It plays out in a medieval world where predators called ,,Yoma'' reign terror over humanity. They are able to hide in a human ,,shell'' and can pop up anytime to kill and eat a human when they see fit.
Humanity though then showed the politely described ,,Go away'' -Finger to the Yoma by the creation of a sub-race.
A secret organisation has brought women together and had let them consume Yoma flesh, or implanted yoma flesh into them. The result to that is that they gain the power to see Yoma even in their human shell, but in exchange -they have to stay emotionless. When those girls unleash their emotions, the yoma in them rises and thus takes over them. If they reach a certain limit then they are not able to revert to their human form.
I will come back to this part in a bit.
The Story brings us Raki, a young boy that that had lost his parents due to a yoma attack and thus was left only with his brother who tries to teach him swordsmanship. Raki is faced with a sudden yoma attack and even that the elder called the famous ,,Claymore'' to their aid. Claymore , is an unfortunately not explained nickname that the citizen gave the cursed women. Some say that they could see nothing behind those eyes , yet when they changed the colour - they were able to see Yoma.
A young woman with short hair then arrives at the city, she was the one called, but then the story does a rushed step where raki gets attacked by the yoma that hid himself as his brother while telling him bit by bit that he was the one that ate his brother back then.
Naturally this wont go unnoticed by the Claymores' Eye, and she saves the little boy Raki. Him having nothing left, he began to follow her and thus we finally hear her name, Claire.
Claire is basically the same like Raki. The story begins to deconstruct her by showing a bit of affection and care for his welldoing while she protects and trains him too. Up to that point where she even gets saved through his will. Despite Claire being clarified well in the story. We unfortunately get little to no more information about Rakis Backstory during the whole series. The Plot goes then further to introduce the main villain, a demoness called ,,Priscilla'' which violently killed Claires guardian and her friends back then. You get a good feel from then on that she seeks only and only to avenge her killed friend.
Coming then to Art. If you are a fan of gore - you will be fine with this. The art is trying to be realistically and creative and when something should look like it hurts - it does look very very very painful. I was also amazed at the competitive fights and the different yoma designs, not to forget that its style its leaned towards older anime maybe bringing even a bit more comic-like features in it. The sound is more medieval oriented and thus also very fitting. Though while the Opening is very fitting, i feel like the battle themes hadnt had the power they should. Theme should make you pumped, should make you excited for the fight..yet it went a little lash, but thankfully the plot makes up for that so it wont get boring midway through.
Characters, as already mentioned, were sometimes left out and not really well fleshed out, leaving you with scenes that hadnt much reasoning attached to them. Like, why did Teresa not kill Priscilla -it is clear that she would have been a threat, why did she hesitate at the moment of Priscilla being overtransformed and begging to be killed. I know that the new Priscilla might have been too fast for her, but ît seemed like she gave time on purpose instead of ending it quickly.
Though some flaws, i mostly had enjoyed Claymore - even looking it in English dub and japanese dub too. (though i ensure you that watching the original jp dub is much better) i issue it a solid : 7.5
If you have read it all up until here, know that im very grateful for that :) and i Hope that my review could have helped you making the choice to watch it or not.
