I loved Claymore. I actually discovered Claymore when Reddit randomly decided to recommend this sub on my feed. I looked at it and I was like “Oh this anime seems interesting, I think I will check it out”. I decided to go watch the anime and I was hooked. Fast forward to now and I’ve also finished the manga.

I loved Clare as a protagonist because she felt like such a compelling and realistic person. Clare is brave, fierce but also stubborn, reckless and she made and repeated plenty of mistakes. But that makes me love her as a character even more. There genuinely were times when I was reading where I was like “did you seriously just do that Clare? That was so reckless, you need to do better”, and so when she learnt and overcame her mistakes I felt more proud of her. 

And Im also happy that Claymore did not take a sort of easy, cliche route with Clare. Since she had Teresa’s flesh in her it could have been easy to just write the story where she’s just insanely powerful from the get go, but instead the author decided to sort of do the middle ground approach. Clare was constantly (in the beginning) being outclassed by other Claymores, she was doubted by others, and she took a lot of heavy hits, but then she would suddenly show immense strength and ability that even surprises the others, and this continues as she grows stronger and more experienced throughout the story. 

And like I said in the title Im both happy and sad now that I’ve finished it. I really loved the ending. We finally see Teresa emerge again and defeat Priscilla. Priscilla, who really was really just a broken and traumatised soul, finally apologises for her actions and hopefully found peace after her death. The organisation, which is undoubtedly the true villain of the entire story is crushed, and the island and its people are finally free from their selfish, inhumane research for a war the island’s inhabitants don’t even know about. It felt like everyone in the story can finally have their own peace by the end. And it makes me sad that it’s over, but Im happy that I randomly discovered such an amazing story. It’s a favourite for sure.

I finished Claymore and Im both happy and sad