Claymore 09
May 30th, 2007 by Shirukii
I has a head ^_^
Despite all my predictions, they seldom turn out to be correct, so this is a rare event. My guess that Clare would become a claymore by somehow absorbing Teresa into herself turned out to be right. Too bad Teresa’s strength didn’t come along with it…well, immediately anyways.
Episode Rating: 8.5/10
The episode starts with the introduction of three new claymore who dispatch of a runaway yoma on the outskirts of a town. When they arrive at the actual town they find that Clare has already taken care of the other four that they were sent to kill. Although she was successful, Clare’s orders were to await backup because of the possibility of a voracious eater among the yoma, so she ends up being scolded and reported to the organization for her independent action.
Clare’s handler reveals the true nature of the voracious eaters to Clare, what she fought in the cathedral earlier in the series was a normal yoma, albeit slightly stronger. Voracious eaters is the term that the organization uses to refer to Awakened Beings, beings like Priscilla. He tells Clare to give up chasing Priscilla, as she is among the strongest of the Awakened Beings. But since Clare is so eager to test her limits, he puts her on a team assigned to hunt down an Awakened Being.
Clare is the last member of the team to arrive, to judge their strength, they all reveal their rank and experience.
Rank #06. Miria: 6 previous encounters with awakened beings
Rank #15. Deneve: 2 Previous encounters with awakened beings
Rank #22. Helen: No previous encounters
Rank #47. Clare: No previous encounters
Hearing Clare’s rank, the others are shocked, and Helen even starts to make fun of her. When Raki stands up for Clare, Helen explains, claymore are scattered around the continent divided one per region and distinguished by rank. There are 47 regions on their continent, in other words, Clare is the weakest claymore. The cutoff rank for hunting awakened beings is usually in the thirties, so the rest of the team is quite surprised when they hear Clare’s rank. Despite Helen’s objections, Miria accepts it, as it is a decision made by the organization.
After walking for a day, the team sets up camp. Miria throws Clare her sword and asks her to spar so she can judge her strength. Miria explains that when she saw Clare, she felt as if she was standing in the presence of an immense power. The match suggests otherwise though, as Clare is completely overpowered and ends up passing out from fatigue afterwards.
The next evening, the team draws close to the town as they are approached by a man claiming to be sent to take them to the site. However, Miria senses his yoki and attacks, the man in front of them is the awakened being that they have been sent to take care of. But their information was way off, before them stands a male awakened being, one which they have little chance of defeating given the strength of their current team.
Thoughts
Poor Clare. I knew she wasn’t among the top tier claymore, using Teresa’s power as a benchmark, but for her to rank dead last is kind of disheartening.
But judging from the fight between Clare and Miria, she really is quite bad. I did a bit of kendo when I was a kid, and even from my limited knowledge of swordplay, I could see that Clare was sucking hard. Her stance left many openings and pretty much any time when it looked like Clare parried a strike or countered, Miria could have easily disarmed her.
But what worries me more is that this sets up one of the things I hate most about shounen series, impossibly fast growth of the main character. In Bleach it was Ichigo, who went from barely taking care of low level hollows to owning some of the strongest captains in the span of a few months. In Naruto it was…uh, Naruto, who went from a failure of a ninja to one of the strongest genin over the course of the chuunin arc. Etc etc.
I hope Claymore spreads out Clare’s growth and doesn’t suddenly decide to awaken her sleeping powers all at once, shooting her from rank 47 to rank 1 in one fell swoop. That would be extremely lame.
The episode itself was pretty good, I still liked the Teresa arc much better, but aside from Raki, Clare’s storyline isn’t all that bad. And I’d forgotten how much I like her voice.
On another note, I bought the Claymore manga up to volume 7, but I haven’t started reading it yet. I don’t want to ruin the potential of the anime by reading the supposedly superior manga, so I’ll wait until the series is done to start reading that. I did, however, flip through the pages and notice that TONS of claymore are going to be introduced over the course of the series. Because they all look very similar, I hope it doesn’t get too confusing, sure their hairstyles differ and their armor has slight variations, but when 20+ of them are flying around the screen clashing swords all at once, will that be enough?
As always, remember to mark spoilers in comments!
~ Shirukii ~
14 Responses to “Claymore 09”
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Clare does power up significantly over the series, but it’s not all at once. She gets a power-up from someone unsuspected, along with seven years of training. It’s said later in the manga that because Clare has Teresa’s flesh, there’s a certain randomness to her strength that makes it hard to predict and her rank number irrelevant.
Oh don’t worry. For a long time, Clare will be a weenie with special capabilities. Her growth in power comes VERY gradual, and very well-explained. If you’re afraid of her going to pwn the rest of the story, I can relieve you of all your worries: Not in this lifetime.
