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I wanted to create a club to reflect, inspire, and discuss any anima that’s on Netflix. Any discussion is welcome as long as the arguments are referenced. I am new to anima so I will be objective. This site is more for me than anyone else. 
I hope you enjoy so please just a few rules;
Be very cautious with spoilers. Just a warning is all that is needed. And let me know if there is a movie on here that is not on Netflix. I will do my best.
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rdmiller1437 | Apr 19, 2012 8:43 PM

GeekCritic89 wrote on September 3, 2010 for a review on CLAYMORE. Thank you.

I have a question for otakus that are reading this review. Do you ever have this feeling when you watch a certain anime that you have high expectations for and you seemed to be enjoying that anime for the most part. But when you get into the anime more and more, things start to go wrong and in the end it becomes a disappointment to you. Do you ever get that in some certain animes you watch? Sure, you do. I don't get that very often. But, I do get that from a few animes. And one of them is one that I just finished watching recently and is also the one I'm reviewing. That anime is called Claymore.

It's an action anime that came out in 2007 and this is a perfect example, at least in my opinion, where you watch an anime that you wanted to love so much. But in the end, you just felt that it was a letdown. I know there are a number of otakus that finds this to be a very good anime. But as for me, I find it to be a decent anime at best. I don't hate it. And believe me, I don't. I just don't find it to be great then some people said it is that watches this anime. But hey, I'll explain all of the complaints in the course of this review. So, let's get started on my review.

The story goes like this. There is a world where humans are being hunted by these hellish monsters called the Yoma. What the Yoma does is that it eats humans and once it does it a human, it could take the form of that human and blend in with society causing suspicions on who's real and who's not. When that happens, a secret organization sends a group of female fighters called Claymores, or silver-eyed witches. These Claymores, which are also the name of the swords that they carry, are warriors that are half-human and half-yoma that can track down and kill the Yomas that are hiding around certain towns. They can tell what human is a Yoma just by sensing the Yoma's yoki, or their life force.

The anime focuses on one of the Claymores and her name is Clare, who is the main character of the anime. During the course of the anime, you see her going from town to town hunting down these yomas and later on a different group called the Awakened Beings, which are monsters that Claymores can turn into if they lose control of their powers and activate their strength for more then 80%. This could also happen to male beings, as well. But Clare doesn't go into these missions about these awakened beings until the middle of the show.

I don't know where else to begin for talking about the aspects of Claymore, in terms of it's story, plot and characters. I think I should start on how the episodes work in the show. There is 26 episodes total in Claymore. The first 4 episodes are mainly an introduction about our main character, one other character that I will talk about later, the Claymores and the Yoma. From episodes 5-8, it follows a different story arc telling us the backstory of Clare when she was young and another Claymore by the name of Teresa. Also, those 4 episodes reveal to us what the main story of Claymore is. And after we experience those episodes, it goes back to the present and the remaining episodes gives us more infomation about the Claymores and the Yoma, and would later reveal to us some other aspects of the show which I will not get into. So, the story in Claymore is somewhat interesting for an action anime. And that's good.

There is quite a number of characters to be found in Claymore and most of them do get some good development. Clare is a good character in Claymore. She's quiet, but yet very badass when she gets involve in the anime's actions. That reminds me of an anime character named Guts from Berserk since he is just about the same way as Clare. Now I mentioned about a minute ago that the first 4 episodes were also an introduction to another character and that character is a young boy named Raki, who is one of the main flaws of the show.

The whole story about Raki is in the first episode, Clare was sent on a mission to take down this Yoma in one town. And Raki is involved with that yoma because that yoma disguised itself as Raki's brother. So Clare killed the Yoma and since Raki has nowhere else to go, he sticks with Clare throughout the first half of the show like a stray dog following you all the way to your home. He is an extremely pointless character who is only there just to annoy viewers because he is one of those characters that gets in the way a lot and he has nothing to do with the actual story of the anime, which makes him the anime's version of Jar Jar Binks from Star Wars: The Phantom Menance. But thankfully, he isn't shown very often because around the middle Clare and Raki were going their separate ways at that point. And to me that great because I did not want to experience any character development for this guy at all just for the fact that he is so damn pointless to the story of the anime.

