User:Rej Maddog/Reactions

First impression from Anime
...was that this would be a story I was not interested in. Characters get introduced just largely to die. The story seemed black and nearly irredemable.

Second take after seeing Manga
Good art can draw you in. The local library had the first fifteen volumes most but not all of them on the shelves. Eventually all of them at once to read and absorb. The art and story has fascinated me. The author had some idea where he was taking this. I believed I could trust him with the story.

What is fascinating is that in the midst of all the fighting the story seems to be a love story. Clare and Teresa. Raki and Clare. It is also a war story, although the true war is hidden. Not only is the outcome unknowable, but also the players. Finally how to judge the good guys from the bad? The heroes from the monsters.

Current doubts
There was a game I played as a kid. On a piece of paper I would draw a city. Then in the sky above the city some planes come to bomb it. The city would have defenses to shoot down the planes. This was all done in marker or pencil. To keep the game going more and more destruction of the city and the planes in the sky had to take place. New more powerful air forces came in to destroy. New more powerful defenses. The game stopped when I had a very black piece of paper and nowhere to draw anything new.

The style of the story has always seemed to be similar to that game. I have been fascinated by desspite that, convinced that the author has some point to convey.

I craft and tell stories. The parts have to hold together and relate to each other as a whole in order to be a good story. Events have to have weight and meaning. Whatever that means.

The context of Claymore is death and destruction. The warriors of the organization prevent some of that, for a fee they neither touch nor make much use of personally. They live knowing that eventually they will need to be cut down by a colleague if the monsters they battle don't get them first. They work for an organization that uses and eventually betrays them. The only one in the organization they can turn to for help is the spy. What a weird puzzle? Is a reasonable resolution of this story even possible?

Yet Yagi seems to know where he is going and he is taking us somewhere. Theres loyalty here. And honor. Vs. perfidy. Vs inhuman monsters formerly not only human but honestly good ones. Riful seems she must have been quite good at her job. Pricilla goes out of her way to spare other warriors and with Raki helped protect people again as she once did as a warrior.

I thought I had some of it figured out
Clare is obviously going to grow into something unusual and strong. She already is strong in all the ways that count. But more powerful. Teresa will be back too. A destroyer that can seed kit-lings can divide up into components Teresa is one of those and we may have even seen her in the Maelstrom of youma a while back.

The seven who survived the battle in the north were going to survive the rest of the story too. They were melding into one character. Each a piece of the personality and the team that make them effective as a both a fighting force and as friends.

I have no idea of what happens to Raki, Except he doesn't die before Clare sees him. Maybe not even after that. Probably not after that. Hard to tell the author has established that anything can happen in his story.

Still he has written for 108 chapters maybe some of his style has been absorbed by now. maybe not.

Wishful thinking?
It seems to me that Clare's task in not to kill Priscilla but to overcome the need for that revenge. The desire to kill Priscilla is what drove Ophelia. The reason for this is Teresa. Teresa spared Pris but w/o extracting a promise of no harm. Pris was stuck she needed to complete her mission or fail the organization and she struggled until she abandoned all but trickery and turned herself into a monster. A monster which most of the time looks like both a unicorn and a butterfly. She pursues a memory even though she has figured out she had a good reason not to remember it. So what causes her to remember? So what does she do then? Let Clare kill what she has become much like Ophelia did?

Phantom Maria's Illusion
This chapter bummed me out to the point that I have lost my trust in Yagi and the story for now. The equation has been lost. A character acts alone against her own orders and judgement to achieve what? With what plan? To go after and fight warriors she will not kill? To destroy the organization? How was she going to destroy the organization? What was her plan? What was she thinking?

In terms of storytelling why does Yagi have her decide (or seem to decide) on the battle field that killing a warrior would go against her entire code? How could she have not factored that into her plans to begin with? If this makes the plan extra hard, why didn't Miria build in some extra strength into the plan? Where was the plan? What was the plan???

It all does not make sense, yet. If Yagi is skillful why is this in the story? What was she thinking? What was he thinking?

I didn't want to read Claymore for the whole month of September.

Rabona again
Fortunately I am a curious man. The current chapter is much more to my liking.


 * Galetea
 * Maitia
 * Clarice (her hair gets lighter and has turned white by the end of the chapter)
 * Deitrich


 * Tabitha
 * Yuma
 * Cynthia
 * Helen and
 * Deneve

go up against a legion of yoma and three awakeneds winning without loss of life.

We learn that Miria is probably dead. That means Galetea did not know. And it sounded alot like when everybody points out that Clare is number 47 and therefore the weakest. So I believe Miria to be alive yet. The story calls for her to prove her awesomeness in this battle not to get killed in it for no purpose. (I think I have to put that under wishful thinking. I don't know what Yagi intends. I can never tell for sure. I can't even tell from one version of the translation to another what he intended. Which is what keeps me fascinated. And reading.)

Clare is clearly not dead. What she is though is the great question? The organization is clearly evil and has declared itself. Rubel is playing Xanthos Chess. Which ever move others make, whatever the outcome, it is in his favor.

Well November is another month.