Thoughts: With Claymore ended, although I’ve been hearing people’s complaints about how the anime adaptation began to fail when it started to deviate from the manga, admittedly it’s not as good as the manga, but perhaps it’s not as bad as people claim. But before that, I would like to share a few thoughts on the final episode.

The ending was rather “open”, obviously this leaves room for continuation. In terms of characters who survived, it’s surprisingly close to the manga before the time skip. Except they did completely neglect the claymores who are left at Pieta. Other than that nothing really felt out of place, although I wish they made a bigger deal out of Raki’s and Clare reunion, after all it was still Jeane who helped Clare return from her limit.

Story aside, I thought the execution of the episode was pretty well done, especially when Jeane sacrificed herself for Clare (which coincidentally is the only part from the manga), also how they brought back Teresa through flash backs and the little bit at the end. That final scene did really feel nice, probably because its the ending, but the scene generally appeared to be much brighter which really contrasted with the rest of the episode (and series).

Series Overview: Claymore was not one of the shows I was excited about when the new season started. But surprisingly it was very exciting, in fact after just two episode I started reading the manga. Which may have been a mistake since I did spoil myself, even then the show was enjoyable. There are some really nice elements in Claymore which made it good; the mysteries behind the organization, the claymores themselves and many other things. The story was one of them and it’s very enjoyable to watch as the plot always manages to surprise me.

The characters were equally as interesting, of course being a shounen show every character has their own specialty but I feel that Claymore does this especially well. Teresa and Clare arc was awesome and even by the end the effect is still there and as mentioned above, it’s nice to see them remind us of Teresa at the very end.

There are a lot of criticism about how the series sucked as it started to move away from the manga, and of course there are a lot of bad things to poke at but really it’s not a total failure, I mean at least it’s an ending. Having said that, it really is a shame to see them toss away that potential, even if the ending is open for a continuation a lot of it is already wasted. The animation is pretty stable and at a fairly high standard through out the 26 episodes. The OP and ED are absolutely awesome! Perhaps a little bit of a let down at the end, it was still an enjoyable ride. And as Wrex said, you should really check out the manga

RK

P.S- This is the first series I’ve blogged from start to finish, Hurray!.