Manga / Claymore

Clare: Elena... She joined the Organization the same time I did. We comforted each other in our darkest hours. When our bodies were transforming and we were wracked with pain, we'd hold each other at night so we could sleep. And... From the time I joined the Organization as a child... She was my only friend.

Raki: Why? But why? If it's so painful, why do you fight the Yoma? If you didn't... If you didn't fight... Elena wouldn't have had to die... And neither would you...

Clare: For us... That is our Reason for Being.

— Claymore, Volume 01, Scene 004, "The Black Card"

On a continent cut off from the outside world, in a medieval-ish civilization of scattered cities and villages, demons called Yoma hide among the humans and prey on them for food. These demons are capable of tearing through armored soldiers, have an insatiable appetite for human entrails, and can disguise themselves perfectly as humans. For these terrorized communities, there is only one source of salvation: pay an exorbitant sum of money to a mysterious group called The Organization, which will send one of its fearsome silver-eyed female warriors to root out the threat.

Nicknamed "Claymores" by the common people after the great swords they wield, these warriors are half-human, half-demon hybrids possessing superhuman strength, speed, and regeneration, as well as senses that can detect demons and demonic energy. They are all adopted as orphans by the Organization and trained after undergoing the painful surgery to implant demon flesh in their bodies, learning to use their demon halves to bring out their most impressive abilities while fighting Yoma. However, a Claymore who releases too much of her demon power at once runs the risk of losing control and turning into something truly monstrous. Human society rejects them as freaks, and their own Organization treats them as expendable pawns by sending them on one dangerous assignment after another until their luck runs out. Desertion from the Organization is punishable by death, as is breaking one of their iron-clad rules: they must not kill a human under any circumstances. There are 47 active Claymores at any given time, on top of numerous trainees and younglings. Each Claymore is assigned a numerical rank based on overall strength and competence.

Our main character is Clare, a stoic and self-sacrificing warrior assigned the number 47. She is the weakest Claymore of her generation because she took on the flesh of a fellow warrior instead of a Yoma, and is therefore only one-quarter demon. During her travels, she takes in a teenage boy named Raki who was cast out by his village after she killed the demon that ate his family. Raki tags along with her as her cook as she goes from village to village plunging into one desperate fight after another, and eventually gets past her emotional defenses enough to earn a place in her heart. However, Clare is caught up in her own quest to get Revenge on the monster that killed her mother-figure. On top of that, she is soon sucked into a vast conflict between the Organization in the East and the supreme demons called the Creatures of the Abyss that rule the North, South, and West, as well as a rebellion by a group of Claymores who want to expose the Organization's dark secrets. What ensues is a story of sacrifice, survival, True Companions, and finding something Worth Living For.

Claymore (クレイモア Kureimoa) is a Dark Fantasy shonen manga by Norihiro Yagi, who wanted to try drawing a more serious story after finishing his debut manga, the high school delinquent parody Angel Densetsu. Stylistically it takes inspiration from the generation of action manga that Yagi read as a youth including Fist of the North Star and Space Adventure Cobra. He planned the plot loosely so that he could let it develop naturally and the tale grew with the telling, beginning publication in May 2001 and finishing in October 2014 at 155 chapters. Notable draws for the series include its World of Action Girls, drawn-out and gory fight sequences featuring some really hideous demons, and its exploration of what makes someone a human or a monster. Madhouse adapted the manga into a 26-episodes anime directed by Hiroyuki Tanaka and written by Yasuko Kobayashi, which aired in Japan from 3 April 2007 to 25 September 2007. It covered the story from volume 1 to the first half of volume 11 (up to chapter 59), staying relatively faithful to the source material until its departure from the manga in its last episodes, which it took in order to give the series a conclusion the manga didn't have at the time.

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Claymore contains examples of:

