Yagi Norihiro - Claymore, vol. 01-08 (Eng. trans.)

[oyceter]

I think I actually flipped through volume one in a bookstore before and decided the series was too bloody to read; luckily, my public library has it, so I ended up mainlining it anyway.

In a medievaloid fantasy world, humans are often preyed on by yoma, demons who can assume anyone's form and who like eating human guts. In defense, a secret organization of men created half-yoma, half-human beings to fight the yoma. For some reason, only women survived this transformation, and the humans call them Claymores after the giant swords they all carry. The Claymores travel through villages, kill yoma, and let the black-clad men of the organization get the money.

Unfortunately, the more the Claymores fight, the more of their yoma power they have to use, and eventually, it consumes them. Then, they either become yoma themselves, or they send a black card out to a fellow Claymore so they can die while still human.

Clare is a Claymore, with a more unusual backstory than most. In volume one, she wanders into the boy Raki's village to kill the yoma that killed his parents. The first volume plays much like a western: the solitary village, the villain, the innocent boy whose gratitude she earns, the triumphant yet lonely walk away in the sunset. But Raki ends up following her, and Clare begrudgingly accepts his company.

Like several other people on my flist have said, I love that this manga is shounen and yet revolves around a host of female characters. Raki is our viewpoint character for volume one, but he's really a very minor character who's mostly there to be the kid in distress for Clare to rescue. While volume 1 stands alone, volume 2 gets into a more interesting yoma plot (less slash and bash, more strategy), and then we get to Clare's backstory, which as mentioned, is great.

Unfortunately, the series bogs down a little later with many fight scenes and assorted new fighting techniques; this will probably be fun and enjoyable for shounen trope fans (I, on the other hand, have a limited tolerance of power ups and fights). I am still bothered by the amount of violence, though I've discovered it's less because of the bloodshed and more because so much of it happens to be the chopping off of limbs and assorted decapitations and bisections. I'm not quite sure why this makes me more queasy than a simple sword thrust to the gut, but there you have it.

On the other hand, there's promise of getting more into the nature of the Claymores, the history of the organization, whatever shadowy secrets the organization is hiding—what organization with black-clad men isn't hiding secrets?—and more of Clare's main goal. I'm hoping there will be less limb-chopping, although the number of limbs flying seems to be increasing rather than decreasing. Ah well.

Also, this series may have the first decapitated head hugging scene that is actually tragic and not accidentally hilarious.

Please put any spoilers for vols. 1-8 in <span style="color:#333;background:#333">spoiler text</span>! And no spoilers for further volumes; I have them on hold at the library.

Comments

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

The head hugging is when I declared this to be the best shounen ever.

[furikku.livejournal.com]

I just got the first volume a while ago and it's interesting, but I wasn't sure if I'd want to keep reading it. Raki's reduced presence is a good sign in my eyes, at least. Does the art get less stiff as the manga goes on? That was one of my big sticking points. :/

[desdenova.livejournal.com]

I have a pretty high tolerance for gratuitous violence in entertainment, but even I must admit to being occasionally icked out by the copious amount of dismembering. Nevertheless, I really do enjoy Claymore; 'cause it's like somebody wrote a shonen just for me.

[mystickeeper.livejournal.com]

My library only has volume one of this series, and it's very upsetting! Glad to know that it continues to be decent, though.

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

I have read vols 1-4 and am wondering how coincidental it is that there are glaring similarities to... not so much Buffy itself, but some of the darker fanfic and fanon extrapolations of the world-building that were popular in the later years of the show.

[nojojojo.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I gave this one a one-volume try, and lost interest because the gore seemed unnecessary and I suspected it would only get worse from there on (but the story wouldn't). I may have to take a second look at it; maybe I judged it too quickly.

[octopedingenue]

Teresa of the Faint Smile! She is Paku Romi in the anime! She is MY WIFE ON THE ASTRAL PLANE!

[parallactic.livejournal.com]

Like several other people on my flist have said, I love that this manga is shounen and yet revolves around a host of female characters.

Another shounen series you might prefer over Claymore, that has a host of female characters is Venus Versus Virus. It has a truckload less graphic violence, has action intermixed with slower paced slice of life/characters and relationship* stuff, and what's currently a buddy relationship with femslash subtext. (The manga has one of those ambiguous relationships between the main characters that can be read as best friends forever, developing a romantic relationship, or even as honorary siblings.)

*I mean this in a variously friendship, family, and femslash subtext that could almost be canon way.

That said, Claymore is awesomesauce. I'm glad you checked it out, because I think everyone should check it out. But the series does get more graphically violent later on, and the fights are really involved. On the up side, it does really interesting things with the secret organization, and the nature of claymores. Every time I thought it might look gender squicky, a later plot development made it turn out to be even more awesome.

[jinian.livejournal.com]

I was all set to read this in scans, but it turned out they were the licensed translation, and I discovered a MORAL LIMIT in myself. Maybe the library has it by now -- it did seem to be starting to pick up when I left volume 2.