Claymore: Volumes 1 & 2

Introduction

Sword and Sorcery is a genre that isn't particularly well represented in my collection. A little surprising may be, considering on just how much fantasy there is, and the fact that I grew up watching Dungeons and Dragons cartoons. I even have an abiding fondness for the Dragonlance novels, although a rather fruitless attempt at RPGing (when RPGs involved manuals, models, and 12 sided dice) convinced me that you could take this stuff too seriously. That's just it. This specific brand of fantasy always walked a fine line between genuine storytelling and parody, and it was something that I quickly outgrew. For every Lord of the Rings, there were a hundred Beastmasters and Krulls. I've even found the Conan series, both in print and on film to be laughably cheesy. It's no surprise that any hint of wizards, dragons, swords or lute music doesn't make it to my anime collection either, unless it is an out and out parody like Slayers. But sometimes the creators do manage to take the cheese out of the recipe, and they do offer something thought provoking, honest and engrossing. It's rare, and to be honest, when I first heard of Claymore, I was quick to dismiss it as just another demon slaying fantasy. Except that its recent release in the US beginning last October, preceded of course by the ubiquitous fansubs, generated a surprising amount of community buzz, buzz which has yet to die down. Also, I have heard it compared to Berserk, but with better animation. I love Berserk, that's one fantasy show that I do possess, and it's one of those shows that transcend its genre, offering a compelling and engrossing story. If Claymore is half as good as Berserk, it will still be essential viewing. And so it was that a tentative wariness on my part became a rabid desire to see Claymore right now.


In a world where demonic Yoma prey on hapless humans, and can walk among them unsuspected, there is only one group who can stand against them, the Claymores. But Claymores are feared almost as much as the menace they stand against. They are half human and half Yoma, women all, who have made a drastic sacrifice in the name of vengeance. Claymores alone can sense Yoma, their tell-tale silver eyes turning gold when they find a foe to face in battle, and their altered physiology allows them to survive and heal from wounds that would kill lesser humans. But the more they fight, the more the monstrous half of their nature asserts itself, bringing closer the time when they too will become monsters to be hunted. Clare is such a warrior, accepting missions to kill Yoma and defend people who fear and despise her in return. But it's when she rescues a young boy named Raki that her life begins to change.

Funimation have been releasing this series in the US in single volumes, and will complete the series in a couple of months. We normally have to wait a year or more extra before the show comes to the UK, but Manga Entertainment have managed to drastically reduce that interim period. Too, they have eschewed the single disc format, and will be releasing Claymore in three dual disc collections. The first release of Claymore in the UK even comes with a bumper 10 episodes to get things up and running.


Chapter 1 - The Burden of the Blade

1. Great Sword
A series of horrific murders in a village have the inhabitants terrified, the only explanation is that they have a Yoma preying on them. A Yoma is a monster, a demon that feeds on human flesh, and hides in plain site by appearing human. The village leader has taken care of matters by calling in a Claymore, but it looks as if the cure is more terrifying than the affliction. Claymores are half Yoma and half human, and the only warriors who can easily find Yoma. They are all female, and they all possess silver eyes that turn gold when they do battle. When a Claymore named Clare arrives, she manages to chase all the terrified villagers back under their roofs, all except one boy named Raki. Raki is a survivor of a Yoma attack along with his brother, and far from being afraid of the enigmatic warrior woman; he's fascinated by her, and insists on accompanying her around the village.

2. The Black Card
Clare has picked up a loyal follower, and has adopted Raki as a cook, not that she eats much. It's uncertain how long he will stay though, given what he is learning about Claymores, how they come into being, and what their reasons for living in this world are. Only outsiders call them Claymores, they don't have names for themselves, but they do work for an organisation, eliminating Yoma from this world. All they have to do is kill, the Organisation takes care of everything else, and when Clare runs into a member of the Organisation, he has a few curious observations to make about her choice of travelling companion. Her business is more serious though, as he gives her a black card with an odd symbol on. It turns out that Claymores are conflicted by their opposing halves, and the more they fight, the more likely they are to cross over the line from human to demon. When that time approaches, a Claymore will send a black card with her symbol on to the one she trusts most to kill her while she is still human. The card that Clare has just received belongs to her best friend, Elena.


3. The Darkness In Paradise
Corpses in a Cathedral? It seems like the work of a Yoma, but it's not something that the city guard can handle. The trouble is that the city of Rabana is the Holy City, where the unclean and tainted are forbidden. That means Claymores. But Father Vincent has no alternative, unless a Claymore is called, the clergy will be wiped out. So it is that Clare and Raki have to sneak into the city, with the aid of a drug that masks Clare's Yoma side to the point of making her eye colour revert. The trouble is that the drug also blocks her ability to sense Yoma, which means that she will have to use some old fashioned footwork to track the beast down. But there is a curfew in the city, and a couple of enterprising guards have her targeted as a potential menace. Then the Yoma attacks.

