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The fans of the original anime called it trash and new folk were saying it was amazing. The truth (as it often turns out to be) lies in the middle.

Trigun Stampede seeks out to reimagine the world and story of trigun in a new format: 3D cg animation. A lot of people will dismiss it just for that reason alone and those people are fools. The series's technical elements are by far the best part of it. While significant changes have been made to the look of the world, they mostly work in favor of the show because it’s trying to do a ... new thing.

What most fans of the original miss when trying to analyze this show is that it’s not an adaptation of the one from the 90s. This makes most of their criticisms shallow and off base. What most new fans miss is that this show fails to make the transition from episodic one-off adventures to epic world ending battles. The show is too short to cover massive amount of ground it wants to cover.

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.

Got to be real I am extremely disappointed. I really enjoyed Innocent despite its many flaws. The plot was disconnected, the pacing was pretty bad in some places, the sex/hallucination scenes were a bit overdrawn, and the time skips were too many. Still, the story was divided in mimi arcs which were really well done and even if the time skips fucked the pacing up, the arcs carried over the development of the characters while still being self contained. This is where Innocent Rouge makes a decision that turns a potentially amazing story into a really mediocre one. Even when the characters still hold up ... (at least as far as I read), what happens to them isn't even a plot or a story. Random events (which barely develop the characters) just happen at them. Sure, some of them can be related to the current status of their world but we don't see how it affects it because of the time skips and multiple perspectives. Also the sex scenes go way too far. I know why they are there but the author shows as much as posible all of the time for virtually no reason. Obviously the art is still amazing but when the main character of your manga forgets the abuse she suffered under her brother just because you want them to team up and execute a character then you might need to re-read your previous work.

The concept for this manga is genius. Exploring the perspective of the Sanson family is an inherently interesting concept because of the hypocritical way they were treated. They were well known in Paris. Viewed by many as no more than brutal, cold-hearted, satan worshiper killers. Yet people would show up to enjoy the executions. They were treated like scum but were also needed to keep order. The manga later develops past the personal conflicts of the protagonists and focuses on larger thematic ideas of inequality, wealth, aristocracy, fate, and sexism. I believe it mostly succeeds in tying them together with the characters personal journeys.
The ... art is obviously amazing and one of the most gorgeous things I've ever seen. The setting is well conveyed and both the character designs and the backgrounds are unmatched.
Unfortunately, it isn't perfect. Due to the author's decision to advance their stories through time skips, the pacing feels off at times and there are events and character development that happens off-screen which is pretty annoying since what is actually there is written pretty well. The ending is not satisfying but it is intentional because there is a sequel. Overall it's a fascinating concept with some of the best art and compelling characters but also isn't told as thoroughly as I would like.

Also, I've seen a lot of men complaining about the character Marie-Sanson. They say she is annoying and that she doesn't feel right yo follow in a story about Charles. Whoever says this is either missunderstanding the message of the story or so scared by the thought women being their own selfs that they feel the need to post about it on anime forums.

I was completely on board with every single aspect of the show unit frill showed up. Making such an abstract concept an antagonist you can beat up is a really bad move for the show considering how creative it had been at personifying trauma and the ways to beat it. Still great though.
The art is amazing, the music is really good, all of the characters get super interesting about halfway through, the directing is really strong, and overall the presentation is pretty much perfect.
Also I have to mention how refreshing it is to have a trans character exist naturally in your story and then ... have the villain be the idiot that refuses to accept his identity

So I think the show is pretty good up to about the midway point where it starts to lose some steam. The problems with the show really start to show once it changes genre. It stops being a character study on a man that lives with a parasite and changes into an action anime with big philosophical ideas. Some people believe it to be horribly executed while others see it as genius. I believe it is neither of them: Overall I liked this sho. It had some really good moments and I think the first half is excellent but the mid-tier meh of the second ... half kind of weakens its previous impact.

When I started Fire Force I didn't expect anything other than a generic 6/10 shonen that could entertain me while I waited for more hot episodes to come out. However, I was met with one of the most disgusting mainstream anime I've ever seen. I get that a large part of the anime community is desensitized to this kind of content but this is a problem we need to fix. The objectification of women for no other reason than to bait dweebs into watching this mediocre show results in some of the best scenes of the anime being ruined by awful fanservice that isn't hot ... or funny. The main character claims he wants to be a hero yet sexually assaults his co-workers regularly. The anime community needs to realiza that this isn't a joke. It's lazy, manipulative, offensive, and terrible writing. If Fire Force didn't have this shit it would get a 4/10 because the writing is terrible.