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Yagi Norihiro - Claymore, vol. 09-11 (Eng. trans.)
Thu, Nov. 13th, 2008 11:36 amThis is so sad. It hasn't been very long at all since I last read vols. 1-8, and I've already forgotten who half the Claymores are, what they do, and what's going on.
Sadly, volume 9 picks up from a dungeon arc; i.e. Clare and other people are in some cave or something somewhere duking it out with giant yoma. Although there is some payoff at the end of it that leads back to the larger plot, I got a little bored with the hack-and-slash "how to best kill yoma" sections. But the end of volume 11 promises a very cool plot development indeed, and I am hoping the next few will have much more about the Claymores and less yoma-fighting strategizing.
( Spoilers )
I also want to formulate some sort of thesis about monstrous bodies and strength in shounen: how strength is directly tied to monstrosity, particularly in the villains, but how even heroic strength is frequently tied in with bodily abuse or breaking down your body to build it up again (an extended metaphor of how we build muscle?). It's particularly interesting in Claymore, because the division between the monsters and the heroes is very thin indeed, and because I feel female characters rarely get this sort of monstrous strength. More often than not, if women's bodies are changed, it's to exaggerate them sexually and to create femme fatales with vagina dentata, but in Claymore, even though the Claymores' bodies are monstrous, they're monstrous in a way that is much more in line with shounen tropes in terms of how they push the limits of what their bodies can do and frequently draw on non-physical attributes to help with the physical (ex. ninja jutsu, shinigami strength/bankai, channeling yoma energy). The trope of the Claymores struggling with how much yoma energy to use and how far they should push their bodies is one that I rarely get to see with women.
I don't really have any conclusions, just thoughts about female physicality and strength and how some of the strongest women I've seen so far in shounen are tied to monstrosity directly. I don't think this is necessarily negative, since many other shounen heroes' strength is also tied to monstrosity and/or bodies that go beyond nature, and because all strength in the Claymore universe seems to be monstrous. It'd be interesting to see Yagi write about human men and women and to see how that measure of strength changes (or doesn't).
In conclusion, maybe I should suggest a Shounen Bodies panel to accompany the one on shoujo bodies last year! Except the focus would still be on women, only in shounen manga, not shoujo.
Sadly, volume 9 picks up from a dungeon arc; i.e. Clare and other people are in some cave or something somewhere duking it out with giant yoma. Although there is some payoff at the end of it that leads back to the larger plot, I got a little bored with the hack-and-slash "how to best kill yoma" sections. But the end of volume 11 promises a very cool plot development indeed, and I am hoping the next few will have much more about the Claymores and less yoma-fighting strategizing.
( Spoilers )
I also want to formulate some sort of thesis about monstrous bodies and strength in shounen: how strength is directly tied to monstrosity, particularly in the villains, but how even heroic strength is frequently tied in with bodily abuse or breaking down your body to build it up again (an extended metaphor of how we build muscle?). It's particularly interesting in Claymore, because the division between the monsters and the heroes is very thin indeed, and because I feel female characters rarely get this sort of monstrous strength. More often than not, if women's bodies are changed, it's to exaggerate them sexually and to create femme fatales with vagina dentata, but in Claymore, even though the Claymores' bodies are monstrous, they're monstrous in a way that is much more in line with shounen tropes in terms of how they push the limits of what their bodies can do and frequently draw on non-physical attributes to help with the physical (ex. ninja jutsu, shinigami strength/bankai, channeling yoma energy). The trope of the Claymores struggling with how much yoma energy to use and how far they should push their bodies is one that I rarely get to see with women.
I don't really have any conclusions, just thoughts about female physicality and strength and how some of the strongest women I've seen so far in shounen are tied to monstrosity directly. I don't think this is necessarily negative, since many other shounen heroes' strength is also tied to monstrosity and/or bodies that go beyond nature, and because all strength in the Claymore universe seems to be monstrous. It'd be interesting to see Yagi write about human men and women and to see how that measure of strength changes (or doesn't).
In conclusion, maybe I should suggest a Shounen Bodies panel to accompany the one on shoujo bodies last year! Except the focus would still be on women, only in shounen manga, not shoujo.