Short Synopsis: Humans have been forced to coexist with Youma, who like to eat their flesh. In order to fight them, the Claymores appeared, after having themselves infused with Youma’s blood. Because of this, they’ve become feared as well, and everyone’s scared of them. Apart from one boy, that is, who has been saved from a Youma who killed his entire family by a Claymore named Claire.
Good: Knows its priorities for a fighting-series, nice art style, great ED.
Bad: Interesting, the first series of the new season with no bad points.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10
About two weeks ago, during my post about the 1500th comment, I made a little experiment, allowing people to vote on one series of the spring-season. That series would be blogged no matter what. The result: Claymore. No need for a quick first impression, since it’s certain that I’m going to blog this, and so far, I’m impressed. A lot.
At first sight, this series may be about the bloody fights. Sure, there is lots of blood shown, but so far it’s been more about the characters than action. We’ve got ourselves a young, naive boy who tries to make contact with the main character: Claire. As Claymore are half-human, half-Youma, they’re feared by everyone. This guy, however, isn’t afraid of them. Heck, he’s actually grateful. It’s promising to be quite interesting.
I also love Claire. Because most Claymores are either feared or hated, she’s got a really cold personality, due to the fact that she’ll never be able to become friends with anyone. I apparently spoiled myself a bit on Wikipedia, but this did give me enough information in order to follow the episode quite well, even though it was in raw. Most Claymores fuse themselves with Youma-flesh unwillingly, though Claire is the only one who volunteered. It’s for quite an interesting reason.
The Youma already have proven themselves quite clever, being able to take on the shape of humans and all. The art style so far has been really nice, and different from usual. I like it. The background music features all kinds of eerie tunes, perfect for an anime like this. It’ll be interesting to see where this anime goes. I wonder when we’ll see more Claymores appear.]]>
Claymore – 01
I really hope this doesn’t turn out to be one of those generic “quiet hardcore guy/girl kills everything and hates everybody because of his/her shady past, but due to the serendipitous encounter with annoyingly nice and preachy character X, he/she has a sudden change of heart and learns to appreciate life” anime.
Gah
Well, from what I’ve heard about the manga is that it starts out very generic, but then after a couple of volumes it really starts to get worthwhile. It’ll be interesting to see whether this is true or not.
I hope you’re right because this first episode was very predictable.
Yea the first episode is a bit predictable but that is kind of to be expected with a series like Claymore. Things most likely pick up when we start meeting the other Claymores that are seen in the OP.
I’m at about volume 9 or so in the Manga, and I can tell you that the series definitely picks up. It’s nothing like Goshinga is afraid of it being. Once the other claymores show up, you see a lot more cool characters, neat backstory, and strong character development. So far, the Anime looks like it’s been following the manga nearly panel-for-panel, and that is a very good thing.
I watched it for the first time last week after reading the manga. I really like the anime version, it matched with what I expected. I also think the OP and ED are well suited
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