Claymore manga review

 

Anime or manga as a medium is no stranger to fantasy, most likely owing to the dominance of JRPGs in gaming. But for various reasons, out of the scope of this review, grim medieval fantasy setting is something that’s rarely attempted, Berserk being the only famous work to point towards. Another series that had seen some popularity was Claymore.

 
To boil Claymore down to its core, the series is about badass swords-women named Claymore slaying various demons of fascinating design. Putting technicalities aside a claymore is a Scottish great sword and it’s no wonder that naming your main characters after that gives off a badass impression from the get go. And that impression is key to getting into this series since action is put front and center over anything else.
Does that mean there’s nothing else to enjoy here? No, there’s enough plot intrigue and a colorful cast of characters to keep you going for the entire duration but that’s not the meat of the series and coming with a different expectation would most likely hurt your experience.

DISCLAIMER: I tried to limit spoilers as much as possible but I have to mention some vague minor plot elements to make my critique make sense

Claymore’s narrative can be vaguely divided into 2 parts owing to a time skip. The 1st part introduces us to the world through the perspective of 1 character, Clare who for all intents and purpose is the main character of this story. The plot is kept simple as we deal with a monster of the week formula where the main draw are the fight scenes, which are suitably brutal. I don’t consider the narrower focus of the story a complete negative as it helps keep world building simple but it’s also hard to deny the story remains rather dull for a long time due to this.
The start is also the weakest part of the manga in my opinion given the art is not very good. The manga suffers from having all the claymore characters looking a bit too similar (similar outfit, weapon and hair) so hard to differentiate at a glance. Add to this the relatively weak monsters not being visually distinct.
If you can wade through that mediocrity though, you are quickly rewarded with characters having very distinct personalities and abilities along with powerful monsters with unique designs to match them. Without a doubt the strong points I mentioned are the biggest draw of Claymore throughout the manga and only get better with time. This portion of the manga also introduces a recurring cast of characters which greatly enhances your attachment to the world as any RPG player can tell you, a likable cast of companions can even make a boring journey worthwhile. Without spoiling, the story also builds quite a bit of narrative conflict that I was happy with.
Intrigue at an all time high, the pre time skip portion of the manga ends with a bang which I consider one of peaks of the story. This is also where the anime ends, at least the canon part.

I do not know when it happened but post time skip I began to notice that the art has become significantly better. Character designs were more varied, action scenes have more of a sense of flow to them that I had found missing previously. You can feel the mangaka let loose with monster designs too as they frequently take up 2 page spreads to let you bask in their glory.

A few chapters into this part of the story we also get a plot twist that re-contextualizes the whole story, albeit through an info dump. Sadly I fear that despite being the 1st at it, the twist is far too reminiscent of a new super popular manga and being not as polished, will never get the same recognition. Building on that point, instead of having a single perspective of Clare the manga now switches things up as we get long sections of the manga with different characters in focus, some known, some new. This goes quite well with the shift in goal of the story too. The combination of these makes for a much more engaging plot in the 2nd half.
Having started with positives let me now move on to the changes I was less fond of. I’ll have to make bullet points for this
• Flash backs. So much flash backs. If the first part of the story was the set up then this part could be considered payoff and the mangaka makes a liberal use flash backs to achieve that. It’s not that they are unnecessary but rather the narrative doesn’t flow into them naturally. It’s only after they are over you realize why it was put there.
• Side characters. They probably triple in number. The mangaka makes some effort to keep them unique and I commend that effort but there are far too many to keep track of and having your emotional investment be divided means you care less deeply about each character.
• Excessive action scenes. Every minute plot development leads to some battle. Despite the improvement in art there were portions of the manga towards the end where I just wanted to skip pages to get to any actually plot important part instead of reading action scenes with characters I barely care about.
• Power creep. The 1st part of the manga had a reasonable sense of power escalation, you knew who were powerful and they genuinely felt deserving of fear. Now that the protagonists are powerful and powerful enemies are numerous. Strong enemy ranks become meaningless as even more powerful ones come. To re-contextualize one of Stalin’s quotes in the weirdest way, death of single powerful enemy/hero is impactful, death of many is a statistic.

Despite my complaints, I would be remiss to say that I didn’t enjoy my time with it. The story did tie up most plot threads in a satisfying manner while still leaving open a path for any future continuation. Claymore might not hold a candle to the greats of grimdark literature but it does enough to be a very enjoyable action manga. I hope we get a well choreographed anime remake in the future, I’m sure I’ll enjoy the action a lot more in anime format.