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.
