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R2 DVD Reviews
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Wednesday, 03 February 2010 00:00 |
 Claymore's reputation has it somewhere alongside Berserk on the blood-and-guts scale, and the opening episodes of the anime adaptation waste no time in getting down to the blood-letting. Clare is a half-human, half-demon killing machine - but one with a heart, somewhere...
In a world where monsters known as yoma prey on humans and live among them in disguise, humanity's only hope is a new breed of warrior known as Claymores. Half-human, half-monster, these silver-eyed slayers possess supernatural strength but are condemned to fight their savage impulses or lose their humanity completely. When a village that's being terrorised by a yoma hires a Claymore to deal with the problem, the one they're assigned appears to be more beast than human. While almost everyone in the village is intimidated by the Claymore's presence, though, young boy Raki isn't - he just sees her as another cute girl, and makes an effort to get to know her. He's also hoping to see her avenge the deaths of his parents - but he's unaware that the yoma that killed them is hiding inside the body of his own brother. The Claymore is named Clare, and her rather brutal slaying of the yoma leaves Raki with no family of his own and an outcast from his village thanks to his "brother"'s actions - and so he sets out across the wastelands in search of Clare, hoping to join with her in her travels...
Claymores are all female - they're "created" by forcing yoma flesh and blood into humans, and many attempts have shown that females are far more suited to enduring the process. It's no cakewalk for them, though, as Clare alludes to at one point. The method of 'creation' does mean that Claymores understand human nature and urges - they're still partly-human themselves, after all - but because of the way they're shunned by the people the fight to save, emotions are usually very deeply buried.
Clare is presented as being a little different from the run-of-the-mill, though. She's even less approachable than the average Claymore, but under the sustained efforts of Raki she also begins to open up, and you get this interesting little disconnect between Clare the fighter - who I suspect could hand Guts' guts to him on a plate, in a straight Claymore vs Berserk fight - and Clare the young woman, who has suddenly found herself with a child to care for. It gives every story two distinct sides, and makes sure there's more going on than blood & swordplay. Not that there's anything wrong with a little well-animated gore.
The look and feel of the series is quite dark, in keeping with the tone of its stories - locations usually have just enough detail to let you get a feel for them, while the character designs are nice and easy on the eye. Clare herself is presented as a rather attractive young woman, with just enough "off" about her design to make sure that you know there's something unusual about her; Raki is your typical young boy, and nothing much to speak of in either artistic or story terms. He's a story tool, used to great effect to bring out Clare's human side, but outside that watching him tends to be more annoying that anything else.
Storywise, the opening disc provides the necessary background setup and introductory stories to get the ball rolling, with a few adventures for Clare providing the wrapping to do that, while later episodes deal with Clare's past, telling of the events that led to her becoming a Claymore and that drive her now. That history makes this more than just an action series - there's initially a good story and plenty of emotion in there as well. It's just a shame that in many ways Clare is the only likeable character featured - Raki is two-dimensional, just being a foil for her conscience, while the other Claymores and Organisation fixers come across as arrogant and overbearing.
As the series goes on, the concept of Awakened Beings comes into play: the most powerful Yoma that the Claymores are sent after, they're also former Claymores themselves, ones who have drawn on their yoma power to the point where they can no longer control it and become fully yoma themselves. Most Claymores, on realising that they were reaching this point, would have themselves killed in accordance with the Claymore code of honour - but some either don't get the chance, or don't bother. Clare has had past contact with an Awakened Being and has a score to settle with it; she's also in real danger of becoming one herself, something that the Organisation seems aware of and may even be positively encouraging. She's not the only Claymore in that situation, and a number of them eventually find themselves assigned to an Awakened Being hunt that, on paper, seems to hold out very little chance of them surviving. This is where the series begins to go a bit wrong.
First, the series begins to concentrate rather too heavily on the action side of things, taking on some of the more unwelcome aspects of a Shonen Jump fighting show - although given that it's based on a manga that was serialised in that august publication, that shouldn't be a surprise. It also suffers from the source manga being ongoing, meaning that many of the plotlines dealt with through the series aren't concluded, but simply left hanging, with the unspoken "go buy the manga" exhortation left hanging in the air. Given my preference for character work over violence, especially when we're talking overly drawn-out battle scenes with detailed explanations of who's doing what, that only left me even more disillusioned with what I was seeing. Claymore starts out so well, and yet as the series goes on the pendulum swings almost completely away from character-based to action-based, and just about ruins the appeal of the show along the way. The series is still a long way from unwatchable, but there's such a drop-off in appeal between the opening episodes and the end of the series that you can't help but be disappointed. Taken over the course of its run, it's an above-average piece of work with a lot going for it, but the ending could have been so much better.
For full episodes and screenshots, see the reviews of the individual releases:
» Volume 1/2
» Volume 3/4
» Volume 5/6
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