Oct 15, 2022
Reviewing a series from 2007 in 2022 because why not.
As a fellow dark fantasy fan, I'm very disappointed, especially that there are barely any anime of this genre, we have SNK or Berserk...or Berserk... Maybe also Berserk!
Claymore is like the Witcher 3, but without the lore or its' charisma, actually only with the bounties part, or Dark Souls, but without any memorance for world design and boss fights. It's a very cheap, poorly designed souls-like with barely any story at all.
Plot:
I hate describing series as "boring", but Claymore really has barely anything interesting to hold on. Side-plots lack any meaning or bright points, they
...
are forgetable, very random and rushed, also somehow repeatable (strong purposeless enemy appears out of nowhere, someone gets hurt or dies, someone gets mad or discovers something about themselves, repeat but with a stronger enemy). The world building revolves around the existence of claymores and yomas (which are not even explained, they just exist without any purpose or something), it feels very one-dimensional, without anything interesting that wants to be digged deeper, it's hard to talk about any lore here.
Art:
It's a complicated matter. On one hand I really like the dark, gloomy colors, also design of some locations and "bosses" with this lovecraftian creepy vibe. On the other hand, human character design is very poor, they all have the same body type, almost the same faces and clothes, somehow they all blend together into one person.
Animation is a mess. It's mostly pure gore without any interesting action, sword fights are silver slashes made by characters who barely move themselves, there are implications that they are moving so fast that an eye can't catch this, but it looks very uninteresting and repeatable.
Characters:
Teresa was the only interesting person here and she had like 3 episodes of screen time, what a shame. The rest is either annoying or forgetable (mostly both), all their personalities revolve around fighting and they all compete who is the strongest one, without any time to explore their insides. There are sometimes some mentions about their pasts, but they feel very meaningless, also there are way too many characters who die in a second just to introduce another group of characters to die an episode later. There are way too many claymores without any personality, it's hard to care when they die or get hurt, but it's very easy to confuse one with another because they're just too similar and barely have anything characteristic in themselves.
Except Teresa and Clare, it's also almost impossible to speak about any bonds between the characters, they just lack anything interesting in their interactions, no fun dynamics, no meaningful relationships.
The dialogues feel like from a very poor, lifeless shounen and it has this annoying for me manner of repeating the same sentences over and over.
So yeah, in conclusion, Claymore may feel tempting for darker themes fans, but it's just not worth a while
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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