Claymore

Claymore, unfortunately, falls short as a subpar, sub-mediocre, forgettable, and unimaginative read. Its cast lacks any creativity, and the Claymore organization, which should be the highlight, features more than 40 female monster hunters that look, fight, and act the same. They are praised as great female representation, but the more you grow as a reader, the more you will realize that they are an absolute joke. -The main character, Claire, fails to stand out, appearing like a recycled character from another story. Her arc revolves around being emotionless but learning to feel while traveling with Raki, who is arguably the worst character in the series.-Raki's presence adds little to the story, he does nothing but create problems, lacks depth, and somehow ends up in a romantic relationship with Claire. His development is unsatisfying, as he drops out for training and returns able to face multiple Claymores at once, leaving readers unimpressed as all this “development” is offscreen. -The main antagonists are equally underwhelming, with one becoming evil due to issues controlling her own power, said villain is also defeated through an asspull, and the disappointing revelation of the Yoma's origin ties to an unexplored region in the story, further diminishing the narrative's impact. -The story's regard is not high. The beginning involves Claire and Raki battling monsters, with a middle reveal of the Claymore organization's hidden nature. However, the end devolves into a battle frenzy resembling DragonBall Z but with Near Identical Lesbian Sword Fighters. The final stretch lacks strategy, relying on random power-ups, and resurrecting dead characters to resolve conflicts taking place in a setting which is nothing more than a mundane medieval backdrop. In conclusion, Claymore's mediocrity outweighs its little potential. For a more captivating experience, exploring the Witcher series by Andrzej Sapkowski may be a better choice. The Witcher offers a similar plot with a diverse cast of characters, a creative setting based on mythology, and the advantage of enjoying the story through books, games, comics, TV, and more. This story has political dramas, heartfelt moments between parents, magic, thrilling fights, and so much more than this unfinished paintjob of a manga.

Story: Convenient. A lot of things take place for the sake of progression. There's no real sense of urgency or fear when reading this work, as each fight is recovered by an unknown savior stepping in at the last minute. With a work putting so much emphasis on the overwhelming power of the enemy, it's unfortunate to find it undermined by poor directive decisions. There's a mishandling of dialogue and combat. This is a work that is plagued with characters pausing in the middle of a fight to take out the proverbial tea-table and chew the fat over some expositional dialogue. It can become very arduous andis what fills more than 70% of the pages. This work is very event driven, and that works in some respect. The problem is that a world that is event-driven needs to be lively, and this world is rather barren. There's talk about different locations on this continent but it's never quite detailed what differs between them: if there's varied races, commodities, cultures. It's unfortunate for a fantasy work to pass up this opportunity. The main villain is not all that compelling, and I don't mean to compare but since everyone says. "Claymore is the female Berserk!" then I feel comfortable saying that Claymore's main antagonist is nothing like Griffith. She is not nearly as interesting or engaging as the well-constructed character of Griffith. I found this incredibly disappointing, but I tried not to let it ruin my adventure through Claymore. In fact, I found myself enjoying her as a character during the last 30 chapters. It helped recover a bad taste in my mouth I had been nursing for a while. In regards to some positives, a few of the events are quite intriguing. While I never feared the ensemble casts mortality, I did find it fun to see how they'd escape their perilous situation. There's something fun about the constant hurdles our cast endures, even if a majority of the conflicts seem unrealistic and downright stupid. Despite the somewhat convoluted nature of this narrative, the finale is incredibly satisfying. As someone who felt that this work was going well beyond its worth, I was actually looking forward to the ending because I didn't want to see this work get worse. Thankfully, the ending was not only prompt but efficiently executed with a surprise that I felt was both believable and not a convenient cop-out. Art: The Awakened Beings of Claymore are very cool. They all have their own designs that are somewhat practical and otherworldly. My only issue is that despite their designs, they're never quite as humbling as I'd hope, considering there's always a convenient savior prepared to save our cast. Connected to my issue with this world being quite barren, the backdrops of nearly every fight are boring and uninspired. Rubble and more rubble. Trees used as rubble. Mountains turned into a flat plane of rubble. And no, it's not just because the Awakened Beings are destructive, it's mostly because rubble is easy to draw. It would have been a lot of fun to see creatures fight in special locales such as a Spring within a forest, a vast underground chasm, or a cityscape. Yes, there are battles in dungeons and cities, but it's limited to a street within the city or a hallway within a dungeon, so it's basically like picking a level in Street Fighter where the design doesn't really matter. Early art is disproportionate and characters are seen making the same motions during combat. It's quite uninteresting but the story itself has an interest that supersedes these issues. What becomes overly offensive is the failures during the later chapters, where sometimes it's difficult to actually tell what motions are taking place. This became very bothersome to me, as I wasn't sure who was going where, who hit what, why someone got damaged. Things like that. It merely became an acceptance that something happened and I needed the next page to clarify that event. Character: Tropes everywhere. However, when the narrative is based on events, I didn't find this overly offensive. There's an ensemble cast in a narrative based more on events. It becomes nearly impossible to know who is who, even if they have different hair styles. Something that could have helped is laying off on the combat and including more quiet periods. Seldom are there breaks in the action. I would have appreciated a lot more cooldowns than there were. This would have allowed for more characters to grow in realism. A big issue is the introduction of characters that our writer has no idea what to do with them. It's as though the author went, "This is a cool idea." Wrote it in, then had to write the next chapter for the following month and went, "Oh wait, jeez. What should I do with them?" This happens a lot, and there's many characters who are pretty darn interesting that get the back burner because we're already being overloaded with a group of characters. Despite the many character issues, it makes it clearer when there are characters written correctly within Claymore. Though seldom, there were times where I thought characters were doing things sensible within their boundaries, but also endearing and relatable. Also, the way the characters were handled in the finale was exemplary. This can always be very difficult for writer's, as it can be strange handling the ending for everyone's character arcs. Thankfully, Claymore sticks to one narrative and one narrative alone. Enjoyment: Stable. I wasn't ever bored, though there were periods where I bordered it. Perhaps the biggest offense was the fact that things were too convenient. Because of this, fights weren't of interest to me. I begged for world building as I was getting past the 50 chapter mark, and I wanted an enemy that could meet our main cast with mortality in its grasp. There is an event that takes place that did it a little, but there isn't much of a follow up, and I felt cheated. That said, I wanted to keep reading. There was something interesting. I can't tell you what, and I think that's a negative, in all honesty, but this narrative has a charisma to it, despite its glaring flaws. ((If you liked this review, friend me for new reviews on other works, both manga and anime!))

