Written by So I bought Claymore last weekend to fulfill my constant craving for anime while I was trapped on vacation in Port Aransas, without my laptop. All I had, was my faithful iPod, and a portable DVD player. When I tried to watch Claymore on the DVD player, I selected “Play” and realized it had been preset to the dub, and other than for the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya’s I’m not a big fan of dubs. “Not a problem”I told myself “I’ll just go to the settings menu and change it”. Then I found out that we had forgotten to bring the remote, and for some reason I could not scroll up and down with the limited controls.
It was then and there I decided that I wasn’t even going to the dub a chance. I was going to fight off my anime urge, throughout the weekend, and wait till I got home to watch it. By Saturday morning I was sucking my thumb in the fetal position due to lack of anime. By Saturday night I was all but without strength to get out of bed from the lack of nutrition that only the Japanese could provide. It was only on Sunday morning when I was minutes way from anime starvation that I gave in and decided to watch the dub. Jk 
I just kinda shrugged it off and put up with the dub throughout the weekend.
So what was the point of those two paragraphs other than to make you laugh? To say I watched Claymore’s dub and not the sub.
In a world where sentient monsters called Yoma that feed on human innards, an organization has created an order of half-human, half-yoma warriors to protect humans from the yoma. The people of this world have dubbed these warriors “Claymores” based on their swords. They are also referred to as “Silver Eyed Witches”, based on their appearance and seemingly cold nature toward others. Each Claymore has a rank number which is based on their strength and ability. There are 47 ranks corresponding to the number of regions of the land/world.
A Claymore known as Claire saves a small town by killing a Yoma living there, and meets Rocky, a boy whose parents were killed by the Yoma. Out of gratitude, Rocky ends up following Clare from town to town during her Yoma-killing jobs.
The animation in Claymore is OK, the only thing I can complain about is the character design of the Claymore’s. In anime there are very limited ways to design a character that makes it possible for the audience to identify one character from another. These things include hair color, hair style, eyes, facial bone structure, ears, personality and voice. The more you take away the harder it is to tell which character is which. In the anime all of the Claymore’s upon having the Yoma blood transfusion have their eye color changed to silver (hence the nickname the townspeople gave them “Silver Eyed Whitchs”), but for some reason all the Claymore also have blond hair. I’m going to assume that is also a side effect of the Yoma blood, but I don’t remember that ever being stated in the anime. In Claymore it’s really difficult to tell one Claymore apart from another, and most of the time it’s left up to the characters hair style and personality. That creates confusion a lot of the time, especially during action scenes when it’s Claymore fighting Claymore it’s hard for me to tell who to be rooting for.
That being said however the characters especially the Claymore’s have a wide variety of personally’s, that does immensely help to define each Claymore as a character, not just a girl in the background with a broadsword. There is also a heap load of character development, especially with the main character Claire. The only character I didn’t like was Rocky. He did NOTHING throughout the 26 episodes of the show, and he’s supposed to be the male lead! All he ever did was cry and give barf worthy emotionalspeeches. He even has a sword, he just never uses it! That being said if you can get past Rocky then you’ll definitely enjoy the personality’s the Claymore bring to the table.
The Op and Ed are both very nice, although only the Op earned a spot on my iPod, but the rest of Claymore’s music is extremely repetitive. Throughout the show I felt like the anime only had 5 total songs on its soundtrack and a lot of them didn’t fit the style of the show. Not to mention their was one techno song they played at almost every fight scene that drove me insane. Fighting music shouldn’t sound like that, it should be feel suitably epic and blood pumping like this song.
Claymore is a dark drama, adventure anime with a lot of blood and awesome fight scenes. If that’s your thing I think you’ll really enjoy it. Would I recommend you buy it? Well I did, and I think its worth it. I can say without a doubt, that while it’s not perfect and has it’s flaws, It’s a really good watch and definitely worth your time. Also I have been told that the anime only covers around 1/3rd of what the manga does, and it’s not very likely Claymore will have a second season, so if you like the anime, check out the manga.
If You Want To Buy The “Claymore: Complete Series Box Set [Blu-ray]” You Can Do So At Amazon.com