For the exception of Raki, there is some characters that I wished could've gotten more development. I can't say who they are and I can't explain why should they get more development because of spoilers. But I will say this, though. I think they would've gotten more development if the staff of the anime, and I guess the manga staff in a sense, had fixed 2 problems. One: Remove Raki completely. Since he is also one of the anime's main characters besides Clare, he demonates half of the anime and gets a bit of screen time. Maybe not as much as Clare because she is shown in every episode of the show, which she should givin she is the actual main character of the anime. But Raki gets more screen time in comparisions to some of the anime's supporting cast. So if he wasn't in the anime to begin with, I think some of the supporting characters could get more development that way.

And the next problem relating to the supporting cast is also my next flaw of Claymore, which is a major one. The anime ends on a cliffhanger! Where the hell do I begin? Let me start off by saying that I hate cliffhanger endings. And I know I'm not alone about this because I know a lot of people that hate cliffhanger endings. Animes aren't just guilty for this. Some video games like both Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance games and some movies that are based on video games like Super Mario Bros, Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter have also ended on a cliffhanger. But to me, animes seems to be the worst when it comes to not ending the story in the end. Bare in mind, not every anime is like this. But, there are some number of animes out there that shares this problem. Animes like Berserk, Air Gear, Black Blood Brothers, Inuyasha, the Hellsing TV series, the old school Guyver OVA and of course, Claymore, are true examples.

Cliffhanger endings can cause 2 problems. In Claymore's case, it causes for some of the supporting characters to have extremely limited appearances in the anime counterpart, then it's original manga version. As for the other problem, it can be mentioning some elements in the plot of the anime. But only mention about it in very few episodes. Claymore has that problem, but I will get into that later. The whole point about this mini-rant is that cliffhanger endings can hurt an anime, especially ones that don't even have a sequel because it gets the viewer mad that the staff would leave important aspects of the plot and characters given less effort after the anime ends that way. The only exception that I know of is Code Geass. While that was a good anime, it did a good job for covering aspects of the story very well. It did give some characters limited screen time. But for the most part, Code Geass did give most of it's characters development and the story was told very well. There is a sequel to Code Geass and from I've heard, it's just as good as the first season because it develops the story nicely and the characters from the first season have gotten more development, at least from I've heard.

If Code Geass has a sequel that picks up after the cliffhanger ending, why can't some of the others that have cliffhanger endings do the same thing? Sure there was Hellsing Ultimate and a new Guyver TV series. But, those don't count because they are really remakes of the original then actual sequels. But the rest of the animes that I mentioned don't have a sequel, which most of them should get one because it would help a lot by giving more exposition to the characters and some of the aspects of the story that wasn't talked about in the original. And some animes that do have this problem are based on manga's that weren't even finished to begin with. That alone should prove to you that there something wrong is going to happened in that anime.

I'm really getting off topic in this review. So I will end this argument in short. If you're going to make an anime, wait until the manga is finished. And if by some chance you are making an anime that's based on a manga that is still going and you want to end it with a cliffhanger, give us a sequel straight up. Don't wait 6 years or longer and don't even think about not planning on making a sequel. Just make a sequel and we'll all be happy.

Anyways, back to the review. So because of the cliffhanger ending and Raki, some of the supporting characters in Claymore have very little development. If those were to be fixed, then those characters would've not been on the bland side and also would've made this anime a lot better. Now I said that Claymore had an element in the plot that was only talked about less. And that is relating to the Organization that the Claymores work for, which is stupidly enough called "The Organization". We don't get a lot of backstory about the orgnization a lot in the anime because most of the times, we learn mostly about the Claymores, the Yoma and the Awakened Beings. That's what you get, Japan, for making an anime that is based on a manga that isn't finished. So please make a sequel to Claymore because I think it would really help by giving us more backstory on the Organization.

Now that I gotten all of the major flaws of Claymore out of the way, let me talk about the good stuff. I do enjoy many of the characters. Like Clare, Teresa, and some of the other minor Claymores like Jean and my favorite out of all the Claymores, Ophelia. She only appears in a few episodes. But when she does appear, she does leave an impact. She's very sadistic and psychotic and I like these kinds of villains because they are so good at being evil. And not to mention that in the english dub, she is voiced by my favorite voice actress of all time, Luci Christian. And that makes it even awesome.

There is a big number of action scenes to be found in Claymore, which is something what you would expect from an anime like this. And for the most part, the action scenes are pretty much. At first, I didn't care for them because I thought they dragged on. But that was when I saw this anime a couple times before I even saw this the third time just to review it, which got me uninterested in watching Claymore. But now, the action scenes did grow on me. I don't find them as boring as I used to because during an action sequence, the anime will go into break time when it include's some talking or something else important. And then, it will go back into the action. So overall, I did enjoy the action in Claymore.