Thank you Thank you!! for the blog Shiruki!
Clare’s power suck right now until next arc.
But I think you will like Miria’s and Helen’s power!
It’s always difficult comparing the manga to the anime of the same story. I would have to say though the manga is like the original concept, the specific panels that are shown, the actual story that is told. Whilst the manga is always and will always be the representation of the manga in a different art format. It is much harder to satisfy the anime viewer then the manga reader, simply becasue you need to have good audio, video, dialogue, voice acting, fillers (time inbetween manga panels), and then art quality and interpretation.
That being all said i think the anime rates quite highly and is pulling it off.
PS. What everyone else said, Clare’s growth is always marked by something holding her back, it’s usually a two edged sword.
(Typos are gold, “whilst the ANIME is always…”)
Further adding onto what i said before (my bad for double post), one of the best things about Claymore is that information is smoothly added in, and not given in large chunks at a time. Each arc you learn something new, but leaves questions in your mind at all times.
Thanks for the clarification everyone!
There certainly are a lot of Claymore manga readers here.
I’m holding off reading the manga with all my willpower, hopefully I don’t cave. If I do, expect Claymore entries to have a lot of “Well, in the manga…” type comparisons XD
The anime’s style of slowly feeding us information, leaving enough for me to develop theories but not nearly enough to verify them is exactly why I love this series.
I think Shirukii is going to start liking the Claire story arcs a LOT better, beginning with the very next episode. It should feature the best pure action seen yet in Claymore, and depending on whether a certain development is pushed into the episode after, a very major plot twist.
Theresa was great, but Claire is going to emerge as an even more impressive figure as the story develops. Her first ‘arc’ in episode 1-4 was weighed down by the requirements of exposition. From here on out, things will get pretty wild.
Anyway, remember Claire’s fight with Miria when you view next week’s episode—it was clever setup of Claire’s exciting hidden technique! (Hey, this is a shonen anime, even if its a good one.)
Shirukii, I suggest that you read the manga up to volume 5. So you can judge for yourself wether the anime adaptation is good or not. I think that MadHouse is doing a great job. They are very respectful to the story.
About Clare’s ability, I like the fact that she isn’t an uber-warrior. She always needs the support of fellow claymores. This is more realistic than the usual shounen crap.
hii Shirukii,
huge fan of your blogging work, i have a question though, in the claymore8-part you write that this:
“100% release: Awakening. In rare cases the claymore will not become a true yoma, instead transforming into something beyond a yoma or a claymore.”
i am confused about this ^^ do you mean priscilla with this? because we’ve seen claire slaying a winglike yoma who looked just like the awakened priscilla in episode 2 T____T;;; or is this is a reference to a creature we haven’t seen yet? (hence i don’t read the manga T___T;;; )
keep up the good bloggingwork ^__^;;;
neverminddd, just saw episode 9 ^__^;;
Hmmmmmm…….very good stuff! :)………Totally wasn’t expecting Clare to be dead last in the Claymore rankings……..
@ Shirukii (or any others that want to answer lol……):
I too fear a Naruto quantam leap of abilities…….besides which, I don’t know why everyone seems to love that show *holds up flame shield*
Anyone care to enlighten me??????
Honestly, I’ve only been able to stomach three full episodes before being bored out of my skull…….which is weird considering I stuck around after Sola’s first 4 (ultra slow) episodes lol :P…….
@ Silvering: I also like Clare more as a character, partially because of her demeanor, sort of like a stoic tsundere. Her voice is awesome too, and last but not least her loli form is win.
@ Son Gohan: Ahh! The temptation, it’s killing me. I really want to read the manga, it’s sitting right beside me…But I still want to try and get through the anime series before touching it. It’s going to be a looong couple months.
@ twsl: Haha, looks like you answered your own question. Thanks for the compliments though, they’re what keeps me going! …that and insatiable boredom.
@ Kanon_fan82: Naruto wasn’t that bad, Naruto Shippuuden however, is terrible. Slow pacing is sloooooow. The manga advances at a snails pace already, and the anime just takes it one step down.
Just finished the rest of the published manga… Wow, this is going to be a great series, from both a character and action standpoint. Shirukii should keep his manga well hidden from himself.
(I was not expecting Priscilla to perfect the moe moe girl-*glomp* attack, that she’s just that powerful.)
i really really like this movie……..
and i always watch this…!!!
but so sad to say that no. 1 teresa of the faint smile was dead…. the new no. 2 prescilla cut her head…. because prescilla deceived teresa…..
it so unfortunate that teresa was died….!!!
I really really like her very much…..
“Teresa of the Faint Smile”