4. Clare's Awakening
The guards get a harsh lesson in tolerance when Clare almost dies trying to protect them. Fortunately she is a quick healer, and when she wakes, she asks a favour from Father Vincent. The Yoma has to be hiding in the cathedral, and masquerading as one of the priests. All pretence forgotten, she will have to use her Claymore senses to divine just which one it is, but another truth about Claymores is revealed. The more power they use, the closer they come to the edge of losing their humanity, and wind up like Elena, asking to be killed before they in turn become killers. In the battle that is to come, Clare will cross that line.


5. Teresa of the Faint Smile
Teresa may be the greatest of the Claymores, certainly she never has to call on her Yoma half when fighting the monsters, and she is utterly ruthless and efficient, as well as remaining aloof from all the fearful villagers and townsfolk she encounters. The town of Theo is slightly different from most of the places she cleans out. This town actually has a nest of Yoma, seven of them to be killed, and the last one thinks he is safe hiding behind an innocent child. He's not, although Teresa isn't expecting the gratitude from the little girl to be so clingy. She learns why when the villagers shun her. Apparently the Yoma had picked up this girl and been hiding behind her in every town they preyed upon, while using her as their plaything and abusing her. As a result she has been left mute and fearful. She's also determinedly grateful, and insists on following Teresa wherever she goes. The girl's name is Clare…

Chapter 2 - The Point Of No Return

6. Teresa and Clare
Getting to know Clare is having an odd effect on Teresa, she's getting in touch with a humanity that she had long since thought extinguished. It's having an effect on Clare too, as slowly she regains the ability to speak, and what she has to say takes Teresa aback. Nevertheless, a Claymore's side is the last place a child should be, and she determines the best thing to do is to take her to the nearby town of Rokut. It's a safe place, with nice people who are willing to raise her, that's after Teresa has killed the local Yoma. But there is a group of bandits in the vicinity who have had their avaricious eyes on the town, and have been waiting for a passing Claymore to get rid of the one threat there. Her need to protect Clare will lead Teresa to break one of the Claymore's fundamental rules.


7. Marked For Death
A Claymore must not, in any circumstances, kill a human. That's the only way that the half monsters can co-exist with people, and be worthy of their trust when it comes to dealing with Yoma. Teresa broke that rule when she decided to protect Clare, and she compounded her crime by not submitting to the Organisation's justice. The Organisation puts together a group of Claymores to take Teresa's head. The trouble is that Teresa is ranked #1. Even if #2 through #5 can overcome their mutual antagonism and work together, they'll still be outclassed. However there is a new #2, one almost as skilled as Teresa in fighting without invoking her Yoma half. Priscilla gives them a chance, and joined by Sophia, Noel and Ilena, the four of them walk into the town where Teresa is hiding with Clare. Fortunately they pay in advance for the damages.

8. Awakening
Priscilla's naïve belief in honour, justice, and facing one's foes directly has to be put aside, and the four warriors confront Teresa on a bridge. There's a reason why Teresa is ranked #1 among the Claymores, and they've no idea what they've let themselves in for. It's worse for Priscilla, who's barely grown out of childhood, and confident in her abilities. Being bested by Teresa, and then not being allowed to die is utterly humiliating. Lusting for vengeance, and unleashing her rage, she lets flow the Yoma side of her and totally loses control. For a Claymore, unleashing her Yoma half is a matter of degree, 10% changes the colour of the eyes, 30% shows on the face, while 50% alters the physiology. Anyone who goes past 80% goes past the point of no return, and becomes a monster to be hunted down. Priscilla goes even further, and becomes an Awakened Being, more than Yoma, and utterly lethal.


9. Those Who Rend Asunder I
That's the reason why Clare became a Claymore, and that's why she hold a grudge against the monster that Priscilla became. She's been trying to gain in ability and strength, which is why she picks difficult confrontations such as the Yoma turned Voracious Eater in the Cathedral. Only that wasn't a Voracious Eater. There are no such things as Voracious Eaters, it's just PR from the Organisation to mask the fact that the monster is an Awakened Being, a Claymore turned bad. That's something that the public doesn't need to know. Learning this, and remembering Priscilla, Clare is more determined than ever to face one, and her chance comes when she hears of a Voracious Eater in the mountains. An Awakened Being needs a team of skilled Claymores to fight it, and Clare joins Helen, Deneve, and Miria, ranked 22, 15 and 6 respectively. The only problem is that Clare is the lowest ranked of all Claymores, 47 out of 47 on the continent. In comparison to the others, she's weak, she's unskilled, and she's a liability. But what they find is totally unexpected, a male Awakened Being.

