YMMV / Claymore

• Awesome Music:
  • The opening Raison d'être. Bonus points for being sung by the same band that brought you "The World".
  • The ending theme, "Danzai no Hana ~Guilty Sky~" is just all kinds of awesome. The singer has such a powerful voice and the music mixes classical and rock seamlessly.
• Complete Monster:
  • Rimuto is the head of the Organization and the one responsible for its inhumane activities. Rimuto has orphans taken by the Organization, turning the boys into inhuman monsters, either Yoma or Awakened Beings, while the girls are turned into Claymores. The lifespans of Claymores are typically short, either dying or becoming monsters themselves to perpetuate the cycle, with Rimuto having countless killed to keep their operations going. Utterly unconcerned with his test subjects, Rimuto even states warriors who die quicker are best, and when villages refuse to pay the fees, Yoma are sent to wipe them out completely. Throughout the course of the series, Rimuto keeps his warriors as disposable cannon fodder, conducting awful experiments on innocents while being wholly unconcerned with all who die in the crossfire.
  • Roxanne of Love and Hate, a former "Number One" of the Organization, differs from most other villains in the series by being an outright cruel and violent sadist. Initially a low-ranking warrior, Roxanne rose up the ranks by seducing/befriending and eventually murdering stronger warriors after stealing their techniques. Eventually, she set her sights on the existing Number One Cassandra, but when she saw Cassandra's technique, she decided it was unsightly and gave Cassandra the hated moniker "Dust-Eater." She later set up Cassandra's only friend to die a torturous death at the hands of an Awakened Being and mocked Cassandra by saying that her friend had looked as if she had "enjoyed" being played with by the monster, so interfering wouldn't have been right. Cassandra snapped and attacked her. Roxanne used the other 45 warriors as shields, relishing in their fear of Cassandra and cackling at how hideous Cassandra's abilities were. When Cassandra finally reached Roxanne, Roxanne gleefully impaled her head with the pommel of her sword, a technique stolen from her first victim.
• Crack Pairing: For some reason, Shippers have taken a sudden liking to pairing Galatea and Miria. Even though they've barely spoken to each other in the manga and never in the anime.
• Ending Fatigue: People are getting rather tired of the final fight with Priscilla, given how it amounts to countless resurrections and defeats taking turns with each other.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Teresa only had a few scenes, but quickly became very beloved by the fans.
  • Isley's a bit more of a literal example, but his cool looks (both Awakened and human forms), awesome fighting style, and overall good treatment of Raki won him quite a lot of fans, especially after his sympathetic death and backstory.
  • Riful and Dauf's interesting relationship and strength made them a Love to Hate due to fans.
• Fan Nickname:
  • "The Seven Ghosts" (the seven surviving Claymores of the Northern Campaign) and while not necessarily a nickname, Ophelia is often referred to with the phrase "Nobody out-crazies Ophelia!" (originally from The Simpsons).
  • Some people call Raphaela 'Raph' and Priscilla 'Prissy', which seems natural. For some reason, some call the as of yet unnamed Eldritch Abomination that results of the fusion of Raphaela and Luciela 'Mary' and, by extension the mini-Eldritch Abominations that it offshoots are the Mini-Marys or M+ M's if you want. Another, more logical name for same Eldritch Abomination is Raciella Luciela + Raphaela.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Along with the aforementioned Berserk and Übel Blatt, the series is huge in France. Seems the nation has a love of dark fantasy manga.
• Growing the Beard: The flashback arc depicting the past of Clare with Teresa is generally considered the point where the series becomes truly memorable. Reasons include the introduction of fan-favorite Teresa and her tender relationship with a young Clare, the debut of Big Bad Priscilla and the reveal of the Awakaned Beings when Priscilla kills Teresa and awakens. From that point on, the Yoma end up becoming mere nuisances and the Awakened Beings take the mantle as the main threats of the story, with battles with more stakes and dangers than the ones before.
• Les Yay: So much that it gets its own page.
• Love to Hate: Roxanne provoked more discussion than the vast majority of the post-Time Skip cast and rapidly endeared herself to the Claymore fandom, if only by being utterly loathsome.
