Claymore 1

Norihiro Yagi – Viz – 2006 – 19+ volumes

Hey, look what I got in at work. Someone sold us the first three volumes, so I thought I would give this a try from the beginning.

I’ve always liked this series, but I feel a little lost since I started around halfway through. Reading volume one now is a little strange, since the plot of the series has nothing to do with what’s going on here. And I like it a lot this way. That’s not to say I’m not into what’s happening later, but there’s something very simple and elegant about the demon slaying that’s happening in this volume.

A small town is being terrorized by yoma, and they hire a Claymore to take care of the monster. Only a Claymore, a half human/yoma hybrid, has the strength to slay it. Clare shows up in town, and the villagers are not pleased to see her despite the fact she’s there to kill the monster that’s terrorizing them. But one small boy, named Raki, takes an interest in Clare. Where everyone else avoids her, Raki opens up to her, thanks her for coming, and reveals that the yoma has slayed everyone in his family except his older brother.

I was not expecting Raki to be a main character. Clare keeps her distance from the reader, and it’s a mystery why she’s allowing Raki to follow her until another character warns her away from the bond towards the end of the book. Clare and Raki make for an odd pair, but I like the simple device of harsh Clare having a soft spot for the boy. And Raki’s fairly easy to like, too.

And her soft spot contrasts sharply with her fighting style. I’ve seen the best/worst Clare can offer in a fight, and the later volumes are much more brutal than what’s going on here. Still, the savage battles are presented in such a stark manner that it’s still rather shocking. The story does a good job of making Clare very, very scary.

I’m glad I had an opportunity to pick up some of the early volumes, because I like the series even better now. I’m interested to see the world-building in these early volumes, and I’m curious about how long Raki sticks around.

Claymore 19

Norihiro Yagi – Viz – 2011 – 21+ volumes

I don’t have a whole lot to say about this volume, since the bulk of what happens here is a rather lengthy fight scene. On the plus side, two of the story threads converge towards the end of the fight scene. Unfortunately, the fight is still ongoing as of the end of this volume.

Briefly, the action switches over to Miria and her forward progress in confronting the organization. Her fight is with twin trainees while high-ranking members of the organization look on. They offer commentary about Miria’s strengths and the twins’ weaknesses, but reveal their trump card at the very end of the volume. It seems like a bit of a low blow in a series that seems all about physical strength, but I suppose you have to shake things up every now and again.

The larger fight is with the mess in the forest and… uh, Clare’s opponent from last volume (who may be spoiler-y, but I also can’t remember her name, and they don’t mention it here). Deneve and Helen do successfully take Clare out of the fight she can’t hope to win, but her opponent begins chasing them, then turns her sights on the monument in the forest that seems to be wreaking unbeatable havoc. This goes all sorts of wrong, and Deneve and Helen basically take a backseat as a massive, bizarre biomass fight takes place. It’s pretty epic, but it also means the volume moves very fast without advancing the story much. Still, the art is quite good, and the fight is really worth looking at.

Yuma, Cynthia, and the third Claymore in their group join up with Deneve and Helen at ground zero, but that’s where that storyline leaves off for next time.

I know I say this every time, but I do enjoy this sort of slow-paced sword and sorcery comic, and I really need to go back and start with volume one. I haven’t had any trouble following the story for the last six or so volumes I’ve been reading, but with the disparate storylines going on, I have a hard time distinguishing between anyone who isn’t Clare or Miria, since character development has taken a backseat to the fight scenes that (eventually) advance the plot. I’d love to go back and find out what makes them tick, and the significance of the numbers they all had. Claymore is good stuff, and it deserves that.

This was a review copy provided by Viz.

Claymore 18

Norihiro Yagi – Viz – 2011 – 21+ volumes

Unfortunately, I skipped a volume. I didn’t realize this until after I had finished this one. This may account for my slight disorientation.

I’ve liked this series pretty well so far, despite jumping in about five volumes ago. This volume gave me a little trouble, though, but I think it’s only partially because I skipped the last one.

