And so ends Claymore’s ‘Slashers’ arc, which proved to be a nice balance of action and plot revelation. Although I do like where they’re going with the half-awakened beings and being targeted by the organization, I’m still a little disappointed that Clare got a rather large power boost, from dead last to rivaling single digits is quite a leap. Although the top 5 seem to be in a whole different league, so there’s still room for gradual growth.

Episode Rating: 9/10

From afar, Galatea reports the end of the battle with the death of the awakened being. Rather than pleased, her handler appears utterly shocked by the result, he composes himself quickly and says that he didn’t expect such a short battle.

Although they managed to win, the team of four still sustained heavy wounds, and although Clare, Miria and Helen are in relatively good shape, the same can’t be said for Deneve. While they wait to see whether Deneve will pull through or not, Miria holds an interrogation.

The responses are shocking to all but Miria, all four of them gathered for this mission have come close to awakening themselves, as well as being considered problem children by the organization. Coincidentally they all were gathered onto the same team, and coincidentally they were misinformed and had to fight a male awakened being. Miria hypothesizes that the organization may have sent them here on purpose, as a sort of informal execution.

Furthermore, Miria thinks that rather than having successfully stopped their awakenings, that they in fact awakened already, or at least partially so. Each of them have grown considerably stronger since they almost awakened, so much so that any one of them would probably not have any problem with single digit ranks below #5. In their current state, Miria thinks that they are either awakening gradually, or that it’s only a matter of time before it happens suddenly.

All the talking has awoken Deneve, who overheard much of the conversation. In a position where only death awaits her if she regenerates at her current speed, she recklessly volunteers herself as a test subject. She pushes herself to the brink of awakening to accelerate her regeneration and to see if she can suppress it again, Clare and Helen standby to take her head if things go wrong.

Deneve ends up being successful in reverting past her limit, whether this confirms either one of Miria’s theories is uncertain as of yet.

The whole ordeal is of course being watched by Galatea, who reports in detail to her handler. Her ability to sense yoki is so fine tuned that she can even sense changes in the emotions of the four at such a great distance. But she’s not the only one who has a heightened sense of yoki, Clare is able to catch her presence, however faint, which seems to impress Galatea.

Her handler tells Galatea to memorize the yoki of the four, as she may have to fight them in the future. But Galatea’s rather skeptical that any of them will survive long enough to cross swords with her.

Before parting, Miria gives the four of them some advice, to remain obedient to the organization so as not to raise suspicion. Miria will continue to investigate the organization and their knowledge of awakened and half-awakened beings like themselves.

But more importantly, she warns them that even though they may be able to rival single digits, the top 5 are a different story, the gap in strength between 1-5 and 6 onwards is considerable. She draws out the symbols of the top 5 and warns the girls to avoid fighting them at all costs.

Rank #1: Alicia
Rank #2: Beth
Rank #3: Galatea
Rank #4: Ophelia
Rank #5: Rafaela

Special mention is given to Ophelia, who is known to not give a damn about the lives of her fellow claymore or humans in general. She is a being that seeks out blood and carnage and has an abnormal obsession with hunting awakened beings.

Thoughts

This episode did well in explaining the questions that were brought up last week. It’s pretty obvious that Miria’s hypothesis is correct and the awakened being they managed to kill was used by the organization as little more than an alternative method of execution for those who may pose problems in the future.

It looks like Miria is going to play an important role in Claymore from here on in. Aside from Clare, she was the only one in the team whose past was explained in any depth. We were shown the incident that caused her to come close to awakening.

On her third hunt involving awakened beings, she found out that the one she killed was a friend that joined the organization around the same time she did. When the job was done, Miria went berserk and would have awakened if not for the provocations of a certain claymore who would have loved nothing more than to fight Miria awakened. Though I didn’t see her symbol, judging from her demeanor and Miria’s warning to the girls, it must have been Ophelia.

It was surprising to hear her say that Miria has the potential to surpass rank #1 when put into a team position. It’s apparent that she is a great tactician and able to put a team to its full effectiveness, but the way Miria spoke of the gap between the herself and the higher ranks, I find it hard to believe that putting her in a team would be able to even things out. If Alicia’s strength is anything comparable to Teresa, who took down the four subsequent ranks with very little effort, I think it would take more than throwing together a competent team under Miria’s control to take her down.

I’m anxious to see how things progress from here. The organization can’t be happy that their execution plan failed and the four of them are still alive and well. It would be too obvious to send them out on another suicide mission, not to mention that there’s the chance they might survive and come out even stronger. Another option is to send the top five out as assassins to kill them off, but that’s blatantly obvious and out of the five, it seems that only Ophelia would take up such an offer.

The recent events and the revelations of the awakened beings raises the question of whether the organization is even worth keeping together. Sure they may be saving villages every so often by killing the yoma, but if for every couple villages saved, an awakened being is born that could tear down everything in its path is born, what’s the point? And the organization doesn’t even do anything about it! Unless a request from a village is made, they don’t even make an attempt to correct their mistakes, letting the monsters that they’ve created roam around and become stronger by the day, devouring the very humans they’re supposed to protect. It all seems like futile in my eyes. Though I suppose the alternative would be to let yoma roam freely, which isn’t much better.

But I guess there’s no point in debating that XD without awakened beings there wouldn’t be any antagonists to challenge the claymore, and that would make for one hell of a boring anime.

Meanwhile my temptation to read the manga grows stronger every passing episode T_T

~ Shirukii ~