Year: 2007

Type: Fantasy

Subtype: Half-demon girl warriors protect humanity from regular demons and former half-demons turned super-demons.  (Basically what I mean is there’s lots and lots of demons.)

Primary audience: Fight-scene aficionados, and people who miss Buffy but can do without the cheerful banter.

Tics: None worth mentioning.

Worth watching: Yes.

The secret organization that fuses traumatized demon victims with demon flesh to create an army of demon-fighting super warriors, Claymores, is actually a bit evil.  Such organizations usually are.  The demons are eviller, though, and the super-demons, former Claymores who have turned to the dark side, are the evillest of them all.  This creates for us a nice progression of baddies to introduce gradually throughout the series.  Claymore is a game of “how many times can we up the ante and still keep the fight scenes spectacularly entertaining?”  The answer is: Every time.  Every single time.

The story falls dead along the way, but the fight scenes inflate like the 1920’s Deutschmark, and I mean that in a good way.  There’s really nothing to do but gape at the wheelbarrows.  The violence here is a thing of beauty. It’s like every episode is a season finale of Buffy.  And that’s all I ask from any (mindless revenge-themed demon-fighting) series.