Claymore

When a Claymore walks through a village, the locals gasp, grab their children and head indoors. They whisper among themselves and avert their eyes. The bravest of them gossip about what "the silver-eyed witch" could possibly want. And this is how they deal with the good guys who keep them safe from monsters.

In the world of Claymore, silver-eyed women called Claymores—presumably because they all carry gigantic swords—are the only things standing between feeble humanity and the horrible, gut-gobbling monsters called Yoma. At the same time, the Claymores are cold, distant, inhuman killers who are half Yoma themselves, and since people see more of the Claymores than they do of Yoma, the Claymores are considered just about as scary.

A young boy named Raki learns the hard way about how inhuman Claymores can be when a Yoma kills his family and his town hires a killer named Clare to take on the monster. Raki tries to tell Clare about his desire for revenge, his loneliness and his gratitude to her, but she shows no interest. When she saves him from the Yoma, she emphasizes that she was just doing her job. When she saves him from another one, she says she was just using him tactically. And so on and so forth, though by the time she takes him on as her cook—even though Claymores barely eat—it's become obvious that she has some attachment to him.

After the first of Claymore's 26 episodes, Raki and Clare travel together, and he finds out more about the "silver-eyed witches" than he'd necessarily like. For instance, they aren't crossbreeds—they take Yoma flesh into themselves in order to gain human power, but it eventually overwhelms them, and they call upon their fellows to kill them. And the prejudice against Claymores greets and infuriates Raki everywhere they go. Yet Clare seems as indifferent to the fear, anger and hatred that greet her on her travels as she is to the occasional word of praise or friendship.

Shut up already!

Claymore would be a very different and probably more interesting series without Raki, who exists in part to repeat everything he learns over and over for the viewers' benefit, and in part to whine and whimper and grovel to Clare in order to emphasize just how aloof and inhuman she is. Claymore is a surprisingly talky series, with someone always jabbering on at great length, mostly reiterating points that have already been made about how scary Claymores are, how powerful Yoma are, and so forth. Raki is the worst offender, but in the fifth episode, Clare's mentor Teresa is just as guilty of constantly, repetitively narrating herself. This series might actually be better with the sound off, though then viewers would miss the unusual, discordant ambient music.

Still, the lack of babbling would make it easier to concentrate on the simply spectacular visuals, courtesy of animation house Madhouse. Oddly, the Yoma are the least impressive things about Claymore—they're just big, fangy purple people who brag too much, without a lot of variation to them. But the series puts so much color and depth and detail into Clare and Raki's world that every shot is a wonder. There's a strong emphasis on the subjectivity of fast movement, with people blurring and objects distorting as they hurtle toward the viewer. And when no one's moving at all, they're occupying a world of gorgeous visual clarity and color.

Claymore spends too much time explaining its world—the first few episodes are glacially paced and repetitive as the details get laid out—but it's a fascinating world, with a lot of strange details: the eerie men who follow Claymores around and collect their fees, the way Yoma can possess and wear people, the complicated Vatican-like holy city society that Clare and Raki end up in through episodes three and four. The attention that went into the lovely visuals and the strange music also went into building a unique world, and while the specific way it gets explored can be annoying and redundant, it's breathtakingly rich nonetheless.