A-D

• Action Dress Rip: Galatea does one in Rabona, when Clarice and Miata arrive to execute her. After all, nun clothes aren't really adequate for combat. I'm not really sure if the high stockings were always part of the uniform though...
• Absurdly Sharp Blade: The weapons that give the Claymores their name. Miria notes how the blades must have been forged with special materials, and are quite the overkill when used against Yoma, and that's because these swords were originally made to fight the Dragon Descendants.
• Action Girl: It would honestly be easier to list the female characters who aren't. Clarice, Clare back when she was a kid, and... that's about it.
• Affably Evil: Riful and Isley. Possibly Luciela too, for the little that was shown of her.
• The Ageless: It was said that Claymores and Awakened Beings do not age. It appears that the source material for the Claymores, the Asarakam, can simply live for 200 years and pass this off on their 'descendents'. They do not appear to age during this time period.
• Alas, Poor Villain:
  • Pour some wine out for Isley, Riful and Dauf. Pour it twice for Dauf. Anyone who can lose whatever vestige of humanity he had left and still have a sense of purpose deserves that much.
  • Cassandra, presumably because the manga-ka hates his fans.
  • Possibly Hysteria. Right before her death, she seemed genuinely hurt by her perceived betrayal by the organization.
  • In earlier chapters, Ophelia. Despite necessitating her split from Raki and causing her no small amount of terror, Clare can't seem to bring herself to be genuinely angry at the woman at the end of it all.
  • Octavia is beheaded, and lives long enough to watch in horror as her body is devoured.
• Alas, Poor Yorick: Clare cradles Teresa's head to her after Priscilla and Teresa's fight in the beginning of the series. To make it better, she takes the head with her and asks Rubel to put Teresa's flesh inside her.
• Alien Blood: In the anime, Youma have Royal Purple blood.
• Always Chaotic Evil: The youma. Eating people is their only reason to live. Subverted. They are just humans who became the unfortunate victims of horrific mindless parasites that mutate them and drive them insane with a hunger that only human entrails can satisfy.
• Amazon Brigade: The Claymores themselves. First-generation Claymores were male, but it was soon discovered that men are much more prone to becoming Awakened Beings than women.
• Ancient Conspiracy: In the continent Claymore takes place the Yoma have preyed on Humans since ancient times, only recently the Organization managed to create warriors able to fight the Yoma and protect the Humans. Except that these are all lies. The Organization was the one who created the Yoma, made up the story that Yoma always existed and kept all of this carefully hidden from both the people and the Claymores. The warriors who ended up knowing too much were soon sent to their deaths in a Suicide Mission. The reason for the Organization to do this is that they work for a Human nation in a faraway continent, the mainland, that is locked in an endless war against another nation which is allied with the superhuman Descendants of Dragons, or Asarakam. In order for the Humans to stand a chance against the Dragon Descendants the Organization was created to develop controllable Awakened beings, as the normal Awakened beings used in the war were savage and hungry for Human entrails, so the Organization took over the Island Claymore is set in and made so that the very existence of the mainland stayed a secret. The island is currently used as a giant research lab and production facility for Awakened beings and the Organization is pretty much responsible for every single bad thing happening in Claymore's Crapsack World.
• And I Must Scream: Implied of the process of becoming a Claymore. Also, of the civilian men forced to become Awakened.
  • All youma are cases of this, being humans infested with puppeteer parasites that give them a Horror Hunger while slowly breaking down their bodies.
  • The captured Descendant of Dragon and Asarakam are also most likely this considering they're still alive when Miria kills them.
• And Then John Was a Zombie: The result of Heroic RRoD. A Claymore that taps too deeply into their powers risks becoming an Awakened Being. A special mention goes to poor, crazy Ophelia, who originally became a Claymore out of hatred for Awakened Beings. Ultimately, her rage and helplessness at her failure to destroy Clare, whom she suspected of being one, leads to her own Awakening. It takes her a while to realize it, too.
• Anime Hair: The Claymores are pretty much all tall, white-blonde women in identical armor, so hairstyles are essential to telling them apart, especially in the battle scenes. They all have unique hairstyles which usually manage to never get ruined no matter what damage they undergo, and important characters have especially distinctive styles. None of the others have anything close to Clare's bob, for instance, so she can always be distinguished. Only Six Faces is not followed, however; when we can see the faces properly, some of the Claymores have very distinctive (and in some cases rather unattractive and non-human) faces.
• Anyone Can Die: Given the situation in the series, this isn't too surprising. Note that Raki and the Seven Ghosts seem to have Contractual Immortality...so far. Everyone else is fair game.
  • The War of the North arc is a perfect example of this, suddenly introducing a large number of characters, building up a few of them character-wise, and then mercilessly killing a large number of them off in the same arc.
  • As of Chapter 147, this apparent Contractual Immortality has been shattered, with Tabitha being the first (and, hopefully, the last — but no one's holding their breath) of the Seven Ghosts to die.
• Appendage Assimilation: Claymores are able to reattach their severed limbs. Ilena later gives Clare her own arm so Clare can replace the one she lost with it.
• Armor Is Useless: Given the absurd power of the Yoma, Claymores don't wear much of anything apart from form-fitting shirts and leggings, and metal boots, wrist guards, and pauldrons. All armor that isn't naturally formed by Yoma is shown to be so fragile it may as well be paper.
• Art Major Physics: The ease in which the Claymores can slice up their opponents varies according to the dramatic flow of the battle.
• Asleep for Days: Happens to Clare twice. First time it was two days after a fight against a particularly strong yoma. The second time she was asleep for a whole week after her first fight against Ophelia.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Awakened Beings, if they recognize any authority at all, usually follow one of the three Abyssal Ones due to them being the most powerful of their kind. Similarly, a Claymore's rank is determined by her combat prowess. However, the members of the Organization, who have authority over the Claymores by virtue of having created them, have not demonstrated any combat abilities so far.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: Strangely, not Miria, but Clare.
• Back-to-Back Badasses: When they are preparing for the final showdown in Pieta.
• Badass Adorable: All of the little trainees count as this. Just look at their cute, clueless faces!
• Badass and Child Duo: Four cases, three of which take a generational approach.
  • First there was Teresa and Clare...
  • ... Where then it becomes Clare and Raki...
  • ... where it then becomes Raki and Priscilla (though it's more of a subversion, since she isn't an actual child).
  • Then there is Clarice and Miata, which turns to be an inversion since it was Miata who was the badass and Clarice took on the role of being the child, at least in the beginning.
• Badass Boast: Of all people Raki busts out a good one when facing the men of the organisation in defence of the Claymore trainees while armed with a blunt training sword:
  Raki: Although it can't cut, its weight is that of a real sword. If it hits you, flesh will be crushed and bones will break. If I hit you in a bad spot it may be worse than getting cut. If you're still gonna come, then come prepared for what awaits you.
• Badass Normal: Raki grows up to be a formidable fighter despite having no superhuman abilities.
• Bad Boss: The Organization arranges for the death of any warrior who outlives their usefulness or starts asking too many questions.
• Baddie Flattery: If someone is flattering you, he can curbstomp you whenever he feels like it.
• Bait-and-Switch Credits: The opening sequence shows Clare fighting Teresa, but this never happens and is, in fact, completely impossible since Clare only became a warrior after Teresa's remains were implanted into her body.
  • Not that she would likely do that if she was able to, given that her love for Teresa borders on the worshipful. It's likely a symbolic image meant to show Clare's struggle to compare to the woman whose flesh and blood she's accepted.
• Barbie Doll Anatomy: Sometimes averted in the manga, where nipples are shown uncensored.
• Battle Aura: Claymores and Yoma both emit an energy aura called Youki, which represents the release of demonic power. Invisible to humans, it can be detected by warriors and awakened beings, so that people with a particularly strong "sixth sense" will instinctively avoid stronger Claymores and Yoma. A warrior who tries to tap into a greater percent of their Yoma energy will produce a greater aura.
• Beauty Is Bad: Roxanne is easily the one of the most beautiful Claymores seen. She also eclipses Ophelia in being the most evil.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Averted very much. The heroines frequently lose limbs, can transform into hideous, monstrous forms when using larger extents of their power and all have a huge, unsettling scar on their front.
• Being Tortured Makes You Evil: Riful's modus operandi, although it doesn't have a huge success rate. And even when it does work, she usually just has Dauf smash the product for not being strong enough.
• Beware the Nice Ones:
  • Raki just loses it when anyone hurts, threatens to hurt, insults, or looks funny at Clare.
  • Hurting Clarice in front of Miata will make her charge at you regardless of what she was doing before.
• BFS: Although they're not all that B as far as BFS's go — they're basically a Scottish Claidheamh da làimh but longer and wider — no ordinary human could use one. And certainly not with one hand. And that skinny hilt would snap under the strain of many of the Implausible Fencing Powers they demonstrate. Though this appears to be somewhat justified, see Thunderbolt Iron entry below.
• Big Bad: The Organization itself is responsible for everything Yoma-related, but Priscilla is the most significant and personal threat.
• Big Brother Is Watching: The Organization certainly seems to have this mentality in mind. They swear to protect the hapless citizens by using their elite warriors to fight the monsters that voraciously hunt them... so long as they pay up and behave themselves. If they don't, accidents will happen. Not to mention that the Organization is the body responsible for creating said monsters that rampage about the continent eating people. In fact, if a village doesn't follow the Organization's demands, what does the Organization send to destroys the village? MONSTERS. And the organization is always keeping tabs on their warriors, in order to keep them in line.
• Big Damn Kiss: The kiss between Clare and Raki is an emotional and dramatic moment which covers almost two whole pages of the manga.
• Bio-Augmentation: Claymores are created by having the flesh of Youma, or, as in Clare's case, a fallen Claymore, implanted into their bodies. The resulting scar which doesn't ever properly close and is barely held in place by thick stitching is gruesome enough to scare away an entire horde of rapists. Abyss Feeders are created in a similar way, but the flesh of an Awakened Being is used instead. The results are even more horrifying.
  • The Youma themselves are created by infesting humans with parasites born from the flesh of the Descendants of Dragons.
• Bishōnen Line: While awakening turns most Claymores into an Eldritch Abomination, the most powerful Claymore awakening simply took the form of a woman with two pairs of wings. Which woman? Teresa.
• Black Spot: Inverted with the black card, which is sent to by a Claymore who is on the brink of awakening to the Claymore of her choosing who she wants to be killed by.
• Blade Brake: As the series is all about fast-paced combat with BFSs you can expect this trope to show up regularly, possibly with the first example happening during Clare's encounter with the Yoma of Rabona.
• Blade Run: the first one is a classical blade run executed by Teresa, the second one is a tongue run done by Claire
• Blood from the Mouth: Almost every character will suffer from this at some point in the story, and it's somewhat understandable considering that they will get repeatedly slashed and stabbed from side to side through the entirety of the series. It's rarely a sign of imminent death though, thanks to the Claymores' innate Healing Factor.
• Blood Knight: Ophelia lives to hunt Awakened Beings. One wonders why Organization even bothers assigning number 4, given their track record.
• Bloodless Carnage: Downplayed. Limbs get severed cleanly and neatly without gushes of blood, for instance. Occasionally averted, such as Ilena walking through a Rain of Blood during her introduction.
• Bloodier and Gorier: For the anime, which completely averts Bloodless Carnage. At least every episode has some form of insane carnage. Example: the segment introducing the Black-and-White Morality Claymore showed a alley riddled with blood. The other attending Claymore are shocked by the amount of Yoma and blood present.
• Body-Count Competition: Sophia and Noel were first seen competing to kill more enemies than each other.
• Body Horror: Many youma undergo horrifying anatomical transformations, doubly so for Awakened Ones and very much so for Abyssal Ones. But Cassandra probably romps home with the prize: she takes the form of a giant, naked female body lying on it back with its legs spread and her own human-sized naked torso emerging from the upper chest, supported by a mass of tendrils with 3 huge tentacles tipped with monstrous versions of her head sprouting from the top which she uses to devour her enemies. Brr...
