Claymore vol. 27
No, this isn’t getting a podcast. I considered it, but doing a retrospective for a series where I covered the first 17 volumes in one edition and then summarized the final 10 seemed kind of pointless. Also, the series doesn’t deserve it. I’ve written here about the series has had its good parts, particularly in the middle, and how these last couple of volumes just haven’t been on the same level. I was hoping for a smashing finish based on the final page of the previous volume as mangaka Norihiro Yagi dug deep for a surprise return. However, that twist turns out to be the biggest problem with the finale. Those of you expecting to see Claire summon up all of the power and experience she has gained over the previous twenty-six volume are in for some bitter disappointment. That’s because everything she’s been through up to now has been to allow someone more qualified to defeat the big bad at the end.
Full spoilers for vol. 27 follow. Mainly to avoid the revelation of who this “someone more qualified” is. That said, if you’ve read up to the last page of vol. 26, you should have a pretty good idea regarding the identity of this person.
“Claymore” has had Claire “partially awaken” to her yoma power many times over the course of its run. The character has managed to avoid “fully awakening” and transforming into an “awakened being” either through her own strength of will, or the intervention of others. So we’ve never actually seen what her awakened form looks like.
Well, it turns out that this form isn’t that of a hideous monster. Claire’s awakened form is… Teresa of the Faint Smile. The Claymore who protected her as a child, abandoning the Order in the process, and ultimately died as an indirect result of that. Mind you, it IS Teresa herself. It’s not Claire assuming her protector’s form, the woman has effectively been resurrected by this process.
The short version of what follows is that Teresa and Claire get to share some catch-up time in the latter’s mind while the former goes on to dismantle and eventually destroy Priscilla. Claire then regains her body and then she and her fellow Claymores go off to live happily ever after on their own terms. We also get a final scene where Claire goes off with Raki to return the arm she “borrowed” a while back from a character that I thought was brutally murdered shortly after that act.
That would seem to be a rather large plot hole for the series to end on, but it’s ultimately a minor issue in light of what has come before. I harped on Raki’s involvement in striking a critical blow to Priscilla as it undermined the series progressive feminist bent. Ultimately, the girls couldn’t do it for themselves in the end and needed a guy to help bail them out. The good news about the finale is that Teresa’s one-woman-army domination of Priscilla here goes a long way towards rectifying that. She doesn’t need anyone’s help, save for all the skills that her former ward has picked up over the years.
The problem is that Yagi effectively throws Claire’s character under a bus to give this moment to Teresa. In a moment that effectively encapsulates this problem, the scene where Claire and Teresa are re-united in their mindspace, the former regresses in appearance and action to the child she was when she met this Claymore for the first time. The struggle, the friendships, the skills she learned from them — all of this was to let someone else do the heavy lifting for her in the end. I’ll admit that Claire hasn’t been the most interesting protagonist I’ve read about. There’s always been a blandness to her as she’s followed the requisite progression for a protagonist in a shonen fantasy/action manga. One might be tempted to read Claire’s sidelining in this final volume as a bit of an admission on this part with the character he really wanted to write about finally getting her due. If that’s the case, then it’s a twist that comes far too late to satisfy in any meaningful fashion.
As for the actual battle, it has its moments. All of Teresa’s fighting against Priscilla is handled in a competent fashion, with Yagi managing to give the proceedings more energy than they usually have. He also manages some impressively macabre visuals as Priscilla keeps getting chopped up and regenerating into progressively less human forms. I can’t say that it was particularly exciting compared to other manga that I’ve read, but it’s better than I’ve seen from this series in a while.
The best parts of the battle are the character moments that emerge between all of the death and destruction. Seeing Teresa interact with the other Claymores based on Claire’s memories is cute, as is her call-out to Cassandra that weakens Priscilla in the process. Seeing Priscilla admit that this great wellspring of hate had driven her all these years was interesting and helped to add something to her character in the end. Best of all was Teresa’s admission to Priscilla in her final moments that she didn’t finish her off when she was in her weakened state earlier because it’s awful for death to take life unawares. Something she has first-hand experience with.
There are also the parts where Claire and Teresa are conversing in their shared mindspace. Yet this reunion and the words they share are ultimately meaningless as a result of the issues that I’ve discussed above. These scenes simply drive home the fact that Claire really hasn’t grown at all over the course of the series. When it comes down to it, she’s still the same crying little girl who followed Teresa out of town all those years ago. Their final moment together, with Claire’s tear-and-snot-dripping face, does nothing to put a positive spin on things.
So there you have it, the end of “Claymore.” For all of the issues in this final volume, I still don’t regret reading the series. I did enjoy it for the majority of its run, particularly the middle when each new volume kept serving up a new plot twist that gave the narrative some real momentum for a good long while. It didn’t last, and that’s something I’ll remember if Yagi starts a new series that winds up being released out here.
“Claymore” also never escaped the specter of “Berserk” in its storytelling. This series owes a deep debt to Kentaro Miura’s epic in terms of story structure, setting, and epic monster battles. It will always be “Berserk Lite,” is what I’m saying.
Yet, I have to give Yagi this: At least his series has an ending. Whether he’s obsessing over Idolm@ster, or doing miniseries about overthrowing an empire a million years from now, it’s clear that Miura is struggling to finish/maintain interest in the story he started telling way back in the late 80’s. I sure as hell hope that Miura is finally able to put the adventures of Guts to bed at some point. There’s too much great stuff in that series for it to be summed up by saying, “It’s awesome! But he never finished it…” Without an ending, everything that Miura has accomplished in that series will be for naught.
So if you’re looking for a series to start reading in between volumes of “Berserk,” then “Claymore” is… not a terrible choice. It’s a decent serving of shonen fantasy/action comfort food that is perfectly readable for the majority of its run, but features a deeply misguided ending that shows the creator didn’t really understand the journey he put his protagonist on. I’ve read worse endings, but the fact that “Claymore” could’ve been better than what it wound up being still stings nonetheless.