Claymore - Reviews

Claymore
sort
SAOJack's avatar
Dec 29, 2012

Been reading it for a long time and it really is a great manga (if you want to read the manga DO NOT watch the anime - they wrapped up the ending very quickly and re-wrote the events of the manga which is still being written) 

10/10 story
10/10 art
10/10 characters
10/10 overall
1 0 this review is Funny Helpful
Mastap21's avatar
Nov 12, 2011

One of the best manga currently running. A wonderful story with epic battles. This is one manga that truly puts it's anime counterpart to shame. If you haven't read it, then you are missing out...

10/10 story
9.5/10 art
10/10 characters
10/10 overall
2 0 this review is Funny Helpful
ReviewBonfire's avatar
Jan 25, 2021

Claymore


The anime adaptation of the manga ends in Chapter 50, if you want to switch from anime to manga, it is best to start with the war in the north, as the differences to the manga already appeared there. The last 3 or 4 episodes of the anime were not canon.


Claymore is a manga that actually surprised me in a positive way, not only in terms of the main story itself but also the fights, representation and implementation. If you are looking for a good Dark Fantasy (in the direction of Berserk), you will certainly find it here. Just as interesting to see how well the drawing style of the Mangaka had changed between the first chapter and its last, the level of detail was massively increased.


But where it shone positively manga, it also cast a shadow. And unfortunately, this contains a number of negative aspects that tripped the title itself.

First and foremost, the main story (especially the background of the claymore and organization) was quite subtle and it was also built solid. What the problem with this is clearly the consecutive fights that I could almost call story blockers. Story-relevant opponents well and good, but so often an irrelevant monster appeared, which was simply thrown into the story to hold the reader off for another 8 chapters. This was a massive problem, especially from Chapter 120. In general, you could have left out the last 3 Awakened Beings and changed the main story for the antagonist a bit, but NOTHING would have changed in the end result. However, these 3 have almost a total of 25 chapters which made it very annoying and destroyed the tension enormously.

I have little complaint about the final finale, it wasn't perfect, but a satisfactory conclusion for the plot and the main antagonist.

Unfortunately, the anime had screwed up the plot armor from fight to fight, whereas so many characters died at the beginning, there were almost no deaths towards the end, although the opponents were around 50-500 times stronger than the claymore themselves.

There was also a big problem with the characters. There were some backgrounds, but the characters mostly stayed flat until the end. You can get them absolutely zero sympathies no matter how you take it.


Story

The basic idea and the setting are very interesting and it stayed that way. Likewise, the resolution to the story and the background for everything has been quite solid. Unfortunately, as I said, there were too many story blockers that had no relevance. Even if you skipped some of these chapters, you would hardly notice any difference. Unless a new character is introduced again who has no personality or background.

The closer you got to the semi-finals, the more complicated everything got. New characters appeared one after the other, and so did the enemies. It wasn't confusing, on the contrary. It looked irrelevant. You just wanted to know how the main story of Clare would go on, instead, you had to deal with any other fight for another 10 chapters.

The irony is that the opponents that were not story relevant actually had longer fights than the relevant enemies. That surprised me, among other things.

But apart from the weak story blockers, the main plot had a subtle implementation. Even if a lot would have to be repaired.

Drawing/illustration

The drawings were quite meager at the beginning but meager on average. But this improved quite quickly and the drawing style of the characters became more and more high quality, as well as the representation of the environment, fights and monsters more and more detailed. Towards the end, I have to say that some of the monsters were extremely cool in design.

Characters

The focus was never on the characters and that is an absolute fact. Inserting backgrounds is not a feat and it doesn't help a character become immediately noticeable. They lacked a great deal of personality and character. There were 1-2 CLaymores that actually had some personality. The rest were copies with different hairstyles.

At least one has to make an effort with the antagonist to the end and make it appear understandable. As a result, she didn't seem as flat and monotonous as the other characters.

Conclusion
Claymore is undoubtedly a very interesting and promising work. And by far one of the weakest 7/10 ratings I could give. The manga had many qualities, but these were often undermined by a lack of creativity and incorrect implementation.

At least I am glad that the implementation of the main story was saved.