  • Also the Abyssal Feeders and Raciella.
  • Whatever happened to Dae, it left him with a face that would make Two-Face jealous.
  • Every single Claymore since the reveal of their "scar" in chapter 129
  • And with the final form Priscilla obtains during the final battle with Teresa, as she completely loses control of her regenerative abilities and random limbs, breasts, butts, and entire body parts spontaneously and violently sprout out from her body, we can say that this series wanted to go out with a bang on this.
• Break the Cutie: Claymores in general tend to have tragic backstories, but Clare gets it particularly badly. Priscilla has set the groundwork for the entire plot. "I killed my daddy while he ate my brother's innards..." Brrr.
• Breaking the Fellowship: The seven survivors of the Northern Campaign were sent on their separate ways by Miria so they could finish any unfinished business they might have before the battle against the Organization.
• Breaking Speech: Riful tries this on Jean. With her usual Affably Evil demeanor she tries to convince a tortured and mentally weakened Jean to give up her Humanity and Awaken, according to Riful it is unnatural and illogical that Claymores choose to protect and die for the Humans, a species that is different from their own and that only despise them. Claymores are monsters and shouldn't care about the fate of a different species. Jean however intends to stay loyal to her Human origins.
• Bring My Brown Pants: Audrey wets herself with terror when Riful traps her and is about to start torturing her, largely because she's in shock from the realization of exactly how powerful Riful really is.
• Broken Angel: The two dragons imprisoned by the Organization who harvested their flesh to create the youma. Until Miria finishes them off.
• Brought Down to Normal: The Claymores have pills that have this effect. They suppress their yoki and conceal their silver eyes so they can pass as regular humans and avoid detection at the cost of greatly reduced combat strength.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Clare vividly remembers the moment of Teresa's death by Priscilla's sword. Priscilla, on the other hand, doesn't even remember Clare, let alone the name of the warrior that she's obsessed with.
• By Wall That Is Holey: A variant occurs when the giant Dauf tries to bring down his hands on Galatea, but fortunately for her and unfortunately for him she's standing right where his hands are cupped. It's explained she used her yoki bending powers to open his fingers, but the expression on Dauf's face is still pretty priceless.
• Call-Back: Miria realizes that Hysteria's Awakened form takes the same principle that Clare used to beat Rigald.
• The Cavalry: The end of chapter 121 when the rest of the Seven Ghosts return for Miria.
• Caught the Heart on His Sleeve: Young Clare does this to Teresa. Teresa does NOT appreciate it. At least not at first.
• Chain Mail Bikini: Downplayed. Claymore armor isn't as outrageously skin-showing as in some fantasy works, but most of their clothing is just form-fitting fabric which exposes the collarbone for Fanservice, and the only solid armor plates they wear are on their hands (gauntlets), shoulders (pauldrons), hips (tassets), calves (greaves), and feet (sabatons), which leaves their all-important torsos and heads unprotected by any kind of cuirass or helmet. It's unclear what purpose their armor serves other than decoration since the minor but not major body parts are covered, the armor rarely stops monster attacks, and Claymores rely more on dodging and regeneration to stay alive anyway. Interestingly, some Claymores such as Helena and Jean have modified armor for their stretch attacks.
• Changed My Mind, Kid: Despite being on the far side of the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism for shonen, this happens more often than one would think.
• Charge-into-Combat Cut: Quite commonly used to build drama and to avoid long fighting scenes. (Yes, you heard that right: a Shōnen manga avoiding fighting scenes.)
• Charles Atlas Superpower: One Claymore mentions that it is entirely possible for humans to become strong and talented enough to defeat bog-standard yoma in open combat (i.e. Raki. The problem is, all the combat prowess in the world doesn't help them identify yoma, hence the need for Claymores. Well, that and the Awakened Beings, which no human stands a chance in hell against.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: Miria, lampshaded by Deneve. Not that she really disapproves, she just wishes Miria wouldn't run off by herself.
• City in a Bottle: The series is set on an isolated island and there seems to be no other lands where humans or civilization exist. It is then revealed that the Organization is the one keeping the island isolated as they don't want anyone to know of their true origins. The Organization hails from the Mainland, a massive continent where two nations are waging endless war against each others, the Organization serves and works for one of these nations.
• Clean Cut: The higher-ranked Claymores are so strong that they can easily cut through stone.
• Clothing Damage: Used to add realism more than Fanservice.
• Cluster F-Bomb:
  • Seen especially in the chapters featuring Cassandra and Roxanne.
    Cassandra: "You, who tastes worse than shit, can keep eating shit forever until you turn into shit yourself."
  • Another example from the anime adaptation, where Ophelia just lays down "fuck you" after "fuck you" after "fuck you" when she has her Superpower Meltdown. Unusual in that the anime tended to stay away from the harsher profane words.
• Combat Pragmatist: Almost everyone in the series have no hesitation to fight four on one, strike without warning or play dirty. The only exceptions among the Claymores are a sadist who wanted to play with her victims and a rookie who is berated for being Too Dumb to Live.
  • The latter gets better. That is not as good as it might sound, though.
• Combat Commentator: Clare in the first battle with an awakened one, Riful in the second. Both are justified : Clare and her companions aren't in condition to fight for the first battle, and Riful is just enjoying the spectacle with someone else.
• Combat Tentacles: Awakened Beings love these.
• Competence Zone: Averted. The most powerful Claymores are sometimes very young prodigies who were just certified, sometimes older veterans and sometimes something in between. Even if the Claymores look like they're all relatively young and around the same age their physical appearance can easily misguide, Claymores in fact do not show signs of aging and thus even if they look like twenty-something women they may actually be veterans with decades of activity on their shoulders. Case in point: Rafaela is revealed to be much older than Teresa, making her the oldest Claymore alive, and you would never be able to tell just by looking at her.
• Contract on the Hitman: Teresa. She isn't quite a hitman per se, since her assignments are only hits on Youma, but that's basically the same thing.
• Contrived Coincidence: After the War in the North Campaign and the 7 year Time Skip, the seven survivors out of 24 set out south to finally get their revenge and then run headlong into Riful of the West, one of the Big Bads almost immediatly.
• Cooldown Hug:
  • Clare does a magical version of this to Jean to prevent her from completely awakening; specifically, she synchronizes her Yoma power with Jean's. Jean returns the favor at the end of the Northern Arc.
  • Raki also does a more mundane Cooldown Hug to Clare for the same purposes
• The Corruptible: Just about all Claymores are at risk of this, especially the males back in their heyday.
• The Corruption: And the warriors become The Corruptible while undergoing the corruption, which is the very process that turns them into Claymores. In order to halt their seduction to their Superpowered Evil Side, the warriors must harness their Heroic Willpower in order to pull themselves back.
• Crapsack World: Such a crummy world to live in that it's almost always cloudy outside.
• Creature-Hunter Organization: The titular warriors are genetically engineered female supersoldiers designed to fight demons known as "yoma" and their evolved forms, giant monsters called Awakened Beings. The procedure to become a Claymore gives the user enhanced strength, speed, and abilities, but at great cost. This all turns out to be a front, as the Organization is actually breeding monsters in order to fight dragons.
• Creepy Cathedral: One of Clare's earlier missions took place in the cathedral in the holy city of Rabona, where a rash of murders had been going on inside of it due to yoma sneak-in. It's made even more creepy in that the yoma was taking the form of a corpse in one of the sarcophagi.
• Creepy Child: Riful, who's actually Really 700 Years Old and quite deadly. Also Priscilla, who may have regressed into the mindset of a child and looks like one, but is actually the most powerful Awakened Being to appear in the series so far, by a VERY large margin. Far less powerful than both of them is Miata, whose tendency to suddenly and seamlessly switch from child-like devotion to her mother-figure to absolute killing machine can be just as, if not more, unsettling.
• Creepy Monotone: Clare, though it's more of a Badass Monotone, considering her lack of emotions comes from stoicism.
• Creepy Twins: Alicia and Beth, the Organization's ultimate Tyke Bombs, are an adult example. No personality, one mind, one Awakens and the other doesn't, allowing them to retain their "humanity". That is until Priscilla starts killing the Awakened one and the other actually finds some emotion and Awakens herself to defend her sister, giving up any chance at returning to human in the process. It doesn't help.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Often. They will haunt you.
• Crystal Dragon Jesus: Though the faith has yet to be given a name and it appears to be polytheistic, there is a dominate religious order in the world of Claymore that takes elements from Catholicism.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Both Priscilla and Teresa are exceptionally fond of doing this to everyone they fight.
• Curiosity Killed the Cast: Helen and Deneve should not have ever have tried to investigate Isley in that town, though they survived.
• Dark Fantasy: Monsters running around massacring helpless villagers? Check. Said villagers are seldom a superstitious, bigoted bunch who has no problem discriminating their saviors and banishing those who had their relatives eaten by Yoma? Check. Extremely short live expectancy? Check. Slave trade? Check. Child abuse? Check it twice! A never ending war raging on the Mainland between power hungry nations? Check. A corrupt Organization who's lying to both the population and its warriors to keep their Ancient Conspiracy and experimentation on humans going on? Check! It doesn't quite reach Berserk-levels of Dark, but Claymore definitely falls within this category.
• Dark Action Girl: Ophelia, Riful, Priscilla, Luciela, Agatha and Roxanne.
• Deadly Hug: How Raphaela killed Luciela (though the latter isn't exactly dead).
• Deadly Upgrade: Well, not necessarily "deadly", but why don't you try grafting the flesh of a bloodthirsty monster into your body and let us know how that worked out for you?
• Death of a Thousand Cuts: Isley vs. the Abyss Feeders ends with them gradually wearing him down and eating him alive.
• Death Faked for You: Epically done for Miria by the other Claymores when she goes against the Organization.
• Death Glare : Yeah, I just got monster blood all over your clothes. Got a problem with that? No? That's what I thought.
• Decapitation Presentation: This is Limt's ultimate fate after that he is killed by Miria in the rebellion.
  • Also, Cassandra brings the severed head of an Awakened being with her when she goes demanding answers to Roxanne.
• Detect Evil: The main reason of the creation of Claymore is that they are the only one able to sense the Youma.
• Determinator: Mainly Clare, although Jean, Deneve (Not that we're forgetting the rest of the Seven Ghosts or anything, but ripping off your own arm to stop yourself from getting infected is kind of hard to top), Raphaela and Teresa should all count under this trope. At least...
• Diabolus ex Nihilo: After being torn in half, Riful's legs stumble into the middle of the final battle and suddenly birth an absurdly powerful being that transcends the abyssal ones from its wound, which then fights Priscilla on more or less even footing. This is NEVER EXPLAINED.
• Diagonal Cut: All over the place in both the Manga and the Anime. In a series where almost every named character has superhuman strength and speed and fights either with huge swords or ridiculously sharp claws this is to be expected.
• Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: Clare puts a sword through Riful's face. Riful takes it like getting swatted with a newspaper.
• Disc-One Final Boss: First Isley, and more recently the Organization itself.
• The Dog Bites Back: the Rebellion is a very good instance of this, as is Cassandra dealing with Roxanne.
• Doomed Hometown / Ghost Town: The fate of any village that either a) got infested with yoma or, related to "a", b) defied the organization.
• Dramatic High Perching: done by Clare in Pieta, and observed in awe by two towns guards.
• The Dreaded:
  • The Abyssal Ones and Priscilla are feared by the Claymores, most of whom go out of their way to avoid angering them. Bonus point for Priscilla for being able to scare the other dreaded.
  • If you are a Number One Claymore, you are automatically a Dreaded.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: Half of the series' most awesome characters had that happen. Isley gets eaten after having been in a near-constant state of combat for months that we never saw, Alicia and Beth get taken out over the course of a few pages, and, as mentioned above, Riful and Dauf, though Dauf goes out with a bang.
• Dual Wielding: Undine, and later on, Deneve. When you consider that the swords in question are BFSes, it starts sounding over-the-top.

• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Years later, after he is all grown up, Raki happens to return to the village that he was born in and eventually kicked out of. He succeeds in killing yet another yoma that has been terrorizing the villagers, but what do these ingrates do in thanks? Why, talk shit about him of course, even suspecting that Raki is a yoma himself! Raki very effectively shames them into submission afterward.
• Dying as Yourself: See I Cannot Self-Terminate example below.

E-K

• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • Not above and beyond weird, but Claymore did seem to take on a mission of the week approach early on in the story.
  • The Squad sent in to kill Theresa is weirdly small in hindsight. Irene assembles the top 4 warriors of the era (not include Theresa herself) to kill her. However, it's shown that the previous Number 1's that went rogue faced the entire force of Claymores and were often barely defeated. This includes the generation immediately proceeding Theresa, where the Number 1 massacred the other Claymores. It's strange that the Organization would underestimate Theresa that badly compared to other Number 1's.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: When the manga ends, Priscilla gets to die more or less as herself, Teresa disappears after a few final words with Clare, some of the remaining warriors take up residence in Rabona and become nuns, the others decide to finish up the Awakened Being hunts, Rubel is told to piss off and never come back or face the consequences and Clare returns with Raki to return Ilena's arm only to find that she's already mostly grown it back. This comes at the expense of over 150 generations of warriors and an untold number of innocent human beings.
• Earn Your Title: Just about all the Claymores are given a title when they become single digits, sometimes even before that.
  • Teresa of the Faint Smile, because she was so absurdly overpowered that she didn't need a signature attack, and so had only her ever-present faint smile to name her by.
  • Quick Sword Ilena, for her Quick Sword ability.
  • Muscular Sophia, for her strength.
  • Stormwind Noel, for her agility.
  • God-Eye Galatea, because with her sense she can see across absurdly long distances and right into the depths of a person's heart.
  • Alicia and Beth, the Black Ones, as they both wear black suits unlike all the other Claymores.
  • Ophelia has "blood-soaked evil warrior", because of her sadism. Envious of those Claymores who had nicknames based on their unique combat styles, she developed a signature attack of her own to name her by, the Ripple Blade. The name Ophelia of the Ripples didn't really stick, however, since almost nobody who witnessed the technique survived to tell any stories about it.
  • Phantom Miria, known for her ability to Flash Step out of the way right when an enemy strikes so that it's like trying to hit a phantom.
  • Windcutter Flora, for her Windcutter ability.
  • Undine of the Double Swords, because... she uses two swords.
  • It should be noted that, as of now, Clare possesses the signature abilities of Ilena (along with her sword arm), Flora and Teresa, but has not yet earned any nickname for herself. Maybe "Clare of the Many Souls" could only be applied to her if she still belonged to the organization at all. "Patchwork Clare?"
    • As of chapter 131, Clare has also gained Rafaela's fighting style of surrounding herself with a thin film of youki to use as a 360 degree sensor.
  • The new Number 7, Winged Anastasia, who fights while seeming to float in midair.
  • Of the resurrected warriors, we now have Cassandra the Dust Eater and Roxanne of Love and Hate. The former is named due to her fighting style of swaying like a pendulum so that her face touches the ground and the latter due to her tendency of idolizing higher-ranked warriors and copying their fighting styles, and her idols' tendency to "disappear" once she'd mastered their techniques. There's also Hysteria the Elegant.
  • Former warriors includes former number 2's, Agatha of the Fresh Blood or Bloody Agatha and Wild Horse Octavia
  • And, in stark contrast to the badass titles seen before, we now have Europa the Idle.
  • Awakened beings have them too - Silver-eyed King of the North Isley and Silver-eyed Lion King Rigaldo.
• Eat Brain for Memories: According to popular belief, Yoma normally eat human entrails but can also devour a person's brain to absorb their memories and impersonate them. The impersonation is so convincing that a number of ignorant villagers believe that Yoma are contagious and cast out certain characters who had close contact with them. It's later revealed that this is only partially true, as the Yoma are actually parasites that jump to new hosts when their old ones burn out.
• Eldritch Abomination:
  • The fusion between Rafaela and Luciela, once it Awakens. Initially it takes the form of a beautiful-but-grotesque parody of the goddess statues seen throughout the land, firing barrages of organic spears that transform into felid monsters and parasitize whatever they come into contact with. After Priscilla shreds the outer shell, it becomes an amorphous black mass that consumes everything it comes into contact with.
  • The Descendants of Dragons are more this than they are typical fantasy dragons. Their flesh is the true source of the youma (and by extension the Claymores). And unlike the other monsters in the series so far, they were never human.
  • Priscilla, after losing control of her power of re-creation during her showdown with Teresa, mutates into a horrifying, mountain-size pile of guts, organs, and other body parts.
• Emotionless Girl: Claymores are encouraged to repress their human emotions.
• Empathic Environment: The world of Claymore is so crappy to live in, even the sun doesn't wanna pop up around this place most of the time, as the continent is usually overcast with an array of gray and gray-greenish clouds. Pleasant days this continent has.
• Enemy Mine: When heroines are fighting a revived former Number 1 Cassandra in her Abyssal form who arrives to give them aide? The remaining Awakened Beings who came from generations before the current one. It's even Lampshaded with the phrase "The most evil reinforcements."
• Establishing Character Moment: Chapter 18 present us Sophia, Noel, Ilena, and Priscilla.
  • Teresa gets a good one as well. She effortlessly slaughters a Yoma and then proceeds to scare the villagers she saved by splattering blood on them and implying that if they don't pay, the Organization would send yomas to destroy the village. This fully establishes her as The Ace and the Ice Queen.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Surprisingly, the Abyssal Ones. All three of them.
• Everybody's Dead, Dave: The result of the Northern Campaign.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: The main objective of the Organization was to create a controllable Awakened being that could be reliably used against the Dragon people in the Mainland war, to this end they worked on twins like Alicia and Beth fusing their consciousnesses and removing any kind of Human feeling or bond, believing them to be an hindrance and a source of disobedience. The Organization believed that only by suppressing Human emotions it was possible to create powerful creatures and warriors, yet this is proven wrong when Clarice and Miata (with the help of Galatea) manage to perform the same controlled Awakening technique in Rabona thanks not to the crushing indoctrination of the Organization but rather the motherly bond the two had developed and their very Humanity.
• Evil Feels Good: There are no male Claymores, because awakening felt like an orgasm to them. Female Claymores also lose all inhibitions once they awaken, but they can resist the change at least.
  • This becomes a plot point later on when it turns out not only does the Organization make Yoma, they're STILL making male half-human, half-yoma. They let them loose on villages and cities that don't pay for Claymore services anymore.
• Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor: Ophelia and Roxanne, who are both Type 2.
• Evil Knockoff: All of the Organization's experiments were attempts to match the power of the monstrous Asarakam by augmenting humans with Asarakam flesh to create their own monsters.
• Evil Laugh: Roxanne has one of these in a flashback.
• Evil Is Not a Toy: Really, the Organization experimented with and created countless generations of Claymores and Awakened Beings, many of whom have a history of going out of control and killing everyone and they didn't anticipate that it would come back to bite them hard?
  • In particular, the Organization allowed Dae to bring back to life some of the 3 strongest Claymores, only to have it backfire on them horribly. They didn't anticipate the awakenings but all 3 Claymores were rebellious, difficult to control warriors who caused huge massacres before they died. They really should have shut his project down.
• Evil Is Not Well-Lit: The inside of the organization's headquarters looks like a dank wine cellar.
• Evil Versus Evil: Post-time skip the North is a barren wasteland and the rest of the country is becoming a power-struggle free-for-all game of Eviler than Thou one-upmanship between the Organization, Riful, Priscilla, Isley, & Rafaela/Luciela with everyone else caught up in the middle.
  • At one point, the survivors of the Northern campaign encounter an Awakened one fighting Claymores, and a half-serious joke is made about which side they should help.
• Exact Words: Some of the 7 Ghosts were shocked to encounter a young Awakened male. Miria explains that what the Organization said is there are no more male Warriors to awaken, the Organization however has been producing Awakened males who were never Warriors.
• Expy:
  • Clare and Raki / Ikuno and Yuji from Angel Densetsu. When Kitano sleeps during the math lesson we can also see him fighting a yoma with (humanly-manageable version of) a Claymore in his dream.
  • Cynthia bears a certain resemblance to Ryoko as well.
• Exposed to the Elements: Justified by the Claymores being Half Human Hybrids, and when one isn't it's a plot point. Some Claymores go so far as to wear thigh exposing stockings in the far north.
• Face Death with Dignity: Teresa prefers to give Claymores and Awakened Beings dignified deaths where they are fully aware and ready to accept it. She tried to give one to Priscilla and manages it decades later, Cassandra and even felt bad when it seemed that she couldn't get to Rosemary in time.
• Faking the Dead: Done by Ilena, failed once by Clare, and done by seven warriors at Pieta.
• Fallen Hero: Each of the Awakened Ones is one of them. A great moment of fun is to discover that you just slaughtered your former best friend.
• Fantastic Racism: Even though humans depend on Claymores to kill monsters that eat them, they still really despise and fear them - up to the point of banning them from entering certain cities, most famously Rabona.
• Fan Disservice: Most of the nudity in the series, though it's at Take Our Word for It levels when it comes to the scars on the Claymore's bodies from their transformation. For example, we have Miata run away from taking a bath while in the buff, and we see the priest's eyes go wide when he sees the scar. Ophelia's transformation also shows off her breasts very clearly, but considering that she's both psychotic and the rest of her body is a snake's, it loses most of the sexiness pretty fast. The Abyss Feeders from later in the manga are even better examples, seeing as they have beautiful nude bodies, but stitched shut mouths and eyes and are completely insane. Then there is Teresa, who may have been the first woman in history to dissuade a roving pack of rapists by taking off her clothes.
  • Awakened Cassandra takes it up to 11.
  • Deneve's naked torso must have been this to Raki.
  • We see Clare's naked body in 129. We then see her nearly split in half. Same chapter, by the way.
  • When Priscilla loses control of her body generation abilities in the final fight with Teresa, one of the parts she generates is a torso-like lump of flesh that has nothing but breasts—and more than two. Most of these examples overlap with Body Horror anyway, but that Body Horror applied specifically to a disembodied set of secondary sex characteristics is probably one of the biggest examples of Fan Disservice.
• Fanservice: As we said, the Fan Disservice is Take Our Word for It regarding the deformations on the bodies of the Claymores. So they're still beautiful women who regularly suffer extreme Clothing Damage.
• Fantasy Gun Control: The continent is advanced enough to have developed plate armour and have turned monster making into a science. But forget having a gun, the people on the continent don't even have crossbows. Bows do appear, but very briefly, and the main ranged attack of soldiers seems to be throwing their spears.
• Fate Worse than Death: Claymores generally consider Awakening to be this. Which turns out to be entirely relative when being infected by spikes shot by the Eldritch Abomination is show to be far worse. Awakened Beings were at least lucid. The infected were driven by only a desire to destroy and... well, infect.
• Faux Affably Evil: Dae and Roxanne.
• Feminist Fantasy: The series treats its titular female fighters respectfully, focusing on them as proud warriors first and foremost. The story focuses on their friendships, rivalries, and driving goals with a minimal amount of attention paid to romance or fanservice.
• Fictional Currency: Beras.
• Field of Blades: The Pieta graveyard.
• Fighting from the Inside: Happens when Raki's brother Zaki was taken over by a yoma and he tried to resist the yoma from attacking and devouring his brother - seen through the tears in the yoma's eyes - but ultimately fails.