The art and animation in Claymore is definitely one of the strongest highlights. This is animated by Madhouse studios and I'm a big fan of that animation studio because they make a lot of great looking animes like Death Note, Black Lagoon, Trigun, Devil May Cry, Gunslinger Girl, the Ninja Scroll movie, Last Order: Final Fantasy VII and Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust. And this anime certaintly doesn't disappoint me when it comes to the visuals. In fact, I consider this one of Madhouse's best work in an anime. The anime use a bunch of different vibrant colors to go with the backgrounds. The colors range from red, lavender, purple, brown, gold, yellow, green, blue and gray. I love on how the different colors are handled in the environments and I just love the artwork in the anime so much that I just wish Japan should make an artbook of this anime. It's that good.

The animation is mostly great, though there are a few spots where it will tend to get bad. The characters look great, although you will notice that the anime gets repetitive when it comes to character designs that are Inn keepers. They're all bald with little bit of hair on the sides of the head or very little hair on the top. Even the action scenes are well animated. I've heard from a lot of reviewers that the whole lightning sparks in the action does make the battles feel cheated. Though personally, those don't really bother me at all. So bottom line, Claymore's look very breathtaking and it's one of Madhouse Studio's greatest achievements.

I watched Claymore in english and the voice acting is very good, which is something you would expect from a dub that's from Funimation. I thought Stephanie Young did a great job for voicing Clare. She has two different kind of voices she makes. She has a young girl voice when Clare is on her human like side. But when Clare starts to get more Yoma like, Stephanie does this dark, growly voice. And she succeds in doing both of those kind of voices.

Raki is voiced by Todd Haberkorn, who voiced characters like Firo from Baccano! and Death the Kid from Soul Eater. As bad as he is character is, he does an ok job for voicing Raki. There are a few times where Todd will sound screechy when he makes Raki yell. But for the most part, he does a decent job. The rest of the voice acting is pretty good. VA's like Caitlin Glass, Brittney Karbowski, Vic Mignogna, Brina Palencia, Laura Bailley and of course, Luci Christian, do great jobs. However, I do have one other complaint on another va. There is a minor character named Undine and she is voiced by Clarine Harp. She does an ok job voicing her character, for the most part. But she makes her character yell, she sounds like if you were to combine a tough female voice to a tough man voice. It's pretty bad. But really, there is more great voice performances then there are bad ones. So, the english voice acting is well done in Claymore.

The music is also great. There are some soft tracks like bagpipes playing in the background which are really nice. And there is a lot of metal tracks which are used in the action scenes and they are a blast to listen to. The opening theme is performed by Nightmare, who did the first opening and ending theme to the anime Death Note. I love the songs they did in Death Note and the song they did in Claymore also doesn't disappoint me at all. It is a very good song to listen to and like the opening theme to Grenadier, this is another example of an anime opening theme that is better then the actual anime itself.

The ending theme is performed by Riyu Kosaka. That ending theme is awesome and it's one of my favorite ending themes in animes. Some parts of that song reminds me a little bit of some of the stuff you would hear in some female lead singer bands like Within Temptation, Evanescence and Nighwish. Granted, the ending theme song is not really like any of the songs from the bands 100%. It's just that it reminds me a bit of the songs from those bands just by it's use of a choir and how it's guiars sound. So overall, I loved the ending theme. The only complait I have with the music is that there are a couple times where one certain background track is poorly used in episodes 5 & 11. But again, the music in Claymore is great.

In the end, Claymore is an anime that have mixed feelings on. It really did grab my interest in the beginning because of Clare and it's interesting story. But as the show continued, It started to go down the path that I just wished that it didn't go to. The path to being a disappointment. Some of the supporting cast don't get a lot of development, the organization isn't talked about very much, Raki is unbelievably pointless and did I not mention about the cliffhanger ending? Those reasons are enough for me to find this anime a letdown. I will give the anime credit though. Most of the characters are great, the action scenes are fun to watch, the story is very good, the artwork is beautiful, the english voice acting is mostly solid and the music is great. Do I think this is a bad anime? Absolutely not. It's a decent action anime and it does have it's moments that are entertaining. But that's not saying too much.

If you are into action animes and if you are curious about it, then give it a look. But if you want my suggestion, I wouldn't bother checking this one out because I think there are other action animes out there that are better then this.

Overall in my own rating, I give Claymore a 3 out of 5. show less

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