The action jumps between three different groups here. In one, a man named “Lord Dae,” who is probably a bad guy, is admiring a terrible creature (apparently “The Destroyer”) that seems to be annihilating all life in the vicinity. He’s very interested in getting a sample for himself. Nearby, Claire is with Helen and Deneve, fighting things coming from “The Destroyer.” During this fight, a character that appears to be rooted very firmly in Claire’s past shows up. In fact, this seems to be the character she’s been trying to fight all series, and the battle is pretty epic. Elsewhere, Cynthia and Uma are fooled by a monster, and are engaged in a battle where each tries to sacrifice themselves for the other. Both get holes blown in them, but keep fighting. Another battle somewhere else covers Riful and Dauf, a doomed couple that appear to be engaging yet another Claymore. Parallel to this is a battle where a dark-haired girl is fighting a monster rather successfully. These two battles merge, and the dark-haired girl fights two monsters while the victims from the Claymore fight only watch. Later, the dark-haired girl finds Clare.

To be fair, the Lord Dae scene is brief. But my main problem with this volume was that there was so much fighting going on, jumping from scene to scene, and little in the way of story. I had trouble telling the characters and fights apart, and the fights meant very little to me, save for the final one with Clare, which was explained. And yes, part of this is my ignorance of most of the series, but I also tend to hate these types of volumes in fighting manga, with lots of fights with many different characters that don’t really mean anything.

All the same, I suspect the Dauf/Riful fight was some sort of climax, and I did wind up enjoying the fight with Clare at the very end. I can’t really appreciate all the story behind it (there’s obviously at least two former storylines that have a direct bearing on this fight), but I loved Clare’s character transformation here, and the fight itself was very good.

Even with this volume not playing as well for me as the others, I still want to pick up past volumes of the series. I need to finish up at least a couple of my current series, but I do intend to go back for this. It seems very much worth it.

I’m not sure why, but I really love the cover to this volume, too.

This was a review copy provided by Viz.

Claymore 16

Norihiro Yagi – Viz – 2010 – 17+ volumes

I know I say this every time I get a new volume of this series, but even without knowing anything about what’s going on, even jumping in the middle of a plot-heavy shounen series, Claymore is great stuff.  I still really need to go back and start from the first volume, and I will.  With six months between new books (I assume we’re caught up with Japan), hopefully I’ll be able to pick up at least a few volumes before 17 comes out in January.

The hardest part for me is that the story jumps around to different groups of characters, but all of them have an interesting story, so I’m not all that lost.  Or rather, I am lost, but I’m enjoying the ride enough that I don’t care.

This volume opens with exposition, an old man explaining to a group of three women what’s up with… what appears to be the villain.  We see the villain, along with a woman she’s kidnapped, and learn that what she has planned is bad for the world indeed.  Another big clue that she was evil was the fact she had cut off the captive woman’s arms and legs and was making her do some sort of reading without them.  So… I’m pretty sure I was right on that one.

Elsewhere, we meet up with a group of two women traveling south.  They meet up with a Claymore who explains the southern situation to her, how she wouldn’t advise they go any farther, et cetera.  They ignore her, and engage in what is a pretty awesome fight scene, made even better by indestructible zombie dolls programmed to eat demon flesh.  This scene (which I’m pretty sure I’m missing the nuances on, the zombie dolls are probably really awful in a way I’m not getting) was great, not only as a way to break up all the exposition, but also just as an action scene as well.  It had interesting enemies and the fight itself was great, made even better by the fact we got to skip over the boring parts where the zombies were killed again and again as they wore their enemy down.

Now, this review isn’t useful to anyone who actually reads the series, since I’m not familiar with any of the characters or creatures.  But from an outsider’s perspective, the volume’s great, and that’s an impressive feat from a shounen series sixteen volumes in.  Even if it’s taken a dip in quality in the recent volumes, I don’t really care, because I’m ready to start at the beginning and be taken on an epic action fantasy ride.

This was a review copy provided by Viz.