6/10 story
7.5/10 art
5/10 characters
7/10 overall
0 0 this review is Funny Helpful
komentar's avatar
Oct 13, 2014

One of the great manga out there.. absolutely must read. Many manga have great story line but bad at ending.. This one is absolutely not fall into those categories

10/10 story
10/10 art
10/10 characters
10/10 overall
0 0 this review is Funny Helpful
kilrazan's avatar
Mar 15, 2022

A fairly traditional Dark Fantasy that borrows from similar tropes and origins as works like Berserk and The Witcher. Where Claymore excels is that it's a great example of a work of art that builds and grows as it progresses - one where we get to watch the Author grow as they work on their masterpiece. What I mean is that Claymore starts off quite rough, but we can see the beauty and wonder of the world the author has built, and as we follow the story, that roughness slowly fades away until at the end we have a glistening gem of an ending. In a way, it's a bit of a parallel to the growth of the world itself, as well - the world is grim and dirty at the beginning, but ends with shining hope and luster.

Story - The first segment of the work largely follows a secondary character - a young boy who lost his parents to the attack of a human-looking monster who feasts on human intestines. We get to see his youthful spirit and wonder overtake his despair when he is completely enamored with the warrior sent to dispatch the monster; these silver-eyed warriors are known simply as Claymore, due to the large swords they ubiquitously carry. After she slays the monster and moves on, he stubbornly follows after her. We follow them together for a time, and get to see and learn a continually expanding lore about the world they live in as they move from monster to monster, and more importantly learn about the organization that commands the Claymores. We see some backstory for the Claymore this boy fawns over, as well as a handful of scenes relating to some of the other Claymore warriors. Eventually, we follow a complex political intrigue through to a spectacular climax, and see a shining hope for a brighter future emerge. One of my favorite aspects of the narrative here is that it does a wonderful job of slowly and steadily peeling back layer after layer of the story - we learn along with the characters what exactly is happening in this world, and devastating revelations are just as surprising to us as it is to the characters themselves. However, one of my least favorite aspects of the narrative is how reliant it is on the visual storytelling from panel to panel, when it can be very difficult at times to determine what's actually happening or who is speaking (more on this later). Ultimately, I found the journey through this story extremely satisfying. 9/10; I loved the structuring of which character we follow for various scenes.

Art - As I said previously, Claymore starts off a bit rough, and often times there are scenes that are hard to follow. This stems from a number of problems with the Art in the work, unfortunately only one of which actually improves as the story progresses. The art is pretty bad to start with, to put it bluntly, especially the faces. Not only are they disproportionate and fairly ugly, they all look nearly identical. This problem is exacerbated when the narrative revolves around a faction of women that all wear the same clothes and wield the same weapons; having their faces look the same on top of it all is extremely frustrating to follow. Furthermore, while this may not technically qualify as being an "Art" problem as much as just a layout problem (or I suppose even a translation problem), the author often makes it hard to identify who is speaking in a given speech bubble. There are also a significant number of Action-shot panels that are laregly just a mess of blur lines and convey hardly any meaning or context for the fight it's trying to depict. Now, the Author does significantly improve the art quiality as the work progresses, and while it only moderately releives some of the same-face issues I mentiones, it certainly improves the overall feel of the work and greatly increases the enjoyment. I would say Claymore starts off with a 2 or 3 in this category, and slowly rises to a 7 or 8 by the end. 4/10; The variable quality might be seen as a meta-level reflection of the world we're witnessing, but overall it's just disappointing.

Characters - Some pretty stellar writing was put into the characters for this work. I found myself instantly invested in the little boy and lady-warrior combo, and each subsequent major character introduction only added to the intricate tapestry of the story. Most characters - good or bad - have clear personality to them, complete with motives and flaws. Unfortunately we do see quite a number of forgettable characters, but honestly it fits the themes - when a character shows up only to die within a few chapters, they didn't really need much exposition anyway. I do wish there was a bit more visual variation in the Claymores' visual designs, but ultimately it is a pretty badass look so I don't blame the author for having them all wear the same uniform. My favorite aspect of the character writing here was being able to see the growth of our two main characters as they took in their world and were forced to adapt to rough situations. 8/10; Above average, and quite enjoyable.

Overall - While my review thus far may sound largely like a lot of praise, there were absolutely a hadful of times I considered dropping the manga, just because it was so hard to follow. I want to make it clear that now, only after finishing it, do I have such a positive opinion of the overall work, and it's very largely due to how spectacular and fitting the ending was. I strongly recommend Claymore, but I warn that it may feel sluggish at times - stick it out and you'll be greatly rewarded. 8/10; An ending that redeems almost everything else is a rare sight to behold.

9/10 story
4/10 art
8/10 characters
8/10 overall
0 0 this review is Funny Helpful