Anime/Manga Review: Claymore

I saw Claymore quite a while back now, but I knew the anime was not finished... and that it had deviated from the original storyline because the manga wasn't finished at the time. The anime ended without properly finishing off the story, and no second season has been announced as far as I know... so I decided to read the manga because the story was very interesting and I wanted to know more.

So first up, a basic outline of the story. Its based on a world where yoma (pronounced yoh-ma) dwell in human villages, and kill people to eat their guts, which is their food source. Yoma is directly translated into 'demon' in the English language, which is pretty much what they are. Then there is the 'Organisation', which is a mysterious group who create half-human half-yoma warriors, which other humans refer to as 'Claymores' or sometimes 'Silver-Eyed Witches', who are sent on missions to kill yoma. As the name suggests, all Claymores are female.

The Claymores have a ranking system. There are always 47 Claymores at any one time, each given a rank between 1 to 47. Ranks 1 to 9 are more special and are commonly referred to as 'single-digits' denoting that they are the strongest of the Claymores.

There are also different types of Yoma. There are the basic Yoma, who are generally pretty weak, but they hide amongst humans and feed off them when needed. Then there are 'awakened ones' who are vastly stronger than ordinary Yoma. The organisation will generally assign 4 Claymores to hunt down 1 awakened one, and 1 of those Claymores will be a single-digit. Then there are the 'abyssal ones', who are the 3 strongest awakened ones, and each of the 3 abyssal ones rule over 1 quadrant of the land (the 4th quadrant is where the organisation is).

The main characters are a Claymore named Clare and a young boy named Raki. Clare saved Raki's village from a yoma, but that yoma had slaughtered Raki's family. Raki left the village with Clare, and thats how the story starts. The story also has a major flaskback early on in the series, which goes back a generation of Claymores, when Clare was still an ordinary girl. The story will also skip some years later on and show another generation of Claymores. So theres actually quite a large number of characters.

The manga is quite relaxed about nudity. I don't remember if the anime had the nudity too, but its possible... so thats something for the guys to enjoy =P The manga is only a monthly release, and is still ongoing... so if you end up catching up to the current manga story.... you'll be waiting a while for each new chapter, but its definately worth reading. The anime is good too, as its pretty faithful to the manga, apart from the last couple of episodes.

Overall I'd give it an 8/10, for an interesting storyline and good action (mainly for the anime). It loses out on some rating due to the divergence in the end of the anime, which hasnt been continued on yet... and because the manga takes so long to be released.

So I'll leave you with a fan-coloured picture of my 2 favourite Claymores from the manga; Alicia and Beth, who are the current number 1 and 2 of the Organisation. They are the only Claymores to wear black armour... and I love the look of it.