Hige vs. Otaku

Yeah, okay. Humour those Shonen Jump tropes and be done with it, Claymore. I’m surprised you pulled out ‘tortured past/traumatic current dilemma’ card so soon, though. I wonder if it’s suggestive of a more streamlined approach in comparison to your sister shows?

But enough of the second-person tomfoolery. Claymore remains a pretty watchable show, even in the face of its overt lack of originality and fairly stilted personality. This episode offered some generic backstory for Clare, which I enjoyed but wasn’t especially moved by. It was a nice history lesson, however, and provided light on the Claymore organisation and its members. The appearance of Rubel was suitably sinister and I’d like to know how he factors into the whole arrangement, beyond providing new threads when Clare gets herself impaled and collecting the money from her contracts. Raki’s role remains fairly redundant bar offering a bit of humanity to Clare’s general aura of stolidity. Oh, he can cook, too. Which is nice.

The dip in animation wasn’t too severe; though the grubbiness you find in out-sourced Korean animation is quite apparent. Still, I really enjoy the texture and style of Claymore, and the grittiness feels more intentional than a by-product of some producer’s budget choices. Audio-wise there’s not much to pick out, except perhaps the rather hilarious Yoma voice-acting at the start of the episode. Claymore’s music is also pretty inoffensive and ignorable, which is a blessing and a curse I suppose. Rather that than it being horrendously cheesy.

Yep, Claymore is ticking along nicely for me. I don’t anticipate it like the big three, but it’s nice to have a bit of solid action to level things out.

Disclaimer: I watched this episode last night after I got in from celebrating a friend’s 21st. I may’ve been a touch inebriated, having indulged in a few cheeky drinks as the kid do these days, so I don’t know how much to trust my shit-faced perceptions of the show.

Still, Claymore is pretty cool (when drunk).

Art-wise, Claymore has a sharp, lucid style that I really like. Character design is lovely; quite high-brow shonen fantasy stuff with lots of quirky minutia. The colour pallet is fantastically vibrant, fostering a broody, murky atmosphere that goes a long way to accentuate the success of the show’s tone and mood.   

Yet I’m well aware that, while having a solid reputation, Madhouse do suffer from the old ‘tend to tart up their first episode and gradually diminish into passable mediocrity’ (ref: NANA) that prevails in most modern anime. I’m not worried about it, though, because Death Note remained decent and Madhouse aren’t prone to GONZO-style fuck-ups. It’d be naive to expect them to maintain the high quality found in this episode, however, which means no whinging in five episodes time, anime blogsphere.

As far as the non-aesthetical things go, Claymore lingered around Entertaining But Nothing Particularly Inspired, which probably explains why my drunk, thuggish mind had lots of fun watching it. Based on a Shonen Jump manga that I have no experience with it has most of the tropes you can imagine involved with fantasy action anime/manga. To be fair, though, I can imagine that its manga counterpart is wholly appropriate for VIZ’s otherwise patronising Jump Advanced imprint; Claymore’s anime adaptation is definitely more mature and serious than most standard Jump fare. And it works to its advantage, assuming there are no horrible surprises loitering around the corner. If they somehow manage to crowbar an irritating comic-relief sidekick/mascot into the show in the forthcoming episodes, then that’s it: I’m dropping it with brutal disregard.

There’s definite potential for that happening, which troubles me, but I’m giving it the benefit of the doubt for now. Claymore is what I need from anime at the moment: solid production values; interesting premise; mindless violence. Our stoic lead Clare looks to suffer from being too hardcore for her own good, which could get boring, but again I’m happy to give Claymore the benefit of the doubt. Simple, attractive fun.