There was a time in secondary school when we made a slight shift from the Big Three and started seeking other manga to devour. If I remember correctly, Fullmetal Alchemist was the next Best Thing on everyone’s list, and more than a few people migrated over to the Fate fandom. Our school librarian watched us, sceptical brow raised, before ordering a load of manga for the library. Claymore by Norihiro Yagi was one of them. A lot of the guys read it: Gary, Fong, Elvis, Kadeem, Henry, Philip, Pham, James, Tobi, Akin, and others, quickly caught onto the series about women with swords. That was almost thirteen years ago. Why it took me until 2019 to finally read it myself is beyond me. Now that I’ve completed it, I’m annoyed that I missed out on the hype back then. Those guys were wild and passionate about anime and manga. It would have made for some stupid debates.

In Claymore, the world is overrun by Yoma: powerful demon entities that infiltrate unsuspecting communities and impersonate humans to slaughter and eat them. The mysterious Organisation imbibes young women with Yoma DNA, recreating them into superhuman warriors that are then contracted to hunt and kill Yoma. The fighters are called Claymores, named after the swords they use to hunt their foes, and are distinguished by their white hair and silver eyes. Claymores are shunned by wider society, and most normal humans are just as scared of them as they are of actual Yoma. The young fighters are distant, stoic and cold towards others, including their employers at the Organisation. The story follows Clare, a Claymore with a twist, and the young boy she meets on her journey. Raki is a rambunctious orphan, and his kindness towards Clare reacquaints her with humanity. It is later shown that Clare was a child similar to Raki, and, after being saved by the legendary Claymore Teresa, followed her around like a little sister, until Teresa was murdered by her fellow Claymore, Priscilla, on the Organisation’s orders.

There’s a lot to like in this series. It features a predominantly female cast and passes the Bechdel test. It strays away from tired stereotypes of bitchiness and jealousy: the Claymores fight and challenge each other, not because they are “women”, but because the Organisation has manipulated them to be rivals, to prove their worth and loyalty for greater rewards and respect. The Claymores are all ranked from 1 to 47, and the lower ranks are teased and treated with disdain by the stronger fighters. As the story progresses, the Claymores become more aware of the Organisation’s insidious motives, and they begin to work together. It’s like Girl Power to the max, with this army of superhuman sword fighters, teaming up and battling against a male-led organisation. It’s hard not to feel sympathy for even the most callous warriors, as snippets of their lives before their Claymore rebirth seeps into the main narrative, and tales of abandonment, loneliness, and severed families create a patchy quilt of unresolved trauma which is exploited by the Organisation.

The enemy designs are deliciously dark and sophisticated. The fights take the supernatural horror from Berserk and the bloody war sequences from Vinland Saga and combine them for a gory, brutal display of intelligently choreographed sequences. The story progression reminds me slightly of Bleach, how we watched as Ichigo fought nameless and inconsequential Hollows in the early volumes, and then saw the Hollows evolve into complex, conscious beings with motives that impacted the wider story. Claymore is initially a tale of Clare and Raki going from village to village to kill Yoma, avoid humans who dislike Clare, and try to find safe places for Raki to sleep. Soon, the concept of Awakened Beings is introduced: warriors who have relied too much on their Yoma enhancements, thus turning them into advanced, incredibly powerful Yoma that are a threat to humans, Yoma, Claymores and the Organisation combined. The Claymores are quickly tasked with hunting Awakened Beings, and their assignments are often used as punishment for warriors who have partly awakened and managed to return to consciousness.

There is a shocking twist part-way through the story that changes everything. The warriors discover the origins of the Organisation and its aims for their world, throwing their own worth as Claymores—mere puppets at this point—into question. Clare joins a band of rogue Claymores (black suits and all) to fight against the Awakened Beings and disseminate the Organisation’s plan to her former comrades. There are enough hints in the story for the reader to know that the Organisation is bad news, from their obviously dark and shadowy attire, to Louvre’s unsettling smile, to their impenetrable fortress, the location of which remains unknown to the reader, and the number of workers are noticeably untold. The execution of the twist is admirable for how it still manages to surprise despite the various clues interspersed throughout the story, and it is explained succinctly enough through the Claymore Miria, who has secretly investigated the Organisation’s activity.