10. Those Who Rend Asunder II
A Claymore named Galatea, and her handler Ermita watch from afar as four women face an Awakened Being, and find themselves out of their depth. There's more to this than just a battle to the death though, there are fundamental secrets about Claymores at stake, ulterior motives, and revelations to be had. Helen and Deneve may have been ridiculing the minnow Clare, and leader Miria may not have thought much of her presence on the hunt, but there is a reason why Clare is ranked #47 of all the Claymores. There is a reason why she is the least skilled and least experienced at dealing with Yoma. Since she became a Claymore, there has been but one goal that she has been working towards, one skill she has been striving to attain, the ability to fight Awakened Beings.

Picture

The 1.78:1 anamorphic transfer is most rewarding. It's a rare NTSC-PAL conversion that limits the flaws of that to a minimum. The image is clear and sharp, ghosting is practically absent, and the pans and scrolls are smooth and free of judder. There is a clarity and sharpness to it that could almost be a native PAL image. It's excellent. Madhouse Studios head up the animation on this project and it tells in the final product. The character designs do take a bit of getting used to, but in the long run, the singular style and difference of the piece help it stand out from the crowd. Also the world design takes a leaf from Death Note's book in terms of palette, mood and detail. It's a very effective, moody and stylish animation, getting the balance between quirky individuality, and mass-market appeal just right.

Sound

You have a choice between DD 5.1 English and DD 2.0 Japanese, with optional translated English subtitles and a separate signs only track. I went for my usual option of the Japanese track and was perfectly happy with clear dialogue, nice music and pleasant action. I did sample the English dub, and it's well acted with the characters suitably cast. It's also worthy of the 5.1 track, as the sound is immersive, the action and sound effects are placed well, and there's more than the usual level of sound design applied to this show. Dub fans will have a lot to appreciate here.

Incidentally, my second check disc had just a vanilla English stereo track, despite the 5.1 flagged on the menu screens, but this will be remedied for the final retail release.

Extras

There are extras spread across both discs, and both discs get suitably atmospheric presentation in terms of menu design.

Disc 1

You'll find the textless credits here, as well as some Cast Auditions for Clare, Teresa, Rubel, Sid, and various Yoma. It all amounts to under four minutes of audio.

The substantial contribution is the commentary for episode 1, with Stephanie Young (Clare), joining ADR director and voice of Raki, Todd Haberkorn. They talk about the show, and the process of dubbing it. It's pretty much par for the course for anime commentaries, if a little dry and technical at times, but it's easy to listen to.

Disc 2

You get the textless credits again, and this time there is an interview with director Hiroyuki Tanaka, who squeezes in quite a lot of information into a 7-minute featurette.

The commentary on this disc accompanies episode 8, and is provided by actresses Brina Palencia (Priscilla), and Wendy Powell (Ilena). It's a nice friendly yak track, a little scene specific, a little gossipy, but easy to listen to.

Conclusion

My experience of the old hack and slash movies has led me to approach anime in the same vein with perhaps an unfair amount of wariness. I certainly wouldn't have watched Berserk were it not for the fact that I had to review it, and it didn't turn out to be an anime Krull. By the same token, Claymore isn't at all like Red Sonja. On the contrary, this series has turned out to be good, very good indeed, and I was surprised at how much I was looking forward to each new episode, or my need to turn the air blue when the final episode on this collection finished. I need more Claymore now, damn it! That's despite Manga Entertainment coming up trumps with the release format. I cannot overstate how much I appreciate the two volume collection, and as they follow Funimation's episode distribution, that means we get ten episodes for a price that would normally have got us just four a couple of years ago. That it's a bargain is incontrovertible, that the show is of such high quality makes the bargain all the sweeter. Previously, this would have had flagship title written all over it, and we would have had single volume releases drip fed to us over the space of a year, indeed that's how Claymore has been released in the US. That we get the whole series in four months is just the cherry on the cake.


The most striking thing about Claymore is that it offers so much more than you would expect. After all, the description hardly does it justice, with women in form-fitting armour, carrying massive swords, and regularly despatching demons with oodles of blood and gore. Played to the lowest common denominator, it would have been a monster of the week show, with an emphasis on fan service and some comedy. Claymore eschews that and instead gives the story a much more serious and sharper edge. It's the sort of treatment that moody adult shows get, where the protagonists are usually male, and there's plenty of angst, soul searching and introspection among the characters. What's refreshing about Claymore is that the protagonists in this case are all female, they are the strong, dominant characters, and the creators feel no need to make an issue of their gender beyond what the story dictates.


