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January 07, 2006

Yagi Norihiro: Claymore vol. 1-9

This is, uh, really good. The "review" ar manganews.net is really bad but gets the gist of it. Claymores are female warriors who are human/monster hybrids (chimeras might be a better term), possessing the power of the monsters in their small bodies which gives them an advantage over the average monster simply because they can move faster. The protagonist is a Claymore warrior called Claire, who we follow in the first few volumes without knowing anything about her backstory. She goes from town to town defeating monsters, and in one of the towns we see her pick up a boy who has lost all his family to a demon. We sense that this fact sets her apart from other Claymores and hints at her past, but we don't get the exposition until a few more volumes in.

To be frank, the first couple of volumes are not very good in an objective sense. Yagi has some very interesting ideas, but his skills aren't mature enough to bring them to life. He actually has a popular multi-volume title under his belt already, but that was a comedy and it's quite obvious (most painfully in volume one) that he has little exterience in drawing human figures from other angles than eye-level (i.e. perpendicular to the ground). He's also very obviously trying to expland on this, as is evident in the fight scenes which show many signs of more dynamic compositions, but he's just not there yet. Additionally, the first few volumes are lacking in any form of exposition or introspection, which make them very unfulfilling to read. Yagi doesn't let the readers know Claire's thoughts and no one speaks much, so the readers' eyes just skim over less-than-brilliant fight scenes (if I'm rude and compare them to fight scenes in manga like Hunter x Hunter, they're shit) without having anything to actually read. My experience is that on average it takes me 25 minutes to read one 200-page volume of manga, while I imagine I finished the first few Claymore volumes in less than 15. They're certainly not uninteresting, but lacking.

The story only gets rolling when Yagi suddenly begins to tell the story of Teresa, a Claymore who was the strongest one in the Claymore organization. It turns out that as a small girl, Claire was saved by Teresa, and without apoiling you too much, we're told why Claire joined the organization and underwent the surgery to become half-monster. Before this exposition Claymore had a good premise, but here the premise begins to develop into a plot: we are introduced to some of the other Claymore; the elusive organization that makes the Claymore warriors is hinted as being not just a nice little the-good-humans-vs.-the-bad-monsters welfare group; Claire's motivations for becoming a Claymore is revealed and we are told what her ultimate wish is. As the flashback finishes, Clair teams up with some of the strongest Claymore of the organization and is dragged into a battle against a foe unlike any she has faced before, and gradually becomes entangled in a conspiracy. Compared to the first few volumes this plot came out of total left field, and I couldn't help but feel that Yagi had come up with this plot at the top of his head, while he originally only meant to write about Claire fighting monsters in a new town in every arc. But despire this, the inner logics of the world he has built is quite intricate and fascinating, and along with his increasing drawing skills and his desire for more emotional depth and individuality in his new characters, it just works so well.

This is also where the different Claymore warriors begin to show their personalities. They never completely lose their air of male wish-fulfilment fantasy ... because come on: they're beautiful with fair skin and hair and silver eyes, model-thin but always with big boobs, fighting in tight leotards and sparce armour, strong as the devil but still underlings in a highly partriarchal organization which bought them and did with their bodies as they pleased? The female Claymore are a double-edged jack-off fantasy where the male reader can simultaneously fantasize about 1) ravishing them and having them submit to his will and 2) being the only one to truly understand them and their tragic past and comfort them and change them back into the sweet innocent victims they were and keep them for himself. Not that I'm blaming the men, here; if the Claymore were male and played by you-know-who, I'd be jacking off, too. And I'm sure you can find manifestations of similar fantasies in the wide world of BL manga. But I digress.

What I wanted to say was that nevertheless, the Claymore are cool. Ophelia is brilliantly wicked and twisted, while Galatea is just wickedly cool, and Irene has style. (Having written this, I came to think that maybe I just like Yagi's long-haired women. Maybe. They're cool.) They share the fact that they are half-monsters, but they each have their own reactions to and motivations for becoming Claymore and working for the organization. Considering that in the first few volumes, not even his protagonists (Claire and the boy) had much personalities to speak of, I'm amazed that Yagi has come so long. He really only needs to apply the same attention to his villains, but judging from the lastest developments, I think he's getting there.

The only less than awesome thing I can think of is the lack of original attacks for everyone, really. I'm not much of a fighting manga buff, and don't really care about fight scenes unless they're extremely good or extremely bad, but even I feel a sense of déjà vu at most of them, especially from Weekly Shonen Jump manga of the Golden Age, such as Yu Yu Hakusho and Dai no Daiboken. The extending limbs of some of the monsters is very Toguro Ani (YYH), especially the scene with them coming up from the ground, which not much of a surprise if you've read YYH. The growing muscles is very Toguro Ototo (YYH), Jean's screw blade was done by Hyunkel in (DnD), and so on. But I guess you can't expect people to make up brand-new attacks all the time. How many of those can there be left, anyway?

On a side note, the current number one warrior of the organization is named "Alicia". Hehehehe. Her nickname is "Alicia the Black", and as far as I can tell from the few frames with her in them, she's pretty much a robot and a complete follower of the organization. Can't wait to see her for real.

All in all, I recommend it.

Category: Shonen/seinen | Comments (0)