• Fire-Forged Friends: A lot of relationships start this way. Just look at Clare, Miria, Helena, and Deneve and their first mission together.
• Flash Step: Miria's "Phantoms." And Hysteria is even BETTER at it.
  • Teresa, against Priscilla in the climax, seems to pull this off often as well. But Miria notes she's not doing it on purpose—that's just how Teresa dodges by defualt.
• Flawed Prototype: Related to Gone Horribly Wrong below, a lot of warriors who were created for a specific purpose usually end up as these. Special mention goes to Raphaela and moreover Clare since it's been speculated and suggested in the Gecko Ending of the TV series that the organization took Clare in because she would have served as a new experiment of making Claymores from the flesh of other Claymores. Apparently, the organization saw some sort of flaw in Clare and that was probably why she was ranked dead last in the organization. But they seemed to have miscalculated....
  • The entire Male generation of Claymores could said to be this; they were the first generation of warriors, and thus prototypical for the following generations, but all the ones that didn't die awakened because Evil Feels Good.
  • Further examples from the manga:
    • Dae specifically mentions the above example with Clare, who requested to be made a warrior with Teresa's flesh—and this was done in the hope that Teresa's might would somehow be preserved. It didn't work, and as mentioned many times throughout the series, Clare's 1/4 Youma status restricts her abilities in many ways.
    • When Miria invades the Organization alone, she has to fight off the twin trainees with Alicia and Beth's Awakening abilities. However, when one twin loses her cool after Miria cuts the other, one of the organization members note that the twins always do that, and they'll have to break the next set of twins "on a deeper level" to avoid such behavior.
• Following in Their Rescuer's Footsteps: Played With for Clare. She was saved from a Yoma by Teresa and she does become a Claymore herself. However, it's because Teresa was killed by an Awaken Priscilla and she's mostly motivated by vengeance.
• The Force Is Strong with This One: Claymores and Awakened beings can sense each other's presence and the amount of yoki. However, some of the most powerful ones can mask their aura to appear far weaker than they are (Riful) or even completely suppress it so only direct contact with their body will reveal that they are anything other than human (Priscilla). The Claymores have a pill with a similar effect. This is the only reason anyone survived the Northern Campaign.
• Forced to Watch: In episode 8 of the anime, Priscilla, who is in the middle of her Super-Power Meltdown uttered that her father, who was taken over by a yoma, forced young Priscilla to look on as he ate the rest of her family. Given this horrific detail - and at the mention that she was particularly close to her father - it's no wonder Priscilla was too emotionally unstable to be a warrior.
• Four Is Death: Claymores work in fours when participating in group demon-exterminating missions. In addition, when Number 6 (Claymores are ranked by power) lists the top five for her companions to watch out for, the only one to warrant emphasis and additional description is not Number 1 (by definition the strongest) but rather Number 4, who "cares nothing for the lives of her comrades or the lives of humans in general... A woman who lusts for battle and the blood spilled." Noel, the Number 4 of Teresa's generation merely has a pathological rivalry with Number 3 Sophia and a violent temper... as for her known successors, see below.
  • After the Time Skip, this trend continues with the current #4, Miata. A feral child of enormous power, she could easily become #1 if not for her highly unstable nature. She is barely brought under control by providing her with a surrogate mother, but she is capable of terrifying violence — tearing Youma to pieces with her bare hands or continuing to attack a deserter Claymore while a powerful Awakened Being attacks them both.
• From a Single Cell: This is the extent of Priscilla's Healing Factor, so powerful that Dae thinks that it can't even be really called "regeneration" but rather "creation" powered by the great hate presents within Priscilla. Not only Priscilla has been known to have an almost unlimited ability to regenerate any wound, she managed to survive having her whole body shattered into pieces, several times, during the final battle until finally Teresa destroyed Priscilla once and for all by using Ilena's Quicksword to pulverize her completely with one single attack.
  • And now for some Fridge Horror let's consider this: Priscilla's last words reveal that a portion of her human self always remained dormant within her, she tried everything to kill herself. Shoving her sword into herself, fighting Isley of the North, being eaten by the Destroyer, allowing young girls to live so that they may become the Claymore that would one day kill her, nothing worked. At the end Priscilla is begging Teresa for help lamenting that nothing seems able to kill her for good, and she's happy when she learns that Teresa knows how to end her life. Many readers might have asked themselves why she wasn't dead yet at many points of the story, but in truth the first one to ask that question was Priscilla herself.
• From Bad to Worse: It was already pretty bad before, but in Chapters 95 and 96 it turns from simply being "near-impossible" to "worse than the Northern Campaign".
  • Once the series got to the Northern Campaign, it pretty much became "It Got Worse: The Series."
• Full-Frontal Assault:
  • Applies to all the female Awakened Ones who manage to maintain an at least vaguely human-ish form after awakening, such as Priscilla and Ophelia. Especially notable is Agatha, a female Awakened One who basically takes the shape of a beautiful naked woman sitting on top of a body like a giant monstrous flower which she is attached to by the hair. The naked woman is a decoy — her real core is inside the giant body.
  • A heroic variant is Jean, who for the duration of her battle with Clare and Galatea against Dauf is naked under the open cloak Clare loaned her.
• Fusion Dance: Luciela and Raphaela
• Future Spandex: Claymore outfits are this plus light armor; even the new ones after the time skip don't stray far from the original concept.
• Gecko Ending: The anime adaptation stops at the end of the Northern Campaign, giving a rather unsatisfactory ending that leaves much unresolved.
• Ghibli Hills: All things considered, it's truly a lovely continent they live on.
• Ghost Amnesia: Suffered temporarily by Hysteria and Cassandra.
• Ghost Memory: From Rafaela to Clare.
• Glass Cannon: Elite Claymore tend to be this, since they can die if they receive a blow in the wrong place. The most powerful monster of the series can die in one good hit, but is very fast and can One-Hit Kill almost anything.
• Gone Horribly Wrong: The Organization seems to have a track record with having a lot of botched experiments that all ended horribly. The most obvious example would be the awakened beings themselves. Also:
  • Making males into Claymores? Bad idea.
  • Soul-linking between two siblings who aren't twins? An even WORSE idea.
• Gone Horribly Right: The Organization orders their resident Mad Scientist to resurrect powerful Claymores using Priscilla's arm in order to protect the Organization. Dae does but the Claymores almost immediately Awaken, creating new Abyssal Ones. When asked why, Dae responds with a You Didn't Ask.
• Good Thing You Can Heal: Claymores have extremely powerful regenerative abilities, so chances are any battle will results in at least one character losing a limb or getting impaled. Defensive-type Claymores are even better at this, able to regenerate whole body parts in short order.
• Good Wings, Evil Wings: Awakened Beings often grow butterfly or other jagged wings. Priscilla for example gets huge butterfly wings after she Awakens. This is in contrast to Teresa who gets angelic looking wings..
  • Played all over with Hysteria who gets angel wings (and general Angelic motifs) but quickly discards that for a more insect look and dragonfly-ish wings.
• Gorn: Not as bad as some examples out there, but volume seven of the manga in particular seems to have an unhealthy fixation with limbs and the amputation thereof. The amputations are bloodless, however, and in most cases repairable thanks to the Claymores' Healing Factor. The anime adaptation, on the other hand, has blood all over the place.
  • That's in addition to the ludicrous amounts of dismemberment. Quite a few youma aren't killed until they've lost at least one arm.
• Grand Theft Me: Clare did that to Raciella, when she was being devoured by her. And yes, you read that right, Clare managed to take over an Eldritch Abomination to seal up Priscilla.
  • Also revealed to be the Yoma themselves.
• Great Offscreen War: On a nearby continent a giant war between humanity and the Asarakam is apparently being waged
• Grievous Harm with a Body: Parasites in your swordarm? Rip it off and impale that sucker's forehead with it. Deneve, my Juggernaut!
• Grim Up North: The Northern Campaign at Pieta and Isley of the North's stronghold. Oh dear...
• Gutted Like a Fish: All Claymores, past and present, when made into a warrior. And the wound NEVER HEALS.
• Half-Breed Discrimination: Claymores are shunned and feared by Humans because of their half-yoma nature, and Yoma have been known to sometimes disparagingly refer to Claymores as "half-breeds" because of their half-human heritage.
• Half-Human Hybrid: All Claymores are this. They are born Human but becomes half-Yoma when they take into themselves the flesh and blood of the Yomas to become Claymores, for this they are feared by normal Humans and sometimes also referred to as "half-breeds" by other Yomas.
• Hard Work Hardly Works : Deconstructed with Priscilla. She ascends without difficulty to her position, but she is lacking experience, which was fatal when she faced a real challenge.
• Harmful to Minors: Kids in the Claymore-verse have to put up with some immense shit in their childhood if they're unfortunate enough to run into either a youma or the organization itself.
• Healing Factor: For most of the Claymores being stabbed repeatedly in the chest is just an inconvenience, and dismemberment a temporary setback, provided you have a spare limb or two lying around... and then there are the ones that heal well, the Defensive Type Warriors.
• Heel–Face Turn: In a very last minute manner, Isley is revealed to have done one during the Time Skip thanks to Priscilla and Raki. Then he dies.
• Hellish Pupils: Tapping into the Superpowered Evil Side brings these to the fore.
• Hero Killer: The Abyssal Ones are nigh impossible to defeat,
  • Priscilla is this to the Abyssal Ones.
  • And the three resurrected Number Ones, who rather casually mow their way through the better part of an entire generation of warriors.
    • And then, they awakened.
• Heroic Sacrifice: When Miata starts going off the deep-end and begins giving in to her instincts as an Awakened Being, Clarice releases her Yoma energy in order to bring her back; an act that would eventually kill a "colored" warrior like herself. While saying goodbye to her adopted daughter, Clarice's body disintegrates.
• Heroic Willpower: Contrary to the popular belief, it is possible for a Claymore to revert back to her human self when her body fully awakens - but they have to have a helluva lot of willpower to maintain their spirit through it all. It was lampshaded once but deconstructed when Clare faces off against Priscilla for the first time.
  • Priscilla, while a Claymore, exercised an unfortunately small shade of this. Although her willpower wasn't great enough to completely prevent her transformation, Dae theorizes that it was the human heart of Priscilla that "cursed" her Awakened form such that young girls would be "invisible" to her. In other words, recognizing the horrow that would be released, she ensured and entrusted that a future generation of Claymores, like Clare, would rise and potentially kill her Awakened form.
• Hero of Another Story: All previous Claymores and even Awakened Beings, many of whom used to be very powerful and respected Claymores. Many presumably did heroic things before they turned into monsters
  • In particular, Riful and Dauf, whose meeting is shown in a side story. The story ends with a line saying how Dauf and Riful fell in love after much trials and suffering.
• Holy City: The city of Rabona is under the jurisdiction of the Church. Because it is sacred, no Claymores are allowed to enter its walls.
• Hope Spot: Aw man did that Teresa vs. Priscilla fight shut us down...
  • Tabitha appears behind Priscilla, blade drawn, and it's been established that Priscilla's one weakness is that she's unable to accurately track weak Yoma auras in a chaotic battles when much greater ones are about. And guess who is the only one who hasn't yet released her yoki? Sure, we weren't expecting Priscilla to die, but maybe Tabitha could have inflicted a serious, battle-changing wound. Nope. Priscilla slices her into pieces.
    • This is immediately followed by another, crueller Hope Spot when Cynthia and Yuma collect Tabitha's severed body parts — including the lower half of her torso — and place them back together, using their considerable skill to accelerate her healing. Surely, surely, after all of the miraculous healings they've done before (hell, Yuma single-handedly regrew all of Cynthia's limbs once) they'll be able to stave off her death long enough for her to use her yoki to heal herself! ...No. She's a goner.
• Horror Hunger: Favorite food of Yoma and and Awakened beings is pure human entrails. Everything else tastes horrible to them.
• How We Got Here: The first two volumes introduce Clare as a warrior for the Organization and how she picks up Raki. A few chapters into the third volume takes us back years prior and reveals Clare's origins before she became a Claymore.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl:
  • Dauf and Riful, inverted whenever she bothers to fully transform.
  • Also Raki and Priscilla after the time skip.
  • Also Isley and Priscilla, especially in their Awakened forms.
• Hulking Out: Claymore who push themselves often start to bulge and become more muscular. One Claymore in particular is huge and rippling, but it's revealed she's actually a poseur and is using her transformation skill to be that big.
• Human All Along: Turns out all youma are merely unfortunate humans infested by Asarakam-born parasites created by the Organization. The Claymores have been killing humans all along.
• Humanoid Abomination: What humans consider Claymores to be. At one point in the story, Sid went so far as to compare Claymores as nothing more than whores who dirty their bodies. Raki did not take kindly to this comment to Clare...
  • Played straight with Awakened Beings in their human(oid) form, in which they are indistinguishable from their past human selves (unless they use their severely diminished, but still massive, powers), even regaining their natural eye/hair colouring. Priscilla is a borderline example in awakened form also.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: Although humans are not the focus of the story, it's made clear that a lot of them are poor excuses for humanity. Cases in point:
  • The banishing of children who were orphaned as a result of yoma attacks is a common practice in most villages just to save their own hides. In fact, this is how the Organization happens upon most of the girls who will become their warriors.
  • Assuming that yoma don't get to them first, villages will most likely be ransacked by bandits.
    • At one point, Teresa is confronted by a bandit whom she took the hand of, and he decides to settle the score not by killing her, but by trying to rape her. Although she doesn't see this as the worst possible fate and allows him to do so, Teresa can't help but ponder why her kind bothers to sacrifice everything for the sake of humanity.
    • The same bandit returned again when his group decided to pillage the village that Teresea left Clare in. The bandit planned to make little Clare the group's child sex slave. This time, the bandit didn't get to escape with his other hand. Or his life.
• Human Resources: The Organization has standard Asarakam and an awakened Asarakam chained in their dungeon. They then cut bits off of the Asarakam to make Youma and Awakened. The Organization has also taken the human flesh of those who have been infected by the Youma and implanted them into Warriors as an experiment.
• Hypocritical Humor: When 24 Claymores including Undine gather at Pieta, things soon devolve into challenges flying around. Who's the first to complain? Helen, of course: the only troublemaker worse than Undine, and the first one to have drawn her sword, as a way of greeting Clare and a Call-Back to their first interation. Given her posture and face, and Clare's expression, this is almost certainly deliberate on the Wakamoto's part.
• I Am a Humanitarian: Between the yoma and awakened beings, regular humans are at the bottom of the food chain. They especially like eating human guts. And as Isley demonstrates, and maybe Riful and Dauf, being an awakened being isn't equal to being an apex predator.
• I Cannot Self-Terminate: Claymores who over-use their yoma powers and begin to transform into an Awakened Being have to be killed by another Claymore. Those who have sufficient advance notice that their control is slipping send a Black Card with their symbol on it to the individual Claymore they would prefer to take their life; being so chosen is a mark of great respect. Clare and Miria, among others, discover that it is, in fact, possible in many cases to turn back even after the transformation begins.
• If We Get Through This…: A variant happens during the Northern Campaign arc, where after their first battle with the Awakened Beings, the survivors (which remarkably, all twenty-four warriors do) spend the rest of the night conversing with each other and giving each other emotional support and pep talks. Touching though these scenes were, just by saying this, you know what happens the next day.
• I'm a Man; I Can't Help It: Played with. It's commented that Awakening is similar to an orgasm, and female Claymores supposedly have the ability to prevent this better than men. On the other hand, we later learn that the only reason Isley Awakened is because he eventually chose to do so, having resisted it utterly up to that point.
• Immortality Begins at Twenty: It was said that half-yoma warriors grow but do not age.
• Implausible Fencing Powers: A speciality of the Offensive-Type Warriors. These include turning their entire arm into a drill, throwing dozens of slashes in a blink of an eye, or granting their claymores the qualities of a Vibroweapon.
• Important Haircut: In one of the omake chapters, it's shown that Clare cut off her hair to use as a lure during her first battle.
• Improbably Female Cast: Every Claymore is a female, and many of the monsters they fight are technically female too. However, the lack of male Claymores is justified later.
• Inhuman Eye Concealers: When Clare has to enter Rabona on an undercover mission, the Organization provides her with special contact lenses that conceal her silvery eyes from the locals and the city guard.
• Innocent Bystanders: The denizens of the continent whom the Claymores are charged with protecting from the yoma.
• Inspector Javert: During their first battle, Priscilla does this to Teresa, completely unable to understand why "the bad guy" is winning, and then loses it after she is defeated but spared by her.
• Inspirational Insult: After Teresa comes Back from the Dead, she calls Cassandra the Dust Eater, a fellow former number one of her respective generation, out on her letting herself be devoured by Priscilla, who has never risen above the second rank. She proceeds to question whether Cassandra has lost all her pride, until she literally breaks out of Priscilla's body to show just who exactly she was messing with. This proves to be a sound strategy on Teresa's part, serving both to weaken Priscilla considerably and to let Cassandra finally Face Death with Dignity.
• Insult Backfire: Hysteria to Miria:
  Hysteria: What an awful fighting style. It's so disgusting I might throw up.
  Miria: To hear that from you, the warrior with the most elegant technique, is the greatest honor.
• Interface Screw: The new number 10, Raftela, can do this by synching up Yokis with other warriors and blurring their vision and screwing with their depth perception. This isn't entirely useful all by itself, but Raftela has other tricks up her sleeve as well.
• Internal Death Squad: The warriors run a constant risk of Awakening into giant rampaging monsters, so sending warrior teams to kill their Awakened comrades is a normal thing for the Organization. What most warriors don't know, however, is that the Organization also has Number 10 (nominally the 10th strongest warrior of each generation) specifically trained to disable and to kill un-Awakened warriors, in case they turn on the Organization.
• Interplay of Sex and Violence: Commented on by an Awakened Hysteria.
  "Keep it up. A blade moving through the body is extremely stimulating."
• In the End, You Are on Your Own: Deconstructed when Miria decided to take on the organization by herself, and the rest of the team - Deneve in particular - saw this as a betrayal, but nonetheless went to the headquarters to take on the organization as well.
• It Tastes Like Feet: According to Yoma and the Awakened, Claymores taste terrible.Not that this stops a few of the Awakened from om nom-ing a few, anyway.
• I Was Just Passing Through: What the Ghosts inevitably claim whenever they help out other Claymores. Lampshaded in chapter 112 by Dietrich, who tells the other Claymores that the Ghosts actually went pretty far out of their way specifically to help Anastasia's group, yet they will still try to claim that they were just passing through.
• Japanese Spirit: Made explicitly clear during Teresa's Kirk Summation in Chapter 154. Her own raw talent and phenomenal power becomes combined with Clare's heart, forged with pure determination to form a power that dwarfs everything else seen thus far in the setting.
• Kid with the Leash:
  • After the time skip, Raki holds Priscilla's. Subverted, it turns out that Raki was just used by Priscilla.
  • Not exactly a kid, but since Clarice is #47 and Miata is currently #4 with the potential to be ranked higher, not to mention Ax-Crazy, she definitely counts.
• Raphaela uses a crushing embrace to kill her sister, Luciela, after "failing" to keep her from turning into one of the strongest monsters to date. Luciela is so far gone she can't understand why her beloved sister is doing this when she realizes this isn't just the hugging reunion she was hoping for, and the close physical contact enabled an equally heartbroken Raphaela to Fusion Dance with her sister into a monster even worse than Luciela was on her own.
• Kudzu Plot: While most of the main plots threads are nicely resolved, there's a lot of the Organization's history and in particular the possibly centuries long war on the mainland that remains unanswered and shrouded in mystery.