Claymore 15

Norihiro Yagi – Viz – 2009 – 16+ volumes

I thought this was a weekly Shounen Jump series (and it was, at one point, but now it is Monthly Jump Square), so I was a little surprised that the volumes were coming out in English so slowly.  I’m thankful that I read two back to back, though, since I got to see just how good the story is here.

I like fantasy stories, and I like them even more when they stay relatively straight-faced.  Claymore has no humor, and this volume reveals just what the scope of the series really is.  There is a huge reveal here, and I was quite impressed that it was completely understandable and worked so well as a turnabout to everything even for a new reader like me.  I do think I’ll go back to the beginning of this series eventually, but I think I’ll read a few more volumes first just to make sure all the elements are working how I think they are.

Most of all, I enjoy the warrior system that has been established.  It’s explained further here when everything is unveiled, but I just like that there’s a special class of women that slay monsters and can be saviors or pariahs depending on the town.  I also like that there are further subdivisions.  The women are half-human and half-monster, but it seems like there are (of course) more variations on this, and I’m interested in a character from Clare’s past who seems to have joined up with the story in this volume.

There are a lot of characters here, and I’m a little bummed that so many warriors suddenly joined the main cast.  I’m also a little put out that the two main characters from the last volume don’t seem to be players in the story at all.  But Clare is the main character, and she takes the story over again after the leader of the warriors explains the situation to everyone.  The other warriors remain relatively faceless, which I appreciate, because I just don’t want to follow that many people, and I like when secondary cast stays low key.

The next volume comes out in June.  I may pick up some additional volumes before then, or I may wait until I’ve read one more volume, but I know for sure I’ll be reading more.  It does have a little bit of a vanilla taste to it, but I can’t help but like series like this.

This was a review copy provided by Viz.

Claymore 14

Within the first few pages, this series struck me as Berserk-lite, and that impression just stuck with me for the rest of the volume, much to the benefit of this story.  They’re fighting demons with swords, they do insane things like blind themselves to escape detection, there’s a naked woman bathing herself in blood… even the art is pretty detailed for a Jump series, though nowhere near as insane nice as it is in Berserk.

The plot seemed pretty straightforward.  Unlike some of the other shounen series I’ve been jumping into lately, which required explanations of factions and mafia babies and demon heierarchy and special powers and whatnot, this seems like a simple story about a race of ladies that kill monsters with their big claymores.  Admittedly, I was a little confused when I got to the bonus content since it had nothing to do with what appeared to be the two main characters in this volume, but it didn’t detract from the story in any way.

I actually liked the simplicity of the story a lot.  There weren’t a lot of pretexts.  Two girls show up in town where they’re not supposed to (apparently Claymores aren’t allowed in this town?), then they find out the town is being haunted by a demon.  Except… well, they didn’t come to kill a demon, they came to hunt down some sort of rogue agent.  One of the two girls is a leader and the other one seems to be a fighter with some sort of mental handicap, she calls the other girl “mamma” and doesn’t speak or do much for herself.  She does manage to dispatch everything that needs dispatching though, so I guess that’s just how those two roll.

The two find the rogue agent pretty easily and the fight begins, which is then interrupted by the demon.  The rogue agent starts to fight the demon so it will stop murdering the townspeople, except… the pair of agents aren’t there to slay the demon, they’re there to kill the agent.  Hm.  See?  Very simple.  I like it.  Lots of swordplay, demons, blood and guts, etc.  Not something I have to think a lot about, but I prefer it over the convoluted fights and power structures you find elsewhere.

There are two side stories in the back that just make me want to read this series even more.  The last one is probably about the main character of the series, though she isn’t even referenced in the main story here.

I think this is the first time I’ve ever read a random volume of a series that made me really, really want to go back to the beginning.  It’s not a must-read-fantastic-story, not the part I read at least, but I’d be willing to believe there’s a lot more going on than what I saw here, and I like the premise and simplicity enough that I know I would love it if  went back to the beginning.  Simple stuff, but it knows how to do simple shounen, which is more than what can be said for a lot of other action series.

This was a review copy provided by Viz.