Way back in the day, when the Clash of the Titans arc was the latest Attack on Titan sensation, forum posters speculated that AOT might “go the way of Claymore”, in that there was an outside, sinister source of the characters’ ills. Now that I’ve read Claymore, I appreciate the comparisons: the world is the enemy in both series, but the latter’s execution is cleaner than the exhausting exposition at the start of Attack on Titan’s corresponding arc. The twist doesn’t feel like an asspull either; the Organisation’s obvious disregard for the safety of their Claymores makes total sense afterwards. The warriors’ rebellion against the Organisation incorporates so many real-life parallels; reclaiming ownership of mistreated female bodies, overturning exploitative work environments that contemptuously treat employees like indispensable numbers, and a critique of war, and its ability to dehumanise warriors and leaders alike. It manages to explore all these concepts without being preachy and heavy-handed.

There’s only a few negative criticisms I have. The artwork is a little rough in the beginning, and whilst it improves over time, I can’t help but think the author is better suited to drawing monsters or mecha: the humans are all very stiff and boxy looking, but the Awakened Beings’ transformations are simply breathtaking.

The battle of the Beings gets tiresome after a while. When you think one has died, another pops up out of nowhere, and they are all so impossible to kill that the chapters go on and on and on, with a new “final form” reveal every few pages. When the battle progresses onto the Final-Final Boss, the scepticism for our heroes is very high: no one is beating this girl, even the other Awakened Beings, how is little Clare and co. supposed to defeat her? The answer is strange and somewhat disappointing, delving into the supernatural. As mentioned earlier, Clare is a Claymore with a twist: she was not imbibed with Yoma DNA, but something else. That’s all we are given regarding Clare’s power, but it never has any real impact on her struggles or battles in the rest of the story. Somehow, Clare’s twist randomly makes an appearance to save the day at the last minute. Clare never really gets to defeat the foe that plagued her entire Claymore career, rather, the dormant power inside her does it instead. Perhaps the lesson for our protagonist is that vengeance isn’t a power to rely on, and that there was no need for her to be clouded by a quest for revenge when her own hard work and fighting prowess already garnered her the respect and admiration of her peers.

Finally, I think the biggest pitfall of the series is Clare herself. She has very little personality. Compared to the other Claymores, who all have similar traumatic childhoods, and who also endured the savage and barbaric rebirth experiments to become warriors (unlike Clare), they are all distinguished by their quirky characters. You have the spunky troublemaker, the calm and mature leader, the sweet assassin, the aggressive one… there’s all sorts of characters to contend with here. Clare is none of these. She rarely smiles, her eyes are vacant. When her comrades challenge her, she only stares at them stoically, no expression whatsoever. It’s hard to believe her when she says she cares about Raki: her companion is all tears and screams whenever Clare is mentioned. Clare does and says very little in response. I suppose her apparent carelessness is a contrast to her childhood self, which was much more emotional, open, and expressive. After Teresa’s death, Clare becomes a different person. It’s just a shame that we don’t really see any development beyond this until the very final moments of the final fight, but even then it’s a little contrived when paired up with everything else that’s going on there.

Overall, I wasn’t disappointed with Claymore, in fact I regret that I hadn’t read it sooner. I love any shonen or seinen series that has female leads, especially women with a difference, divested from fanservice and violent misogyny. It is too easy for mangaka to rely on gratuitous rape and domestic violence, gory nakedness and sexualised stereotypes to beat the reader over the head with how bad everyone is. There is none of this is Claymore, and the characters are treated with dignity and respect. The misogyny is also subtly chilling. Dae’s fetishistic obsession over Claymores, for example, is really unsettling, and his almost orgasmic fervour in response to his incoming death is totally vile but more than fitting for a male villain who only sees his female charges as expendable weapons.

I would definitely recommend the series. It was once extremely popular, but in recent years it’s slipped into obscurity in favour of more exciting shonen series that have captured the newer generation of animanga watchers. I would love to see a Claymore renaissance; it’s not everyday you see a cast of female sword fighters kicking ass and taking names in a male-targeted series. More of this, please.

7/10