L-R

• Lady of War: Very many Claymores especially since Claymores are required to be The Stoic lest they go berserk and turn into an Awakened One. Teresa, Miria, Flora, Hysteria - the list goes on
• La Résistance: Miria pretty much made this happen by rounding up any claymore, mostly the ones that were causing the organization trouble, and convincing them to join her cause or to at least not let the organization dictate their fate. She first started this trend when she teamed up with Clare, Deneve, and Helen. Eventually, just about every warrior in the organization rebels.
• Large Ham: Every single youma, especially in the English dub. Sometimes it works, sometimes it's just hilarious.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Clarice does this to Miata after the successful defense of Rabona. Knowing that she would die and that Miata could lose her mind to grief, Clarice erases any memory of her from her adopted daughter's mind. A side-effect of this is that it restores Miata's sanity, and she begins speaking normally for the first time afterwards. However, in spite of forgetting who she was, their powerful bond remained, and Miata becomes confused by the tears she's shedding for a mother long gone.
• Leave No Survivors: Isley told Rigald to not allow even a single rat to leave in Pieta
• Left Hanging: The fate of Ilena and whether she survived or not her encounter with Rafaela is not immediately revealed in the Manga and it's left hanging for most of the story. Eventually we find out what happened though, at the end of the very last chapter, that's to say, over one hundred chapters after the event.
• Lensman Arms Race: This turns out to be the entire reason behind the existence of Yoma and Claymores. The Organization's experiments with Yoma and Claymores are attempts to create an army of Super Soldiers for one side in a war. The other side of the war has dragons.
• Leotard of Power / Minidress of Power: Each of the Seven Ghosts wear some variant of this after the time skip in addition to their light armor. Like the organization's uniform, it's hardly played for Fanservice like some other series, but more of an alternative take on medieval dress for warrior women. Ilena also wears this sweet-ass outfit when Clare meets her, granted that she would probably have some problems putting it on with only one arm, but meh.
• Life Energy: Youki.
• Life-or-Limb Decision: In one instance, Deneve didn't hesitate to rip off her own arm when it got infected by previously unseen parasites. Another case is when Clare had to make such decision for Yuma when the Nigh-Invulnerable Dauf got ahold of the latter's leg. Thankfully both of them were defensive warriors and could regenerate lost limbs.
• Little Miss Badass: Riful... and how! Miata has elements of it too, though she's more Ax-Crazy than badass. Not that that anyone's forgetting Priscilla or anything. You know what, if you see a cute little girl in this series just assume she's going to kill something in graphic fashion.
• Loners Are Freaks: Played for a rare laugh in volume 8. When Clare meets with Helen, Miria, and Deneve in the cave in Pieta for their secret meeting, Helen comments on how none of them were followed to that location because they were seen as the weirdos of the organization, so nobody bothered to care where they were going. Funny that.
• Love at First Sight: Dauf for Riful back when they were both claymores.
• Love Goddess: Teresa and Clare, the twin goddesses.
• Lovecraftian Superpower: The Awakened beings.
• Made of Indestructium: The Claymores (swords).
• Magical Bare Footer: While usually wearing armoured boots, the Claymores occasionally go barefooted outside when training or duelling even when the weather is frigid and ground is rocky. This is an indicator of their inhuman toughness, and gets taken up a notch with female Awakened beings such as Riful, Luciela, and Priscilla who are always going barefooted in human form. This is also a nod to those characters' feminity as male Awakened wear boots.
• Magical Eye: Claymores are known as "Silver-Eyed Witches" due to their unsettling eye color. Youma as well as Claymores tapping into their Youma powers have Supernatural Gold Eyes.
• Mama Bear: You really don't want to hurt Clare in front of Teresa. Inverted with Miata. Hurting her "mama" is her Berserk Button.
• Mars Needs Women: A "Venus Needs Men" inversion with Agatha and Cid — she's a lustful tentacle monster who captures Cid and suggests that they have some fun before she rips him apart; he's not interested, and seeing how Agatha kisses, you can understand his decision.
• The Masquerade: Early on the Warriors pretend that Awakened Beings are exceptionally powerful elder Youma. Calling them Voracious Eaters, they all keep the secret that Awakened Ones are the (un)natural end of a Warrior's lifecycle.
• Mass "Oh, Crap!": two memorable instances
  • A more mundane version was seen back in chapter 17, where a band of bandits see their leader (whose "Falcon Sword" technique had previously seemed invincible) effortlessly cut down by a woman who was holding a girl one of them had brutalized in her other arm.
  • Everyone except Dae and Rubel in 120:The resurrected Number Ones are AWAKENING.
• Master Swords Man: Every Warrior in the Organization is this, to the point that many of them are Combat Aestheticist who disrespect fellow Warriors who have ugly fighting techniques. Raki himself is a master swordsman but he got caught in a Mexican Stand Off against a pair of trainees who were holding back, showing that even the trainees are experts.
• Meaningful Name: Just take a guess at what kind of weapon Claymores use.
  • Ophelia's Awakened form is that of a snake; the etymology of "ophidian" means "snake."
  • Riful might be a transliteration of "Riffle," since it turns out her true form is that of a mound of ribbons the size of a mountain.
  • "Hysteria the Elegant". Nope, totally not someone to worry about at all.
  • Roxanne of Love and Hate loves learning special techniques, hates the original users once she surpasses them.
• Medieval European Fantasy: The setting where the whole story take place. Considering the big numbers of full plate armors (which are utterly useless against Yoma by the way) it may be nearer to a Renaissance setting, but we're there.
• Men Are the Expendable Gender: Only civilian men die on screen, female civilians are always saved. Though female Claymore and Awakened Ones die all the time.
  • The anime totally averts this though, as it's clearly shown during the battle in the north that civilian woman are killed on-screen as well.
• Mental World: In Chapter 92, it seems like Rafaela entered Clare's Mental World. Turns out it was the other way around, Clare entered Rafaela's Mental World.
• Million to One Chance: The odds of the Northern Campaign succeeding are defined by Miria and Clare as being zero. They're right. It doesn't succeed. Seven of the warriors survive the Northern Campaign, and that's it.
• Mistaken for Quake: Raki mistakes vibrations caused by fight between Isley and Luciela for an earthquake.
• Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: The Claymores ultimately refuse to kill Miria and instead join the rebellion against the Organization when they see that during the whole previous battle Miria never killed or seriously injured a single Claymore even though she was dominating them, showing far more attention and dedication to her former comrades' life than the Organization ever did with its usual attitude.
• The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body: The transformation from Claymore to Awakened Being is stated as warping the ideals of anyone, so that someone like Isley or Priscilla who despised Yoma are completely different when they turn.
• Mix-and-Match Critters: Clare has a bit of this when she begins to Awaken due to having Irena's right arm
• Monster Lord: The Abyssal Ones are this to the lesser Awakened beings and Yoma. Things change for the worse when said Abyssal ones start actually acting like lords and gather whole armies of Awakened beings to wage war on each others and the Claymores.
• Monster Protection Racket: The Organization is secretly responsible for the creation of the monsters that it demands payment for getting rid of.
• Mook Horror Show: Those bandits messed with Teresa and Clare once too many for their own good.
  • The Yomas who thought it would have been a good idea to attack Miata en masse when she was disarmed most likely felt the same. Miata just tore them apart with her bare hands, murdering Yomas even as they attempted to escape.
• Morality Pet: Clare started off as Teresa's morality pet, Raki started off as Clare's morality pet, and Raki is now Priscilla and (until his death) Isley's morality pet.
• More Expendable Than You: Miria injures and leaves Tabitha in Rabona with Galatea so that she a) won't have to kill a human or her former fellow soldiers and b) so that if it all goes to pot, only Miria will be the one they go after.
• Mouth Stitched Shut: The Abyss Feeders have their mouths and their eyes stitched shut.
• Mundanger: The bandits from the flashback arc were the only Muggles who posed a threat in this series, both in a short term and long term sense since when Teresa killed them, that was the beginning of her end.
• My Kung-Fu Is Stronger Than Yours: This is an action Shonen after all. For much of the story the main character Clare is learning from Claymores stronger than her and trains herself to be able to face Priscilla one day. However this trope is also downplayed, as many battles in Claymore aren't won by the stronger side but rather the one with the better teamwork, the ability to land a special attack at the right time or the smartest strategy, as Miria's battle against Hysteria, both awakened and not, shows.
• My Name Is Not Shazam: Claymores do not actually refer to themselves as such, instead they refer to themselves as "Warriors (of the Organization)". This became a plot point early on as elaborated in Spotting the Thread.
• Nebulous Evil Organisation: The Organization took a level in malevolence when their true intentions were revealed.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Renee chooses to run for her life from Riful rather than take the chance of awakening Rafaela and Luciela, even though it would almost certainly mean her death. Then after she leaves Clare blunders in and wakes them accidentally, unleashing the series' first true Eldritch Abomination. Smooth.
  • Miria's failed attack on the Organization put the humans (civilians and soldiers) in Rabona in danger when the Organization decided to retaliate.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Subverted
  • played straight when Isley let Priscilla go with Raki, he is killed by Abyssal Eaters without her power
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown : Subverted in Miria's falling. It only looks like a mindless hacking of a defenseless warrior whereas it is a way to help the warrior survive.
  • Also, Cassandra.
• No Name Given: Two warriors very important to the narration are conspicuously never named in the story: the small, two-digit Claymore who refuses to strike down Miria and thus basically allows the entire rebellion arc to happen, and Cassandra's friend, whose death pretty much shaped Cassandra's life (and un-life) from there on.
• No One Could Survive That! : Invoked at least thrice.
  • Clare intentionally lets Ophelia's strike dismember her and lets herself fall off the edge of a cliff so that Ophelia will think she's dead. Meanwhile, Clare begins reattaching her severed at the bottom. Unfortunately Ophelia turns up next to her, telling Clare that her deception would have worked if she hadn't tried to save her arm as she fell before mulching the offending limb.
  • The second one succeeds, even on the reader. Miria was hacked by her fellow warrior so that she would be a bloody piece of meat (even the black coat is horrified), but they consciously avoid wounds that would actually kill her, as a reward for not killing them.
  • The third was against Cassandra in the same manner as Miria, but was both averted and technically subverted.
• No Periods, Period: Claymores are physically incapable of having periods or getting pregnant.
• Nothing Is the Same Anymore: The Northern Campaign changed the entire series, with many of the then-current generation of Claymores dying, and the survivors defecting from the Organization and eventually turning against it.
• Not Quite Dead: Miria turns up alive in chapter 113, the gory mangling seen in the aftermath of her attack on The Organization turning out of be deliberately superficial.
• Nothing Personal!: ... Exclaimed the villagers as they unceremoniously shoved the orphan Raki into the desert, making the poor kid fend for himself after his entire family was devoured by yoma. Yeah. Saying that makes everything better!
• Obstructive Code of Conduct: Humans are not supposed to have anything to fear from Claymores. This does not always work out that way in practice.
  • The Organization makes no exceptions when it comes to killing humans—Claymores are not allowed to kill in self-defense or protect innocent people from human criminals. If a Claymore kills any human, no matter the reason, they are marked for death. Teresa breaking the rule to protect Clare and a town from murderous bandits is what sets up the event explained above.
    • Ophelia claims that it could be done — so long as the Claymore wiped out all witnesses, the Organization won't get wind of it (unless the Claymore reported it herself).
• Obviously Evil: From the start, it's clear that the Organisation is extremely sketchy and charges extortionate fees for the Claymore's services. The only surprise is how much worse they are than they initially seem.
• Offhand Backhand: Riful does this to Rachel. with four spikes, which mysteriously become five in a later scene.
• Oh, Crap!: There is a good number of them.
  • Clare when she realizes that she has gone too far and will awaken if not killed.
  • Miria has one when she saw that their opponent is male.
  • Ophelia is very good at provoking them.
  • The normally calm and playfully evil Riful has one in chapter 98, when she senses Priscilla's youki as she casually kills both of the Organisation's strongest fighters, Alicia and Beth in an instant, when just one had nearly annihilated Riful without really trying. "My god.... you've got to be kidding... to have such a thing exist in this world...."
  • Everyone who discovers firsthand how awesomely over-powered Priscilla or Teresa are has this reaction. It's also usually their last reaction.
  • Miria discovering that the Organization has trained new twins.
  • The black coat during the massive defection.
  • Priscilla has one when Raki, an ordinary human that she already curbstomped and left for dead, gets up and shoves his sword right through her neck.
  • Prscilla again when Clare awakens as Teresa.
• Older Than They Look: Because they stop aging in their teens or early 20s, Warriors all look to be similar in age. But even in the 7 Ghosts, individuals come from different generations with Miria being the eldest at Generation 127 and Clare the youngest at Generation 150. At one point, Helen and Deneve wonder why Clare can be so childish at times, then they remember she's the youngest out of all them and had a laugh at that.
• The Omniscient Council of Vagueness: The Organization is periodically shown as a bunch of sinister robed figures in a meeting chamber who comment on the Claymores' progress while cryptically discussing whatever they're plotting at the moment, such as an Uriah Gambit or secret weapon, while giving away as little detail as possible until the author sees fit to reveal it to the audience.
• One-Gender Race: Subverted. The Organization used to make male Claymores, but they found out real quick that that wasn't a good idea...
• One-Handed Zweihänder: Every Claymore does this. Granted, their swords are only moderately large by anime standards, but no normal person could use them like they do. Lampshaded by Clare in the first chapter. You know Raki has really become a badass when he picks and uses one with a single hand during the rebellion against the Organization.