Claymore is one of the most disappointing manga I've read. From chapter 1 to about 60 it is amazing, however, afterwards the quality declines little by little until by the end there is barely anything left to enjoy. Let me explain. The story starts out fairly simple but gets more complex quickly as we see the past of the main character. We slowly get introduced to more aspects of the life of the claymores and how it affects them. We get to see what makes the main character special among all the other warriors and watch as she gets stringer and forms relationships with other people.All of this culminates in the best battle of the series. We get proper build up to the onslaught that is to come, recurring characters come back, the interactions between the cast are both sweet and terrifying because we know not all of them will make it, and then the battle starts and it is great. Claymore never even came close to recreating these chapters and it was certainly not for the lack of trying. So what went wrong? There are some underlying problems with Claymore that were never addressed and eventually ruined the manga. The fact that some of the worst shonen tropes were present definitely did not help. One of the things most praised about Claymore is the art. This is for good reason since the creativity in the monster designs of the monsters (awakened ones) is outstanding. However a lot of people don't acknowledge where the art falls short. The backgrounds aren't detailed enough and straight up absent in most fights, the character design of a lot of the claymores is very similar and it is not hard to confuse them because there are a lot of them, and most importantly, the fight choreography is lacking. Not that its always bad but the author abuses the "teleports behind you" moves and also the fact that the monsters tend to use projectiles is a shortcut for the author to draw white lines colliding with a character and not worry about making the fight look Cool. This doesn't always happen but the frequency of the fights doesn't help. The author also fails to establish a power ceiling which makes the stakes non-existent. At the beginning of the story we are introduced to the basic setting, the power levels of the main characters and what seems to be the power level of what the main villains of the series will be. The problem is the fact that it is a lie. As the series continues moving forward the author feels a need to one up each enemy with next. The villains who were supposed to be the final villains end up being footnotes to the actual villains of the later half of the series. the danger is lost because we know the characters will win no matter what and that the next villain will be a lot stronger but will still lose and get replaced with someone more powerful. Due to the sheer volume of fights, later chapters become a slog of identical looking women outspeeding monsters for hundreds of chapters in fights that feel the same. The second big problem with Claymore is how after a while, the protagonist seems to appear less and less. This isn't a problem at the beginning because the side characters are solid but it keeps happening and the story loses direction. With nothing to do, the author decides to fill pages by making side characters fight powerful monsters that contribute nothing to the story. The third (and biggest) problem with the manga is the overreliance on bad shonen manga tropes. I don't have anything against shonen. I think my scores for slam dunk and chainsaw man, however, I think authors writing shonen can sometimes fall into the realm of cliche and lazy writing. In Claymore, this manifests as the overuse of flashbacks. Especially to try and get an emotional reaction out of villains. I understand that writing complex antagonists is generally a good thing but when the setting of your story explicitly says that the monsters have left behind their humanity and are now just evil cannibals maybe you should chill with the sad flashbacks to their earlier lives. I understand doing it for very important figures but when you are trying to make me empathize with the dude I just met who has just finished gutting one of the best side characters in the story there is a problem. Also the time skip requires a lot of flashbacks to explain gaps which is really time consuming and unnecessary. The final complain is the fact that the biggest plot twist which attack on titan apparently ripped off is actually meaningless. A more complex aspect was added to the story yet it was dropped for the entire manga until the final chapter where it suddenly comes back and is resolved in less than three pages. I don't want to criticize this aspect too badly since it probably was not the authors decision to cut short such a potentially large storyline however it still bothers me quite a lot. All in all, Claymore isn't a bad manga. Just an incredibly disappointing one. Im not sure if I recommend reading it but I guess that you might like it if you... Like dumb action and don't care about plot, like horrifying monsters, want to experience the great first third of the story and then stop reading and pretend it ended at its highest point.

Claymore, a manga with lot of story arcs. It starts off simple, with claymores (aka silver eyed witches) doing their job. A character bonds with one, and they do things together. Things get a lot more complicated later on, but it maintains its general flow. The main problem I had with it is how long is dragged things on sometimes. I generally like to avoid animes such as Bleach, Naruto, One Piece, Fairy Tail, and all of the others like that for that very reason. Fights take forever, and there can be a lot of talking sometimes. So obviously if this will bother you, it might notbe the manga for you. HOWEVER, the long drawn out stuff doesn't occur until a certain arc. I like to compare Claymore to Air Gear in this sense. Claymore and Air Gear both had their anime counterparts ended early. The reason I like to compare them is because they both start experiencing the long talks and fights after the stopping points of the anime. I'm not entirely sure if I'd quite recommend it, as a lot of people (including myself) didn't find the ending very satisfying. This is a problem since it's a fairly long read, so be wary.