This started out as a bit of Fridge Logic for Claymore and then became absolutely brilliant. If Claymores are people with yoma flesh and blood in them but Claymores are the only ones who can hunt Yoma, then how did they get the first Claymores? Plus, how did they figure out this would even work? This isn't Fridge Logic it was foreshadowing! Since the organization created both Yoma and Claymores the Organization would have had the material from the get go. The fact that they couldn't have gotten Claymores without Claymores was a logic puzzle that was a hint to the organization's more sinister machinations.
It's not quite that bad. While Claymore are needed to hunt, i.e. find, Yoma, actually killing yoma can be done with conventional tropes. So if you do get lucky, and/or just wipe out everyone in a town to be sure of getting the yoma, you have your first Claymore material!
This doubles with the initial contradiction that Claymore were created solely to fight Yoma yet their awakened forms are about a hundred times more dangerous.
Chapter 129: look at the middle seam of the warriors' uniforms and their little turtleneck thing. This makes The Reveal seem so obvious now: of course they have a straight line wound going down their bodies. If you were a doctor, how the hell else would you put a foreign object into every part of a patient's body?
When we first see Clare's Awakened form, her right arm is noticeably different from the rest of her body, being a mass of segmented tentacles instead of enormous claws. Why is that? Because it's not her arm! Her right arm had been replaced with Irene's and we're seeing what Irene's Awakened form would have looked like!
Dae's theory that the Claymores' power is derived from their hatred towards the yoma flesh in their bodies offers another reason Clare was ranked dead last. Clare loved Teresa, the donor of her Claymore flesh. Clare doesn't have any real problem with carrying a piece of Teresa inside her, so there's no internal conflict to empower her.
Doubling with Fridge Horror: With the revelation of exactly what kind of deformation the Claymores suffer from as a result of their transformation, suddenly Rubel's throwaway comment from way back at the beginning of the story (the second chapter!) makes more sense. Clare is bathing, and he asks her if she's trying to wash off the scent of blood — then follows it up by saying that it's a useless effort because her own body produces that scent. Of course it does. It has a massive, gaping wound that will not heal.
There are also other scenes that make more sense when you know about the Claymores' true appearance. When Ophelia forces her hand into Clare's clothing and then comes out bloodied she has clearly just stuck her fingers into Clare's frontal wound to taste her innards, who smelled like Awakened being according to her. In the previous battle between Miria's squad and an Awakened being instead, when the Awakened being tortures Miria and he's... well... sticking his tongue into heryou can see it moving over where Miria's wound should be, obviously the male Awakened being is hitting in that place because that is where a Claymore would feel more pain. So yes, definitely doubling with Fridge Horror.
Miria warned her friends that a huge gap of power existed between her, Number 6, and the top five Warriors. At first this seems to be part of Miria's cautious nature but as the series unfolds, we learn that she really was not kidding. None of their numbers are actually reflective of their degree of strength. In theory they have an Abyssal One, her handler, two people who can equal a Number 1 in power and a Number 2 equivalent.
Alicia and Beth (Numbers 1 and 2) are an experimental type of Warrior that is meant to fight as an Awakened Being. How strong they are compared to conventional Warriors is never mentioned but as Awakened Beings, their power is head and shoulders above what a conventional Warrior can achieve without Awakening herself.
Galatea (Number 3) is the strongest conventional Warrior. Absent of experiments like Alica and Beth, she is actually a Number 1 in terms of power and it shows.
Ophelia (Number 4) is not only psychotic but incredibly powerful. Like Galatea, she is actually as strong as a Number 2.
Raphaela (Number 5) is as strong as a Number 1 and is probably one of the oldest surviving Warriors still in service.
Actually Alicia and Beth are not ranked 1 and 2 only because they are abyssals. They are ranked one and two because their basic strength is that of number one, even without awakening as shown when fighting Riful. Galatea doesnt have the strength of a number 1, she is way below those two even in their human forms. Still, Miria comment is very accurate because generations of claymore tend to generally have the single digits forming an elite group way above the others. The 5 first are an elite group to the others. And the Number 1 is this to the 4 others. Clare's generation with 3 claymore with a number 1 level and above in the top 5 was really exceptional indeed.