  • Undine's special technique is that she dual-wields them.
• One-Man Army: Or, to be precise, One-Woman Army. High ranking Claymores are repeatedly shown to be able to destroy entire hordes of Yoma with no support and no difficulty whatsoever. Miria even single-handedly incapacitates almost every single active Claymore in existence during her attack on the Organization's headquarters, and Alicia wipes the floor with the half of Isley's army of Awakened being sent to attack the Organization. That's definitely not the kind of girls you may want to mess with!
• One Super, One Power Set: Most Claymores tend to develop their Signature Move early in their careers and continue to use it in more or less the same form for the rest of their lives. Averted entirely by Clare, who continues to pick up new techniques as the series goes on, letting her punch well above her weight despite having at most half the yoki of normal Claymores.
  • Possibly justified, since most warriors with signature techniques are powerful enough to not encounter opponents that would necessitate improvement. In general, the trope is averted by the Seven Ghosts, due to their 7 years' time hiding and training: Miria develops a less youki-based phantom technique, ridding herself of the number-of-uses restriction she had before; Helen learns Jean's drill sword technique, building off of her own extendible arm technique; Deneve adopts Undine's dual-wielding combat style, supplementing her amazing recovery powers; Tabitha gains youki-sensing abilities akin to "God-Eye" Galatea; Cynthia learns the youki-synchronizing technique and develops a healing technique; Yuma gets good at throwing swords like javelins, and many chapters later is also able to learn Cynthia's healing technique; and Clare, as mentioned above, gains a variety of techniques throughout the series. Other than that, however, almost no introduced characters develop their abilities or styles, or adopt new ones.
• One-Winged Angel: Most of the stronger Awakened Ones, especially Abyssal Ones. Technically ALL Awakened Ones, but many of them don't have a human form anymore.
• Only a Flesh Wound: Subverted and played straight, depending on context. When a Claymore gets a leg chopped off, she will, unsurprisingly, fall to the ground and scream in pain while bleeding heavily. When she gets an arm chopped off, she will...have an Oh, Crap! moment and then keep fighting. ^note Makes a bit of sense; Claymores are tough enough to fight with one arm, but you kind of need both legs to run or fight.
• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: Priscilla is rather disappointed when she learns that Clare has been "killed" by the swirling mass that was once Raciella, and makes it her new target.
• The Ophelia: Ophelia, obviously, though she's a far more violent than most.
• Origins Arc: Clare gets one in "Teresa of the Faint Smile" arc, both in the manga and in the anime.
• Orphanage of Love: It is implied that Galatea works for one as a nun in Rabona, or that she made it possible with her presence there. This would be a big turn around in a world where being in a Orphanage of Fear would be an actual good thing for orphans (unless the Organization counts as one).
• Our Dragons Are Different: The dragons, or the Asarakam, are bizarre looking creatures who can awaken, like Claymores, into the "Descendents of Dragons" and are about as monstrous as any Awakened being. Both are positively Geigerian. These Asarakam are hermaphroditic and can live up to 200 years, growing stronger as they age. When slain, they decay at a rapid rate.
• Our Zombies Are Different: The reanimated number ones Hysteria, Roxanne and Cassandra are a mix between Artificial Zombies brought back by the mad science of Dae, and Revenant Zombies as all of them keep their personalities intact, or at least have inhibited versions of their personality so that they stay loyal to the Organization. Not that such loyalty lasts at all, the resurrected number ones soon Awaken giving birth to a new generation of Creatures of the Abyss.
  • The Abyss Feeders certainly love to eat flesh and it's the only thing they can think of.
  • With the reveals of chapter 126 we find out that Yoma are nothing more that Humans infected by a parasite that force them into Horror Hunger.
• Over-the-Shoulder Murder Shot: Done in the anime when Raki finds Priscilla in a cave eating a victim.
• Painful Transformation: Subverted. It's implied that transforming into an awakened being starts out painful, but gets more pleasurable near the end. A huge reason why men aren't made into claymores anymore since it's like an orgasm to them.
• Partial Transformation: Justified in the case of Clare, in that she cannot fully Awaken. Every abyssal likes doing this often, instead of going One-Winged Angel, in order to save energy.
• Paying for the Action Scene: The group of Claymores sent to hunt down Teresa find the inn she is staying at, and hand the innkeeper a bag of money. The innkeeper protests that it's too much - for that amount of money, you could buy the entire inn. You can probably guess that it ends up being fair compensation.
• People Puppets: Galatea's 'Yoki Manipulation' lets her do this to other Claymores (Clarice), Awakened Beings (Dauf) and even the projectiles he shoots.
• Personality Powers : The Offensive Type Claymore (who tries to kill their opponent as fast as possible) and the Defensive type claymore (who just try to survive each encounter) regenerating at different rates—the Offensive type is unable to regrow limbs, but is stronger and more aggressive. Personality Powers become more prominent when they awaken: Revenge obsessed Claymores tend towards massive lethal implements, loyal ones tend towards wings, etc.
• Picky People Eater: Youma and Awakened Beings are implied to eat human flesh in general, but they are absolutely nuts for "innards" — that is, stomaches, intestines, kidneys, livers and the other sundry organs that make up the entrails. Most of the times that Youma feeding habits are brought up, people specifically talk about the Youma eating innards, or the Youma itself rants that it wants to feast on innards.
• Plenty of Blondes: The titular Claymores, even normal humans, like Raki, which has a more golden tint, seriously, there's an incredible amount of blond persons.
• Pointy Ears: According to The Other Wiki, a semi-rare mutation caused by the enhancement process.
• Poor Communication Kills: Clare and Ophelia both want to kill Priscilla. If Clare would've tried to explain herself to Ophelia they could've figured out they both wanted the same thing, maybe even worked together. But Clare kept her lips shut and they didn't figure out until after Ophelia awakened. Ophelia's bloodthirsty insanity didn't help that much either; she may have just killed Clare anyway for kicks.
  • But why would Clare have ever brought it up? It had no bearing on the mission and Ophelia said absolutely nothing to indicate in any way that she had any connection to Priscilla at all. Clare met Ophelia, Ophelia cut off her legs, and then Ophelia threw Raki to an Awakened Being. Then things started going badly. Not much chance for backstory comparisons there. Bringing up Priscilla would have been utterly random and absurd.
• Post-Rape Taunt: Roxanne tells Cassandra that the reason she didn't interfere with Cassandra's friend's torture and implied rape at the hands of an Awakened Being was because Cassandra's friend looked like she was having fun. Cue (unfortunately) quite stoppable rage.
• Power Copying: Clare's specialty, though some other claymores get in on the action as well, copying a technique or two from their fallen comrades (Roxanne in particular is a very twisted version of this.)
  • In the final battle, Teresa takes this up a notch, with most of the battle being a homage to all of Clare's friends through using their techniques. But, y'know, better than they can, because it's Teresa.
• Power of Friendship: When you really get down to it, this is what Claymore is all about (or, it's at least one of the themes). All claymores have gone through a great deal of trauma in their lives, from being divided from their families, having half of their humanity stripped away from them, and becoming pariahs in normal human society. The "benevolent" organization are no surrogate parents, since they only see the women as expendable tools for their own mission. As a possible defense mechanism, most claymores put up a wall of indifference and cynicism around them, to avoid enduring more trauma on their part, but in reality, all that the claymores have are each other, so strong bonds still manage to form between them, be it a pair of two, a team of four, a mini squad, or the whole damn army.
  • Played straight in chapter 124, where all of the warriors present at Miria's battle with Awakened Hysteria must combine their yoki into Anastasia's strands of hair (which are suspending Miria in midair so that she can fight with Hysteria), so that she may have enough lift in order to reach and defeat her. Miria even says, "Spun by my eight comrades, these are my wings!"
• The Power of Hate: Dae surmises that this is the true source of a Claymore's power. The contradiction of their hatred for Yoma and the Yoma flesh in their bodies is what makes Claymores so powerful. This is the reason the Organization chose children who had suffered Yoma related trauma (or in some cases, created such situations) for their experiments. Dae believes that Priscilla is so powerful because she somehow figured out that the Yoma she killed in her backstory wasn't a monster who looked like her father but rather was her father, mutated by the Yoma parasite. Priscilla lost her memories of the incident, but the burning hatred and self-loathing she carried for killing (and cannibalizing) her own father eventually turned her into the most powerful Awakened Being ever.
• Power Glows: It's the only way to indicate a power-up.
• Power High: The reason the modern Claymores are exclusively female is because release of yoki acts like this to men. Male Claymores (produced long ago) experienced the power-up as sexual pleasure and Awakened almost immediately.
• Power Levels: In a manner of speaking. Claymores are assigned to a territory based on their perceived competence at killing Yoma. Claymores that are inexperienced or incompetent are assigned to territories with relatively few Yoma, while the most experienced and powerful Claymores are sent to territories overflowing with powerful Yoma. As such, each Claymore is assigned a number that corresponds to the territory they protect: the lower the number, the more powerful the Claymore is. By this point in the story, anybody with a double digit ranking is basically an expendable Mook, while single digit Claymores veer dangerously close to being One Woman Armies.
• The Power of Love: It's what allows Clare to transform into Teresa and Awaken without becoming a monster.
• Power Perversion Potential: Many Awakened possess the ability to extend their extremities.
• Power-Upgrading Deformation
• Pre Ass Kicking One Liner: Often said just after the first strike.
• Pro-Human Transhuman
• Proper Lady: Claymores such as Galatea, Flora, and Anastasia always try to be poise, proper, and polite even in battle... but this does NOT mean they should be taken as delicate flowers.
• Punch-Clock Hero: The Claymores officially claim to be like this. It's not usually true though.
• Puppeteer Parasite: This is what the Youma REALLY are. They're artificially created parasitic organisms born from mixing an "awakened" Asarakam with a regular Asarakam. This parasite creates a craving for human intestines in the host and thanks to over-working their bodies with their energies (which they use to activate their various Youma powers), has to change hosts frequently. This creates the idea that the Youma devour people and absorb their personalities. In truth, its just the parasite jumping hosts. The parasite is never seen, but only referred to as a "wriggling thing" that doesn't decay. Since this parasite hides in the brain, the decapitation technique used by the Claymores to kill the Youma doesn't stop the parasites—it just forces them to move to a new host.
• The Purge: The Northern Campaign was designed, in part, to get rid of some of the more rebellious Claymores. The decision was basically, "Since we're going to have a redshirt army, we might as well use it for a purge."
• Rape as Drama: Subverted. Claymores already experience some physical disassociation from having their bodies painfully transformed into something not-quite-recognizable as human, but after experiencing physical mutilation up to and including dismemberment and impalement, rape isn't quite an ordeal. When faced with the threat of rape, Teresa indicates what she's been through by baring her body, and invites the raiders to do their worst. The would-be assailants are too repulsed to follow through.
  • It has also been implied that male Awakened Beings "toy" with their female victims.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Claymore loves this trope. Deneve and Helen, Audrey and Rachel, Sophia and Noel, Luciela and Rafaela might have been this trope. It seems that every generation there is at least one of Those Two Girls
• Red Right Hand: It seems that all the members of the Organizations have weird physical traits, be it Rubel's characteristic Unsmile, Limt's strange veins at the sides of his head, Pardo/Rado and his white Monochromatic Eyes, or Dae who seems to have taken his Harvey Dent's cosplay quite too far. And guess what? It turns out that the Organization and its members are the ones responsible for creating the Yoma in an attempt to build biological weapons, and act as the Greater-Scope Villain behind all the problems in the story.
• Redshirt Army: All but seven of the Claymores in the Northern Campaign.
• Removing the Head or Destroying the Brain: The only surefire way to kill a claymore, a yoma or an awakened being, since they have the Healing Factor.
  • Subverted with Europa, whose special technique is "fake death". After her supposed awakened form is decapitated, her head transforms and sprouts bladed tentacles.
  • Also subverted with Priscilla — who else? — who manages to somehow survive being chopped up into bite-sized pieces from head to toe.
• Resist the Beast: Most Claymores who start to Awaken gradually, until they get a Mercy Kill. If they're really lucky, they can suppress their yoki even more, and draw more heavily on their powers before shit hits the fan.
• The Reveal: Besides the revelation that "the world" is actually one continent isolated for a weapons program and the Organization being corrupt, Rubel reveals to Dae that Clare is not the only 1/4 Youma Warrior. There were others who had been unknowingly implanted with the flesh of loved ones who had been infected by Youma. The result is the ability to Half-Awaken (for these 1/4 breeds it takes far more effort to Awaken but it's better controlled). Other experiments were Miria, Deneve and Helen and maybe more.
• The Revolution Will Not Be Vilified: Miria is very clear that her revolution will be deathless.
• Revenge: Lots of claymores' personal motivation to hunting yoma is to avenge their families. Clare took it to the extreme by being the only person to approach the organization and demand that she be made into a claymore.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: As a result of Raciella's virus spears and the death of Riful, Dauf decides to go after Priscilla. It's strangely sad.
• Rock Beats Laser: Priscilla, in her awakened form, is weakest against attacks without any youki intent behind them, which is why Raki is able to pierce her neck from behind, while she's concentrating on the rest of the actual warriors.
• Rooftop Confrontation: Where Clare fought Galk and Sid in the city of Rabona earlier in volume 2.
• Rousing Speech: Miria in Pieta; the black coat in chapter 113.
• Run or Die: Happens a couple of time. Unfortunately, the strongest opponent is often the fastest, which means that running isn't an option.
• Running Gag: Clare getting her face smashed into the dirt by whoever thinks she's being irrational.

