Decent little adventure manga. When man-eating monsters called Yoma attack isolated villages, the villagers hire fearsome warriors called Claymores to kill the beasts. The Claymores look like frail young women, but they are the only ones capable of fighting the monsters. Here we follow the journeys and battles of a Claymore named Clare and the young boy who joins her, Raki. This volume does little more than set the scene, explain the Yoma and Claymores, and put Clare through her basic paces. The story gets much more interesting in later volumes, but you need to start here to really understand what is going on later. Not a life-changer, but a decent way to while away and afternoon (or a train ride, as I did).

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I was excited to start reading this manga series. I originally watched the anime series for Claymore. My husband has been reading the manga for a while and kept asking when I was going to read it. This book was an excellent opening to this series, I really enjoyed it. Right now there are 24 volumes in the Claymore series.

This volume follows the first anime episode very closely. It is an excellent introduction to Claire and the demon fighting Claymore. The demons are called Yoma, and in this book we learn about the Claymores role in society and how the Claymore become these powerful demon-fighters.

It is a very engaging world with characters you really care about...and of course some awesome fighting scenes between Claymore wielding women and evil demons.

Yagi does an excellent job of humanizing Claire and making us care about her. This isnt all about kicking Yoma butt (although there is a lot of this). We learn about the sacrifices the Claymore make in their effort to protect humanity and we learn how painful it is for them to leave some of their humanity behind.

The illustration throughout is very well done, I really enjoyed it. Some of the scenes are beautifully detailed. I never had trouble recognizing characters or following the story.

This is a traditional Japanese manga, so you read from back to front and right to left.

Overall I really enjoyed this first installment in the Claymore manga series. Excellent world-building, explosive fight scenes, and characters I actually care about make for a wonderful read. This is highly recommended if you like action-packed dark fantasy manga. I cant wait to see what volume two holds.

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This is your basic monsters vs hero story. Claymore introduces a world where the bad guys (yomas) are monsters and the good guys (Claymores) are actually gals and they are half-monsters as well. It is also a buddy traveling story, introducing the unlikely friendship between a Claymore, Clare, and a young human boy she saves, Raki.

I liked this story. Although the premise seems hackneyed and unoriginal, there is enough here that is done well to keep you interested throughout the story, and there are hints of things to come that may prove to break this story out of the cliched hero vs villain mode. A big plus, the sidekick Raki isn't a useless, whiny excuse for a character, but actually has some backbone to him. Also, I'm looking forward to finding out more about how the Claymores are created and how they differ from the human girls from whom they are created.

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