In chapter 50 Rubel makes a comment on how in this land the slavers send the young girls in the East (where the Organization has its headquarter, all but implying that the Organization itself has a role in slave trading) and the boys in the North. Now, why would the Organization, or anyone, want to send the boys to the North? Well, obviously, the Organization is sending the boys in the North so that they can turn them into Awakened beings. In chapter 112 we find out that the Organization has a facility hidden in the Northern mountains where men are brought to be transformed into half-Yoma creatures, like the Claymores, but unlike the Claymores these men aren't trained to be warriors, once transformed they are abandoned where the Organization want them to be and, because they're men, they will soon awaken being unable to control their Yoma Power. The Organization has continued to transform men into half-Yoma with the aim of producing Awakened beings, as men Awaken far too easily, and Rubel's dialogue in that early chapter was foreshadowing this reveal!
Chapter 129: Claymores have their guts held in by a line of stitches. Now think about it. A trainee is going to be constantly needing those stitches redone as they grow, and their going to constantly be popping and stretching. And no wonder Helen and Deneve figured Clare couldn't have had a kid. Just try going through pregnancy with something like that!
As stated above, Dae hypothesized that the Claymore's power derives from their hated towards the Yoma flesh in their bodies. Teresa was the most powerful Number One of all generations of Claymore, and if she ever awakened would make all other Awakened Beings - including the Abyssal Ones and Priscilla - she would make them all look like specks of dusts. Her backstory is that she was sold to the Organization by the people she trusted in the past. If Priscilla's anger and madness turned her into what she is now, just how much rage was boiling up inside Teresa all those years?
Basically, if Teresa had ever Awoken, it likely would have been the end of the world.
The reveal of the Yoma's true nature causes a lot of this. The yoma that "impersonated" Raki's brother in the beginning? That really was his brother!
Also, the yoma that impersonated Clare's brother, the one that raped her and killed her family? That could've been her actual brother as well.
Even after creating the Abyssal Ones and Priscilla, and finalizing the results with the Twins, the Organization still required stronger experiments for the war effort. Just how powerful are the dragons if creating a world-ending abomination isn't enough incentive for a cease-fire with the dragon faction?!
With the revelation in 142 (assuming Dae isn't just talking out of his ass again) that Priscilla ate some of her yoma-infected father's corpse during the month it took for the Organization to find her it now makes sense for Priscilla to be more powerful than just about every other warrior except for Teresa. After all, just how humanwas Priscilla when she started the yoma hybridization process? Though this now raises a few more questions about what the hell was up with Teresa if she was still MAGNITUDES more powerful.
Since Teresa was sold to the Organization and therefore likely didn't have the chance to ingest yoma flesh like Priscilla, how much pure rage must Teresa have had within her, hidden behind that calm façade? As mentioned above, that's Fridge Horror on its own. The Organization is lucky that all Teresa did when she defected was wander off with Clare instead of deciding to crush them utterly. She could have.
When Clare first helped Jean transform back from a fully awakened body to her human body in chapter 47, how the HECK did she avoid her guts falling out of her now untreated and open stomach wound? Although at the time we couldn't see her naked front clearly enough to see what the deformation on a Claymore's body was, when we saw her awakened form we could clearly see a complete lack of stitches running up from her crotch to her throat. So how did that work, did the stitches just vanish while she was transformed and return magically intact when she returned to normal, or did acquiring an awakened body somehow cure her of her unhealing wound?
It has been said that Awakening heals the wound, in fact it's the only thing that does so. So it makes sense that having Awakened once already, Jean wouldn't have a wound anymore.
That is likely the same for all partially awakened Claymores, since they were worried about Clare coming back in that state rather than the state she was in before.
All partially-Awakened Claymores would still have the wound unless their torso was also altered by the partial Awakening, which is not the case with any of the other partially-Awakened Claymores in the series (thus far).
The real Fridge Logic is why Miata still has the wound after Awakening, and didn't need to be stitched up upon returning to human form. Presumably an oversight.
It seems that the wound only disappears if one fully Awakens, if one's body awakens and then manages to go back with Human consciousness intact then the wound stays where it is, and the stitches aren't affected by the transformation either. Both Jean and Miata had their body transformed and came back, both of their wounds didn't heal (we can't be sure in Jean's case but it's likely considering Miata) and their stitches didn't need to be repaired (again, as Miata's case shows). The two cases are coherent with each other but the fact that the stitches aren't affected by body transformation doesn't make really sense, the story seems to be telling us to just accept it.
