMISSES THE ENTIRE ARMY AND GOES IN TO FIGHT THE GOOD GUYS BY HIMSELF! If he were to do the blatantly obvious and logical thing- JOIN his army in battle- it's a win for sure and the good guys would be wiped out. But nope... Dismiss my troops who are already winning on their own and go in by myself. And, while I'm at it, same shit as before- I've got them in a position to kill them but instead I'm going to stop, talk, ask questions, compliment them and THEN go in for the killing blow after giving them loads of time to recover or call for backup. This happened over and over and over. None of the enemies in this show actually want to win the fight and they're mind-numbingly stupid.

All I'll say about the writing, in order to save you guys from another wall of text rant, is if you paid a third grade student to write the lines in the combat scenes this is what you'd get. I want you guys to take a moment to grunt/groan the word "PRISCILLA" in the most fake angry, drawn out, exaggerated tone possible. Also try gems like "I'll kill you!" and "You will die!".

The story has a cool concept, and I love how dark and gory it is, but it goes super off the rails and gets super convoluted not even half way through and it only gets worse from there. And again, a story is only as good as its characters and the characters and the writing are both atrocious.

Enjoyment-

I swear I wanted to like Claymore. I really, really did. It is so unapologetically dark and gory- think severed heads, characters getting full on impaled in nearly every episode, characters losing limbs, characters being cut open from the back and having gaping holes, etc- and I wish more anime were like that, but the awesomeness of that alone isn't enough to carry a show with a convoluted plot, idiotic characters and abysmal and cheesy writing.

Overall-

If you've read to this point I think you know how I felt about the show...

+Unapologetically dark and gory
+The Claymores themselves are badass and awesome

-DUMBEST. CHARACTERS. EVER.
-Writing that is cheesy at best and downright terrible at worst
-Convoluted plot that goes completely off the rails in the latter half of the show

OBJECTIVE RATING- 3
PERSONAL ENJOYMENT RATING- 4

Short review for you to not have to read unnecessary information about character haircuts and stuff but to know what kind of anime this is.

Well it's extremely voilent, there is very pleasant art, pathetic story and a lot of blood gushing from cut off limbs.

Story is dumb, childish and I've had an impression that another plot ideas was made up by the author from episode to episode to keep it running (like, literally: "Oh!, there will be a mighter enemy that we didn't mentioned anything about yet!" "Oh! Things aren't like that, they will be like this from now, cause I didn't think about it ... earlier!")
There's no cosequence, who will lose or win particular fight depends entirely on whim of the author just like the plot changes.

Lots of blood from the beginning quickly turns into extreme and sick voilence scenes. And it's pretty much about it - anime made just to show brutality and blood, because there's nothing more in it.



So it's story on a kindergarten level with sick voilence on adult's only level.



Don't let yourself be tricked by beautiful character art (wich can't be said about animation) and don't watch it. It can only litter your mind.