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“Claymore”! The “Stalkers” New Love

I’ve started doing something that I never thought I would do. But then again, maybe it was inevitable. Maybe it was obvious to everyone but I was the only one that didn’t see it coming. I have begun a journey into the world of anime. My taste in video games was one of my litmus tests that I measured the legitimacy of my art consumption. I’ve always mocked video games like Devil May Cry and Lost Planet that straddled the line between video games and anime; and I’ve always enjoyed rich, well-developed games like Fallout 3.

But after watching the Devil May Cry animated series, I really can’t help myself. My latest dip into the vast and expansive world of anime is the animated series called Claymore. Claymore is an ongoing manga series written by Norihiro Yagi. Madhouse took the first eleven volumes of series and adapted it into a twenty-six episode anime show. It was released in Japan in April 2007. In North America, the anime series is licensed by Funimation which released the first DVD in Fall 2008.

Claymore centers around a young woman named Clare. Clare is a Claymore: a half-human, half-Yoma warrior who works for “The Organization”. The Yoma is a race of shape shifting, werewolf-like creatures that feed on humans. They are the bad guys in the Claymore series. The Claymores were created by The Organization by implanting Yoma flesh inside young girls. They are then able to harness the power and speed of the Yoma while maintaining their former intelligence and combat training. The more the Claymores draw on their Yoma power, the closer they become to “awakening”. When this happens, they lose their mind and transform into evil, blood thirsty gods—essentially—called Awakened Beings. These monsters are much bigger, faster, stronger and more powerful.

Claymore has some really good violence and the things the Claymores do with the swords is pretty sweet. This was not as good or as entertaining as Devil May Cry but I enjoyed it. If you read my last article about Devil May Cry, then you know that one of the main reasons I haven’t been interested in anime was because of the melodrama and the weeping boys. The other reason is because I feel like the animators take the easy road out when it comes to fight scenes. Instead of actually animating the characters and the fight moves, a lot of anime shows end up looking like a motion comic. They just draw a bunch of vibrating lines along the edges of a static image to depict speed and motion rather than having to create more frames where the characters and weapons actually move. I know that this is a defining characteristic of the anime genre, but it annoys me.

Claymore has probably one of the most useless, pathetic characters in any movie I have ever seen…ever. At the beginning of the series Clare is befriended by a boy named Raki (Rocky). He cries in every single scene that he’s in. He never kills anyone. He never gets stronger. He never learns to do anything. In the final episode, when Clare is about to vanquish her lifelong enemy—the very enemy for whom she joined the Claymores—and he dives in front of her and lets the central antagonist get away. He even has an opportunity to kill Clare’s arch enemy and he wimps out. He is so annoying that I can barely even stand thinking about him. Fortunately, he’s not around for the center part of the series. He exists only to walk, sleep and cry through the series.

Shaun “The Stalker” Keating