S-Z

• Saintly Church: Played straight, in spite of the Dark Fantasy love for corrupt and evil religious organizations. The Holy City of Rabona is initially depicted as denying access to the Claymores for being impure half-monsters, and when Clare is ordered to hunt a Yoma within the city she has to take pills that hide her identity from the local soldiers. However, Rabona's prejudice against Claymores greatly softens once Clare shows her willingness to risk her own life to save the humans of the Holy City. Later on in the series Rabona becomes a safe haven for Miria's group and other warriors, and Rabona's soldiers will even try to help the Claymores during the final battle.
• Say My Name: Just before Awakening, Cassandra speaks her tormentor's name.
• Science Is Bad: Using science to win a war by using an island populace as guinea pigs, creating unholy creatures that devour said populace while using on orphans to create almost-unholy creatures through trail-and-error experiments that tend to flop while keeping the citizens and the bio-augmented warriors in the dark.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Coinciding with her Mama Bear moment, this is essentially what gets Teresa in trouble with the Organization. Her refusal to accept her punishment may count as well. Teresa had just inquired about Clare's well-being, and her Handler had stated that her fate was now with the Organization. Teresa probably had a strong suspicion that this meant they would either kill her outright, or convert her into a Claymore, and she wanted Clare to have a normal life.
• Secret Test of Character: After Riful is gone, Galatea say that that she will resume her mission to take Clare back to the Organization, alive or not. After making sure that Clare and Jean don't want to go back and are willing to put their lives on the line for that, she let them go while telling them that she will cover their escape.
• Self-Destructive Charge: Cassandra dies in the manga backstory trying to cut her way through a crowd of Claymores trying to reach Roxanne. In exchange for all the damage she does to them along the way, she doesn't even try to evade their attacks, and she doesn't quite make it. Her last memory is a smirking Roxanne striking her down with the hilt of her sword.
• Semi-Divine: All of the Claymores are half-human and half-youma except for Clare, who is only one-quarter youma. They're born human and become half-youma by taking youma flesh into their bodies.
• Senseless Sacrifice: Played straight in chapter 107, averted in chapter 109.
• Sensor Character: There are several characters whose uncanny abilities at sensing the yoki (demonic energy) have led to them being mainly used for remote observation of other Claymores and yoma. Case in point: "God Eye" Galatea and "Tracker" Dietrich. Also, Roxanne.
• Serial Escalation: Priscilla's power, just look at her fight with Alicia and Beth! She wasn't even freakin trying, and still completely tore them a new one.
  • Teresa's too. She fought the 4 most powerful Claymores in the Organization (after her, of course, since she was Number 1) — which included Priscilla, as Number 2 — all at the same time without so much as releasing the first 10% of her Youma power, which is what most other Claymores have to do to fight any regular Youma, and she curbstomped them without even breaking a sweat. The only reason that Priscilla was able to kill her was because Teresa let her guard down.
  • The anime asks the question: "How much blood can we fill in one episode?"
• Set Swords to "Stun": When a heroic Claymore rebel fights loyal Organization Claymores, they will typically refuse to kill them, but still have to beat them to go on, and since Claymores use, well, claymores, the enemy will still end up with a few solid cutting injuries at least. Justified in that Claymores can take and survive far more damage than an average human.
• Sex Slave: Unlike a lot of Dark Fantasy series, Claymore doesn't shout at the top of its lungs that rape happens, but it's certainly implied that it does, and sexual slavery is no different. Actually, Claymore is a bit more disturbing in that when such implications arise, it usually involves pedophilia, and both monsters AND humans partake in it. Poor little Clare had to go through both ordeals, first when she was held captive by that yoma that was molesting her, and then when the bandits planned on making her their child sex toy. Luckily, Teresa saved her from both fates.
• Shameless Fanservice Girl: Not that claymores strut around nude all the time, but they don't seem to really care about exposing themselves in that manner, partially or fully.
• Shapeshifter Guilt Trip: Raftela can delve into your mind, and bring out deep sleeping thoughts. This results in Miria thinking that her opponent is actually Hilda. She nearly dies as a result.
• She Who Fights Monsters: The more a Claymore uses her Yoma powers, the greater the risk of becoming a literal monster, and having a Claymore or three sent after her. In the series, it's a great sign of respect when a Claymore who has gone too far asks another Claymore to kill her.
• Shoot the Shaggy Dog: In the anime version, since it cuts out right after the northern war, pretty much nothing was ever accomplished but the deaths of most of the heroes, followed by all the major villains and the few remaining good guys returning to status quo.
• Shout-Out: One to his previous work, Angel Densetsu. Ikuno and Teresa compare having a little blonde girl to owning a pet...
  • Also, the towns and regions of Alphonse, Mucha, Lautrec, and Toulouse are all named after early twentieth-century artists (Alphonse Mucha and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec). Both artists were well known for their depiction of women in their art.
• "Shut Up" Kiss: Clare does this to Raki in manga. Anime subverts this by making it clear that Raki was done talking before Clare kissed him.
• Simple But Awesome: While many Warriors have flashy powers, some Warrior abilities are these, including former No. 1 Cassandra who's special ability is to do the limbo and then attack quickly, her enemies have difficulty hitting something going that low and she was able to kill many Warriors until Roxanne took her out.
• Single-Stroke Battle: lot of them. Teresa manage to take that trope up to eleven by performing it on four people at the same time.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Even though there are times when the enemy is defeated and people are saved and Everybody Lives, those instances are pretty few and far between. Needless to say, Claymore is on the more cynical side of the scale, making it a rather rare example among Shōnen series, which tend to side with idealism.
• Sliding Scale of Gender Inequality: Huh? Guys? What guys? Oh yeah - those guys. You can't even give male awakened beings too much credit, since much if not all of their actions are being dictated by a much more powerful female awakened being (oh yeah, there are some ordinary guys around here somewhere...).
• The Slow Walk: Clare does this when facing Awakened Beings.
• Snow Means Death: The fate of those who fought in the Northern Campaign.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: In the anime.
• So Last Season: The Yoma are initially presented as a genuine threat to Clare and in the introductory chapters, she needed some back-up to defeat the Yoma haunting the Holy City of Rabona. Once Awakened Beings are introduced, the Yoma quickly become cannon-fodder to anyone other than Clarice.
• Spark of the Rebellion: The final warrior generation's rebellion against the Organization starts with a low-level Claymore—who isn't even named in the narrative!—refusing to follow her handler's orders and to deliver the killing blow to Miria, the future Rebel Leader. After the rest of the generation similarly feigns obedience, the latter is able to recover from her wounds and returns to rally them against their handlers.
• Split Second Blade Spam: Windcutter (which doubles as an Iaijutsu Practitioner technique) and the Quicksword.
• Spiritual Predecessor: And, as mentioned above, Berserk is considered by many fans of both series to be the forefather of Claymore (though not by Word of God).
• Spike Shooter:
  • Dauf can shoot huge spikes from his mouth.
  • The Destroyer (Raphaela/Luciela merged being) shoots spikes in all directions that turn into mindless monsters, which shoot even more spikes to infect anyone they hit and turn them into monsters as well.
• Spotting the Thread: Raki does this in the first episode when he points out that a Claymore never refers to themselves as such; turns out it was a Yoma in disguise.
• Stab the Scorpion: More like stab the alligator this time. When Raki gets hungry Clare promptly provides him something to cook by applying this trope on a an innocent passing alligator (who was taking a stroll in the middle of a desert for some reason).
• Statuesque Stunner: Are you watching/reading the story? Good. Count them on your own time.
• The Stoic: Most of the Claymores are rare in expressing emotion.
• Super-Persistent Predator: The Abyss Eaters. They just keep coming back. Justified in that they are conditioned to crave the flesh of only one particular target.
• Superpowered Evil Side: One of the Standard Occupational Hazard for Claymores. Less occupational hazard and more design goal, it turns out. See Lensman Arms Race above.
• Super Powered Mooks: The Abyssal Eaters are a new threat to both Claymores and Awakened beings introduced in the second half of the manga. They are created with the same procedures Claymores are created, but rather than using Yoma flesh and blood instead the Abyssal Eaters have the flesh and blood of Awakened beings within them, this make them vicious beasts that are human in shape only and posses such a powerful Healing Factor that only through decapitation it is possible to kill them.
• Superpower Lottery: Usually all Claymores have some special technique that set them aside from the others, some have a special form of attack, some are good at regenerating, others are good at manipulating Yoma energy, some are good at using their hair for tactical advantage and Not Quite Flight, and then there are Teresa and Priscilla who are just far ahead anyone else.
  • Teresa is initially described as a Jack of All Trades who's above everyone else thanks to her ability to read Yoma energy in a way that allows her to predict the attack of her enemies before the attack even begin (as long as the enemy has a Yoma aura), but it is then revealed that she is even more powerful than that and a Master of All.
  • Priscilla as a Claymore instead seemed to have "just" the ability to fight very efficiently even when suppressing her Yoma power, making her a natural counter to Teresa's yoki-reading abilities. She gains her true game-breaking abilities only once she awakens, as she reaches Complete Immortality thanks to her unstoppable regeneration. Awakened Priscilla is able to regenerate almost From a Single Cell and while she is possible to defeat it's very hard to actually keep her dead. While also being as powerful as a Creature of the Abyss.
• Superpower Meltdown: Those who succumb to their Superpowered Evil Side endure this.
• Stupid Sacrifice: Averted twice with the same sentence : "if you want to die that much, I will do it for you right now."
• Suicide Mission: The organization in charge of Claymores sends them on suicide missions whenever they become too dangerous. Possibly justified to avoid Super Power Meltdowns, but later revealed that they do this to take care of claymores who are weak, rebellious, or are digging too deep into the organization's secrets.
  • Any mission with Ophelia is this. It wouldn't be surprising if the organization is responsible for pairing off whatever unfortunate soul with her in order to eliminate them.
• Super-Soldier: Manufacturing Claymores amounts to: hack open some poor kid and graft Youma meat into her. Clare was meant to be a next-generation claymore, being made with another Claymore's flesh and blood and retaining the normal implantation process (incidentally, the organization's #1); she is considered a failed experiment by the Organization. With The Reveal that Clare's handler (and the guy responsible for keeping tabs on the experiment and who reported that it was a failure) in the Organization is actually The Mole for the Organization's enemies whose goal is to sabotage the project, it's possible that Clare may not be a failure after all.
• Surprisingly Elite Cannon Fodder: The organization tried this on Clare, Miria, Deneve, and Helene during their first mission together, but they all survived. The organization tried to pull this on a bigger scale during the Pieta mission, where almost every warrior died EXCEPT for Clare, Miria, Deneve, and Helene (with Yuma, Tabitha, and Cynthia as bonus survivors).
• Sword Plant: Claymores often stab their swords in the ground to lean against when they're sitting or sleeping.
• Sword Sparks: All over the place, and it's pretty useful too as the swordplay (sometimes clawplay) is so fast that this is the only way the viewer can keep following the flow of the action.
• Take Our Word for It: Those scars from the transformation procedure were this for most of the series. Though they weren't shown at the time, they were hideous enough to turn off an entire horde of rapists.
  • The "scar" is revealed in chapter 129. It really is THAT horrible, since it's actually "one clean cut from their genitals to their necks". A cut that never entirely heals.
• Taking You with Me: The way Clare traps Priscilla with the destroyer's power.
• Talking Is a Free Action: Averted. When characters talk, they're generally not fighting at the moment. Comments while fighting tend to be rather short.
• Technical Pacifist: Since the Claymores are forbidden from killing humans.
• They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: Since yoma can disguise themselves as humans, often as their victim since they literally take over their body, you may be sitting next to one and never know it. Especially so if they're an awakened being, who can revert back to their pre bio-augmented form.
• This Is Unforgivable!: When a Claymore says this, she means it. Almost always used as a Madness Mantra.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill Muggles:
  • The Claymores are forbidden from killing a single human under pain of death. As a result, Teresa gets in terrible troubles after slaughtering a bunch of bandits.
  • As Ophelia points out, it's not too hard to to get around this rule, and those who do it usually get caught because they turn themselves in. She herself takes the opposite approach of making sure to slaughter all potential witnesses if she happens to kill a human.
  • This rule was always meaningless, since youma were infected humans all along. The rule was just an excuse for the Organization to remove Claymores.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: Strangely enough, Cassandra's fight with Teresa is this. She finally gets to go all-out against an opponent who doesn't mock her fighting style, and she is allowed to die as herself, with her memories of her friend.
• Throwing Your Sword Always Works: Clare does this a few times. It's Yuma's special ability after the Time Skip.
  • Cynthia even hangs a Lampshade on the impracticality of it.
  • And then Deneve does it in Chapter 111.
• Thunderbolt Iron: Implied to be what the Claymores (the weapons) are made of and Miria's first clue that things are not what they seem.
• Tightrope Walking: The Claymores can do this, and one of them, Anastasia, has even weaponized this ability, using her super-strong and super-thin hair for Not Quite Flight.
• Time Skip: Manga only. First a three month time skip between Clare's fight with Ophelia and her confrontation with Riful, and then the massive seven year time skip following the northern campaign.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Audrey (polite and has the 'gentle sword' technique) and Rachel (looks almost like a guy and has a 'strong sword' technique). They really come across as butch and femme at times, in particular when Ray cries when she thinks Audrey's dead.
• Too Powerful to Live: Priscilla is the most powerful character in the story, and therefore she has to die sooner or later.
• Took a Level in Badass: Raki after the Time Skip. Fandom is divided after whether this is good or bad. And pretty much all of the Seven Ghosts have undergone this, most noticeably Yuma, though some were badass before the skip.
• Toplessness from the Back: Done a few times with Clare and later with Deneve.
• Torso with a View: Claymores get punched through like Play-Do all the time, and yet, they press on.
• Transformation Exhilaration: Transforming into an Awakened being is initially painful, but gets more pleasurable as it continues. A huge reason why men aren't made into Claymores anymore is because it's like an orgasm to them, and they can't resist the urge to push the transformation all the way to the end.
• Trash Talk: Generally averted. Claymores tend to take out standard youma in a quick and businesslike fashion, while most fights between Claymores, or Claymores and Awakened Beings, are done with respect. Notable exceptions are the second part of the fight with Agatha, and Cassandra vs Roxanne.
• True Companions: It takes off with the Awakened Being kill squad containing Clare, Deneve, Helen and Miria. They do part ways for some time, however, so it might be that the seven survivors of the Northern Campaign are the first true example.
  • To a degree, all of the warriors. Only the well and truly psychotic would leave their companions to their own devices and sometimes, even THEY change their minds.
• 24-Hour Armor: Claymores are rarely seen out of uniform, unless they're on a special assignment where they have to blend in with normal humans. However, when they're resting they will take off their metallic armor.
• Tyke Bomb: Although the Claymores don't go into field duty until they're grown up, they're chosen for the job as young children. And out of 47 Claymores each generation and numerous generations of Claymores, only one volunteered to be turned into a half-monster killing machine - Clare. All the other girls the Organization used were slaves, orphans or foundlings.
  • Miata and the unnamed new awakened twins are more direct examples, being massively powerful Claymore fielded while still young.
• Unholy Matrimony: Riful and Dauf, Priscilla and Isley. Both couples are genuinely loving. Riful is unwilling to abandon Dauf to die even dragging him along with her when she's escaping from the fight with Alicia, despite being crippled and his protestations that she should abandon him because he's slowing her down and he doesn't care if he dies as long she lives. She does, in fact, die for him. Isley starts off just wanting to use Priscilla as a weapon but during his dying Internal Monologue admits he truly cared about her and their Morality Pet Raki as a family.
• Unspoken Plan Guarantee: Readers don't find out about Miria's plan to survive the Northern war until after it was over.
• Uriah Gambit : When warriors disobey the Organization, grow "too old," or whenever the Organization feels like it, they are given Impossible Task after Impossible Task until they die.
• The Usual Adversaries: Yoma exist solely to rape and eat people's guts while being alive.
• The Virus: The merged Rafaela and Luciela can infect other living organisms with their youki, which is the main purpouse of their cat-lady minions.
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot: When Priscilla spits out the remains of the Destroyer.
• Waif-Fu: Some of the Claymores are this, in spite of looking relatively graceful they're still able to lift massive broadswords and retain inhuman agility, all thanks to the Yoma blood and flesh transplanted into them. Played straight with "Muscular" Sophia, a Claymore who is greatly praised for her sheer physical strength but looks just like any regular skinny Claymore, Subverted however when any Claymore releases her Yoma Energy that can massively increase their muscles' size and power.
  • Double Subverted with Undine who initially looks like a very muscular Claymore who learned how to dual-wield Claymore swords, but is later revealed to be just showing off as her true form when not releasing Yoma Energy is that of a rather frail looking girl.
• Walking the Earth: Especially in the earlier scenes of both Manga and Anime, when the story focus mostly on Raki and Clare moving around from place to place. All Claymores are expected to travel from town to town in search of their next target assigned to them by the Organization, they have no home to call their own (the Organization's headquarters don't really qualify) and what little food, money or equipment they need is provided by the Organization.
• We Have Reserves: The Organization's treatment of the Claymores and Isley's treatment of his subordinates are identical: as pawns who can easily be replaced.
• Weapon Tombstone: It's a tradition among the Claymores to plant the swords of their fallen comrades into the ground over their graves. Even a newbie like Clarice can recognize a Field of Blades as a makeshift graveyard.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Rimuto argues that the Organization's horrific actions were necessary because the Asarakam are just that fearsome. Miria kills him anyway.
• Wham Chapter: And it all started at chapter 79...
  • ... And it continued in chapter 126...
• Wham Line: Chapter 137 "[The result of creating experimental warriors with Yoma infected relatives] was on the battlefield ten years or so later... some of the warriors have called it half-awakening."
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Symbolic?: An in-universe example Rafaela and Luciela's combined awakened form looks a lot like a warped version of the local religion's deity.
• Where It All Began: Raki returns to the village that kicked him out seven years ago as a badass who ends up saving their asses from the same circumstance (Yoma attack!) that led to Raki's expulsion in the first place. And yet they still talk shit about him. But he sets them straight.
• Whip Sword: The Falcon Sword used by the bandit chief in Teresa's arc is an example of these. He even boasted the power of his weapon thinking that it would have been able to match the power of Teresa of the Faint Smile. Sadly mistaken is a term that would apply in this case...
• Who You Gonna Call?: For normal people, the Claymores are the only fixers who can deal with what they perceive as a supernatural problem.
• Will Not Tell a Lie: The Claymores in general, mostly because they usually just don't care enough to bother to lie.
  • Dietrich states that she has sworn never to tell a lie to the Organization.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity:
  • Averted in some cases, since the most powerful of Awakened Beings (mainly the Abyssal Ones) are generally the most mentally stable. Similarly, the most powerful Claymore, Teresa, was also calm and composed.
  • Priscilla plays with this. At some point, she lost most of her memories and assumed a simple, child-like personality but when she assumes her awakened form she is frighteningly composed, methodical and calm.
  • Power Born of Madness: See the entry on The Power of Hate above discussing Priscilla's issues.
• The Worf Effect: The Youma are a villainous expression of this trope, existing purely to establish a character strength and combat philosophy.
  • Also, Teresa's death at the hands of awakened Priscilla was set up to show just how powerful she was in order to take down the organization's strongest warrior, even though she technically cheated...
• World of Action Girls: Justified Trope. Women inherently make better Claymores than men, because male Claymores become Awakened Beings extremely quickly.
• World of Badass: The cast of Claymore is composed either of, well, Claymores, superhuman warriors who live only to hunt down the monsters known as Yoma, Awakened beings, former Claymores who have gone beyond their limits and have become monsters themselves while retaining some intelligence, and a few common Humans. And even in this world where they're horribly outmatched by almost everything Humans do not shy from attempting heroic acts, like Rabona's soldiers seriously trying to fight off Awakened beings or Raki being able to not only kill Yomas post Time Skip but even play a crucial role in the final battle against Priscilla.
  • For more villainous examples, even the shadowy but still Human members of the Organization always manage to keep a cool head when confronted by their own creations, like Limt/Rimuto shortly before he was killed by Miria for his crimes. In Dae's case he kept nonchalantly chatting with Priscilla even as she was eating his own guts!
• World of Snark: It's probably easier to name the Claymores that aren't snarky.
• Worst Aid: The priest who healed Clare put bandage on her clothes. Fifteen volumes later, he mentioned that it was out of fear/disgust and is deeply ashamed of it.
• Wound That Will Not Heal: All Claymores were cut open by the Organization in order to implant Yoma flesh in every part of their bodies. That huge cut is the one wound their regeneration cannot heal since their altered bodies consider that cut part of their "default" state. The Organization's work-around is to crudely stitch the wound together to keep the Claymores' guts from falling out.
• "X" Marks the Hero: Miria is left with an awesome x-shaped scar on her face after she attempted to overthrow the Organization, was seemingly slashed to a pulp by the other Claymores but survived.
• You Are Number 6: Every exchange between two Claymores lasting more than five seconds inevitably results in somebody bragging about their number. Needless to say, both Claire and Clarice found themselves bullied more than a bit.
• You Are Not Alone: Most of the time, the warriors will band together when the chips are down. Some characters have to be reminded about this several times.
• You Can't Go Home Again: Played straight whenever a child is unfortunate enough to lose their family in a yoma attack. The other villagers are so concerned about protecting their own asses that they don't hesitate to throw kids out of town to fend for themselves.
• You Didn't Ask: What Rafutella answers to the organization leader when he asks why she didn't tell critical information. Unsurprisingly, she falls in the category of warrior mentioned just below.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: If the Organization considers you too wild, too useless or if you just know too much, you will be sent on suicide missions until you finally bite it. This is because warriors get stronger and more capable the older they get and the only threat to a seasoned warrior is an Abyssal One or Priscilla.
• Your Mind Makes It Real: When battling Rafaela in her Mental World, Clare finds out from her that if she dies in the psyche, she dies in the real world.

---

It's all right.

We've crossed blades as Claymores.

We can have no regrets.