• Magnificent Bastard: Isley, the Silver King, was the first of the Creatures of the Abyss, the first Number 1 of the first and only male generation of Claymores. Upon meeting the powerful Priscilla and learning her power, Isley submits to her, intending on manipulating her to bring the world under his control. Bringing about a war in the North with his former comrades now as Awakened Beings, Isley splits his forces in half to sacrifice them against another Abyssal One and the Claymore Organization while he heads South to defeat the third Abyssal One and take her lands. Bonding with heroine Clare's former companion Raki, Isley truly grows to love him and Priscilla as family and even sends them away when the monstrous Abyssal Feeders come for him to save their lives. Even post-mortem, we learn Isley only ever Awakened to begin with voluntarily to stop his former comrades and instilled Raki with a plan to help stop Priscilla if she became a monster, a plan that Raki manages to pull off thanks to his teachings.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • * Ahem* , Nobody out-crazies Ophelia!
  • SUPERB!
  • Chronos has reached fandom familiarity as being referred to as "Jesus."
  • THE QUEEN IS BACK! ^{Explanation (SPOILERS)} As of chapter 149, it's revealed that Teresa was lying dormant inside of Clare the entire time, and she seems to be making a comeback through her now...
  • Claymore: Sisterhood ^Explanation Since the manga's conclusion, fans have held out hope for an anime remake that adapts the whole story from beginning to end. Due to the success of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, some of these fans jokingly suggest the hypothetical Claymore remake be subtitled "Sisterhood" or use "Claymore: Sisterhood" as a shorthand.
• Moe: Young Clare, pre-Awakening Priscilla, and the Organization's trainees. Awakened Priscilla has some Moe traits in her human form (wandering around naked, randomly glomping Raki), but don't let them fool you.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • One could rationalize the Organization's actions as those of a collective Knight Templar Well-Intentioned Extremist (lost sight of the goals, may need to go down, but at least thinking they serve some use), then it's revealed they're the ones creating the Yoma.
  • Roxanne's habit of Mega Manning the signature techniques of more powerful Claymores then killing her teachers was born of a twisted internal logic that makes putting her down pretty much mandatory, but watching an Awakened Being rape and torture a far weaker Claymore to death without lifting a finger to help moved her from the "Cut her head off now please." category to the "Will someone invent the wood chipper so she can be fed to it feet first?" category in the eyes of many readers.
• Nausea Fuel:
  • A lot of the scenes where awakened beings are suggestively impaling the claymores are very Squicky, especially in the anime.
  • Ophelia's molestation of Clare. EW.
• Nightmare Retardant: While most of the Yoma look like something straight out of Lovecraft's notebook, there are a few that are... rather silly looking...◊
• Paranoia Fuel: Are you sure that your family members are really them and not a yoma in disguise after it ate them?
• Periphery Demographic: Claymore seems to get a dosage of female fan attention for a Shonen series, likely because of the cast consisting of a diverse variety of Action Girls.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Post-Time Skip, Raki attracts a lot less hate from fans of the series, because now he's capable of actually taking an active role in the plot.
• Squick: Clare kissing Raki full on the mouth before leaving him to go fight Ophelia. While Claymores have a Vague Age and Clare is probably only a few years older than Raki at most, at this point in the story she still looks closer to an adult woman while he's a child.
• Stoic Woobie: Raftela. Besides being created to kill other Claymores, she's kept away from them altogether, meaning she wasn't even allowed to bond with anyone like the Ghosts or Anastasia and Nike did. And she decides to use what's left of her life for their sake anyway.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character/They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Roxanne in a way was Clare's Evil Counterpart, so some people feel this way about them never meeting each other in the story.
• Too Cool to Live:
  • Teresa, Jean, Flora, possibly Ilena. Miria would have counted had she not been spared by the other Claymores. The author admitted that if Teresa had survived or were somehow revived, he would have to rewrite the whole story.
  • On the villain side, the original Abyssal Ones, and Chronos and Octavia, as of chapter 149. Yes, they would have had to die eventually but still...
• The Woobie: By this point, it is easier to count the characters who are not Woobies on hand. The men of the organization, bandits, Roxanne, and most male Awakened Beings. Everyone else needs a hug, a glass of milk and a plate of cookies.
  • Cassandra, a Shrinking Violet who has, by chance, discovered a technique that she loathed but which propelled her to #1 of her generation. The only person who didn't loathe or fear her, the nameless #35, was killed in a disgusting, brutal, and completely senseless manner due to a certain Manipulative Bitch's machinations. Then, she was bloodily executed by her fellow Claymores. And on top of that, she was resurrected, brainwashed, sicked on her fellow warriors, and eventually awakened, tricked to fight Priscilla—only to be devoured by her just as the Ghosts seemed to have offed her for good.
• Woobie Species: All the Claymores were orphans who were unwillingly put through painful and life threatening surgery so that they could fight man-eating monsters. Even the strongest ones don't get to live very long.

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