Claymore vol. 23

The good news is that this volume continues to keep the title’s momentum going.  We get a decisive end to the conflict between the Claymores and the Organization here with some nice surprises.  Things continue immediately on to the next arc where we get a change to the status quo of the Claire/Priscilla/Unholy Abomination of Creation business from several volumes back.  All in all, if you’ve been enjoying the series up until now there’s nothing that will derail your interest here.

Unless you’re like me and the revelation of the “horrible” deformity that marks the chests of all Claymores serves as a forcible reminder of the overall B-list quality of the book.  For something that was built up so much so long ago, the answers we get for it here are decidedly anticlimactic.

(Spoilers for the “horrible” — yes the quotes are necessary — Claymore chest deformity follow the break.)

It’s not even something that has been played up as a major issue over the course of the series.  However, the fact that Raki has finally rejoined the main cast means that Claire’s return can’t be far behind.  That causes some members of the current cast to wonder if she’ll return “untreated” and if so, will her companion be able to accept her after she has undergone this process?

Let’s back up a bit.  Long ago in vol. 3, shortly after a young Claire had joined up with her savior Teresa, they were ambushed by bandits.  Being a bunch of burly male bandits, they threatened to rape the adult Claymore because that’s what people like them do.  Teresa took in in stride, ripped open the clothing on her chest and said that they could do whatever they wanted so long as they could stand a body like hers.  ALL of the bandits then backed off at this point, visibly horrified and disgusted by what they had seen.

Now a scene like that really gets the imagination going.  How bad does such a deformity have to be to turn off such hardened bandits, who we subsequently find out have no qualms about indiscriminately murdering townspeople, from having their way with a Claymore?  It’s something we were left to ponder for quite a while as the issue was never brought up again.  If nothing else, it feels like something mangaka Norihiro Yagi threw in so that he wouldn’t have to deal with that particular issue, or why Claymores would be adverse to pursuing any kind of relationship with the opposite sex.  Given that this has produced a series devoid of what would have certainly been tired, cliched romantic subplots I guess we can be thankful for that at least.

Then we find out what the bandits actually saw and while it’s certainly morbid, it’s really not as disturbing as it should’ve been.  As part of the process that turns girls into Claymores, a wound is opened straight down their chest so that the necessary yoma guts can be stuffed in and their powers absorbed.  Problem is that in doing so, the wound is the one thing on their body that can’t be healed through the use of their new abilities.  So, the Organization took a cue from Frankenstein and tried the direct method of simply stitching the wound closed with needle and thread.

So the “horrifying” truth of the Claymore’s chest deformity essentially comes down to a primitive form of surgical stitching.  Frankly, I have a hard time wrapping my head around how that’s supposed to be something to be frightened of.  More often than not, I’ve seen that kind of scarring is taken as a point of pride for the patient to show what they endured (before the stitching is taken out, anyway).  This does strike me as being a bigger deal in Japan.  Remember, this is a culture where things like tattoos are openly vilified and seen as something only gangsters would have.  Given that series like “Twin Spica” also made jokes about how one of the female astronaut students lamented the fact that she had to use a diaper during training would mean she’d never be a bride, it’s not hard to see the stitching here being more of a culturally-specific issue than something with global resonance.

On that level, you can’t blame Yagi for not considering what people in other countries would’ve thought about his choice here as his primary market is Japan.  Then you consider something like “Black Jack” where the character is scarred on his face and hardly anyone bats an eye, and this underlines the lack of imagination and detail that keeps “Claymore” as a B-list title in comparison.  Granted, this is still a title that’s part of the “Shonen Jump” family of titles (it’s published in the Monthly Jump Square magazine which allows for a little more mature content than you’d find in Jump proper) so it could be that he just doesn’t have the license to push the envelope in ways that would truly disturb.

Yet the title is still entertaining for what it is, particularly for the way it keeps upsetting the status quo.  Even if destroying evil monsters is still the focus of the series, the motivations and methods of the cast to that end have changed significantly over its run.  Also, even if a lot of the story beats for this title are predictable, it’s still hard to tell exactly where the story is going to go and how it’s going to end.  So it has its merits, even if things like this surgical scarring business show that it doesn’t have the imagination to transcend its cultural mores in the way that the best manga do.