Jul 6 2009 09:32 AM Hello people,
Just finished watching the entire Claymore series and wanted to give my thoughts on it.
It's a very dark and gruesome story, with some deep character relationships and interaction, which I really liked. The combat was also pretty epic and entertaining. It kind of reminded me of DBZ combat in some ways, like the charging up to gain more power, but the combat of course also has a lot of differences and is far far better in Claymore in pretty much everyway, so I don't mean to take that comparison too far.
This is definitely one of the best anime I've seen.
I noticed there's a lot of mixed opinions on the ending. Here's my thoughts on it, hopefully this all hasn't been mentioned before (don't care to read through all 77 pages to find out).
First of all, I haven't read the manga yet, but it doesn't have much relevance to me anyway, since I'm willing to view and judge the anime as a separate story.
So I thought the ending was overall pretty good for what it was, but it did kinda annoy me that Clare didn't try to kill Priscelia when she had the opportunity to, after being so determined to for almost her entire life and having such a good reason to. It was somewhat of a disappointment. However there is the fact that Easely was there the entire time watching their battle, and would have saved Priscelia if Clare tried to kill her, since he says after the battle, "Sorry but I can't let you kill her", so it made Clare's decision not matter as much. There's also the vision Clare has of Teresa afterwards, which makes it seem like Teresa is glad Clare didn't go through with it.
I was sort of expecting Clare to never be able to revert back to her normal form after the fight with the Silver-Eyed Lion, since it seemed too unrealistic for her to be able to after the extent that she transformed/awakened. However, the way she managed to turn back at the end wasn't that bad at all. I'm glad Raki's hugging/crying isn’t' what caused it, as that would have seemed far too simple and easy. It was sad though that Jean had to die from it, but death is just a big part of this anime and partly why it's so good.
As for my thoughts on the likely hood of a sequel.. I think it's very very likely, since there were just so many unresolved conflicts at the end. The three ultimate awakened ones are all still alive, Priscelia is still alive, Clare and the others still have to deal with the organization on their back, and there's just so much more that needs to be revealed or developed more. Plus, there's a lot of talk about the future between the characters. I really doubt they had the intention of creating an incomplete anime..