Claymore

クレイモア

7.7(347,116)

MAL Score

Ranked #1346

Popularity #326

Action
Adventure
Fantasy
Gore

Episodes: 26
Duration: 23 min per ep
Aired: Apr 4, 2007 to Sep 26, 2007
Status: Finished Airing

Synopsis

Shapeshifting, flesh-eating demons called youma descend on Raki’s village, and a solitary silver-eyed swordswoman arrives in their wake. She is a Claymore—an engineered half-human, half-youma warrior created to hunt these creatures. After Raki’s family is slain, she spares his life, but his survival comes at a cost: he’s cast out from his home with nowhere to return.

Raki tracks down the warrior, Clare, and chooses to travel beside her as she moves from town to town, cutting down youma wherever they appear. Along the road, the truth behind Clare’s organization and the other Claymores gradually surfaces, while each battle draws her closer to the youma she has pursued for vengeance since the day she became a Claymore.

Otaku Consensus

Claymore remains one of Madhouse’s most durable mid-2000s dark fantasy adaptations: Hiroyuki Tanaka’s stern direction, Yasuko Kobayashi’s clean escalation, and the widely admired Teresa flashback arc give its swordplay more tragic weight than a standard monster-hunting series. Critics and fans consistently praise the fights, character development, and severe medieval atmosphere, while the recurring complaint is that the anime-original endgame compresses and redirects the source material in a way that feels less satisfying than the build-up.

Why You Should Watch

Watch Claymore if you want grim medieval sword action with the emotional temperature of Berserk, the monster taxonomy of dark fantasy RPGs, and a cast dominated by adult women rather than teenage power-fantasy leads. Its appeal is not just gore; it is the way battles are treated as controlled risk management, with bodies, ranks, instincts, and discipline all under pressure. Madhouse’s adaptation favors bleak terrain, pale color design, and sharp silhouettes, so the violence feels cold rather than flashy. It also scratches an early Attack on Titan itch: soldiers facing grotesque predators, an organization with hidden rules, and a constant sense that survival has a bureaucratic cost. If you want fantasy without mascot comedy, school detours, or softening romance beats, Claymore still hits hard.

Key Characters

C
Clare
Clare’s fan appeal comes from the contrast between almost surgical restraint and sudden brutality, making her a kuudere lead whose quietness feels tactical rather than decorative.
R
Raki
Raki functions as the human-scale pressure point of the series, a vulnerable companion whose presence slows the carnage long enough to reveal what the warriors have been trained to suppress.

What Makes It Stand Out

1
Madhouse’s 26-episode 2007 production leans into a desaturated medieval look, with Manabu Otsuzuki’s art direction, Nobuhito Sue’s art design, and Harue Oono’s color design giving the world a cold, weathered texture rather than bright adventure-fantasy polish.
2
The series is structurally built around escalation: early travel-and-extermination episodes gradually give way to organization politics, rank dynamics, and identity-based horror, which is why reviews often single out the development as more intriguing than the simple action hook suggests.
3
Its action is swordplay first and spectacle second; the fights are praised because they are staged around speed, spacing, bodily risk, and tactical restraint rather than long-form tournament choreography.
4
Claymore’s cast profile is unusually specific for a 2007 action anime: AniList classifies it as Female Protagonist at 93%, Primarily Female Cast at 91%, and Primarily Adult Cast at 85%, placing it far from the teen-boy ensemble template common to battle fantasy.
5
The mature-content reputation is earned, not decorative: AniList tags it Gore at 88% and Body Horror at 73%, and contemporary review coverage explicitly warned viewers that it is not a light hack-and-slash show.

Fun Facts & Trivia

Fun fact 1: Claymore aired from April 4 to September 26, 2007, finishing as a 26-episode Madhouse adaptation of Norihiro Yagi’s manga rather than an open-ended long-runner.
Fun fact 2: The main production spine was led by director Hiroyuki Tanaka and series composer Yasuko Kobayashi, with Yuuzou Satou credited as storyboard supervisor and Takahiro Umehara handling character design.
Fun fact 3: Its database footprint shows strong long-tail visibility: on MyAnimeList it holds a 7.73 score from 347,116 votes, with popularity at #326 even though its rank sits lower at #1346.
Fun fact 4: AniList’s tag spread captures why the show still has a distinct identity: Medieval is marked at 100%, Swordplay at 98%, Tragedy at 91%, Demons at 87%, and Monster Girl at 79%.
Fun fact 5: The reception split is unusually consistent across fan commentary and reviews: the battles, premise, and character growth are the sell, while viewers familiar with the manga most often criticize the anime’s final stretch for diverging from the source.