The story itself is fascinating. What could have been a simple good guys versus bad guys dynamic becomes infinitely richer when the good guys, in this case the Claymores, are themselves linked to the Yoma that they hunt. Indeed the only way they can match them in battle is to be part Yoma themselves. I must admit that when I learned that Claymores were half human and half Yoma that it did sound a little prurient, but the reality is even more unsettling, going beyond something as straightforward as cross species breeding. That they are part Yoma means that the Claymores are always in danger of becoming that which they hunt, indeed the implication is that it's an inevitable transformation, and that by choosing to become Claymores, they knowingly sign their own death warrants. The background to the Claymores as revealed here is interesting as well, and we learn of a secretive and manipulative organisation, one that hides the truth from the general populace and even its own members. As those truths begin to be revealed in latter half of this collection, the story becomes all the more compelling.


Clare's story is also compulsive viewing, and the way that the episodes are structured makes it even more so. There are comparisons made to Berserk, but beyond the violent content and swordplay, I don't find that to be justified. Berserk was very much about politics and character drama, while Claymore is a little more traditional an anime in its outlook. The one place that comparison is warranted is in the episode structure, with an introduction, followed by a scene setting flashback, then a return to the modern day. Berserk suffered from the whole series being the scene setting flashback, but in Claymore it works out well. We're thrown into the deep end when we meet Clare as she takes on a Yoma in a village, then picks up a young stray who's been exiled. Raki begins to have an effect on Clare, bringing out her human side and getting her in touch with her emotions again, which turns out to be essential when she faces a particularly tough Yoma that brings her close to the edge of losing her humanity.


All this time we're fed snippets and hint of Yoma lore, and who the Claymores are. We then get four episodes of flashback, where we meet Clare as a child, a victim of Yomas, rescued by a powerful Claymore named Teresa. We learn why Raki has such an effect on Clare, as it transpires that she was in Raki's shoes once herself, we see the effect that she had on her saviour, and we also learn ultimately why she became a Claymore herself. It isn't a pleasant story, but it does in these four episodes tell us a lot more about the Claymores and the Yoma that they fight. Then comes what to me is Claymore's masterstroke. We return back to the present day, with Raki and Clare continuing on their travels from village to village, but the show suddenly delivers the unexpected, turning everything on its head. When we started the series and met Clare, she was like a Terminator. She'd go into town, hunt down and kill the Yoma, regardless of what damage it inflicted on her knowing full well that she'd heal quickly, and oblivious to the hostility with which people viewed her. That began to change when she met Raki, who of all the people she encountered, didn't fear her, and even awakened something akin to protectiveness in her. But we'd still see her scything through Yoma, a lethal killing machine, and still pretty emotionless and aloof. The flashback hinted that wasn't the normal state of affairs when it comes to Claymores, and while Teresa was just as aloof, she certainly wasn't cold, indeed there was a quiet humour to her interactions with the young Clare, and how she dealt with her foes. The other Claymores that we met at the end of the flashback were wildly different in personality as well, even though all of them were brutal killing machines.


But all of a sudden, when we return to Clare, and she encounters some fellow Claymores, we realise that far from being the perfect weapon, she's actually the weakest and least skilled of the lot. Helen, Deneve and Miria all outclass her completely, and she's like a backward schoolchild in comparison. It has the effect of shifting the playing field, and broadening the scope of the story, and it's masterfully done, especially when we learn just why Clare is so deficient compared to the others. Incidentally, it's a good thing that the various Claymores have such wildly differing personalities and abilities. The one criticism of the animation is that the character designs for the Claymores are all so similar. Admittedly when the physical traits of the Claymores call for them all to be warrior women with silver eyes and blonde hair, there's very little you can do to differentiate them, but through character performance and writing, it actually becomes difficult to get them confused.


Manga Entertainment is on to a winner with Claymore. It fulfils their original mandate of violence, monsters and lots and lots of blood. It could be a classic straight from their archives, and it doesn't hurt that you have statuesque, sword-wielding women as the show's protagonists. Babes, blood, and butchery, it all sounds so lowbrow. But Claymore ups the ante, with a smart story and an irresistible hook, effortlessly well written, with characters that draw you in further to the tale. Most important of all, it's brilliant fun to watch, and 'just one episode more' addictive. Claymore is a must-own anime.