Welcome to Claymore, Beauty can be Tarnished
- From the very first chapter, the Youma that took Zaki's identity and its attack on Raki. Zaki's memories are still active within the monster's body, forcing it to cry. Zaki can watch, but can't act on what the Youma is going to do. Now that is horrifying.
- With the revelations of later chapters, it appears that Youma are literally the person that they most recently 'consumed'. With Youma being parasites that jump from body to body, the original host body's mind is subverted by the youma's, with the parasite making full use of the body's memories and mannerisms to play its part perfectly. Meaning not only were Zaki's memories still active, but Zaki was still the very Zaki that Raki grew up with, he was just no longer in control of his own body.
- It's even worse than that. The Youma are really mindless parasites that merely mutate their hosts and drive them insane with a Horror Hunger that only human entrails can satisfy. Meaning Zaki was still in control of his own body, but was so damn hungry for human flesh that he no longer even cared if he killed and ate his own little brother.
- Clare got assimilated by the Destroyer, which involved the lower half of her body being infected and detached from the upper part of her body, with the remainder of her body being infected after that.
- The Abyss feeders. First, they are created out of human women, and look like those, only almost nakedand with their eyes and mouths sewn shut. In contrast to their looks, their behaviour retains not even the faintest traces of humanity or even individuality - they're reduced to mindless predators. What has been done to them is bad enough, but nothing compared to what they can do to you: They are conditioned to crave the flesh of one particular individual, relentlessly tracking their target by scent. They have an immense Healing Factor and even if you manage to take them out, they will retreat if more than half of them are killed, only for their numbers to be replenished by their creators. When they do so, they scatter into all directions, so the best you can do is to follow and kill a single one of them. No matter how many times you kill them, they just keep coming, never allowing you any rest, wearing you down little by little. They also share their experience, so that they get better and better at fighting you, until they eat you alive.
- Imagine coming home to find your mother lying on the floor dead, ripped open, with your father eating her insides. Welcome to the typical Claymore backstory.
- The recently resurrected #1, Roxanne, is just a pail full of high octane nightmare fuel by herself. Imagine that you're faced with crazy 'ol Ophelia again - only she's ten times more deceptive, more cunning, and has ZERO redeeming qualities or troubled back story (if she does, we don't care). Roxanne is quite possibly the series' first serious complete monster who still had the title of a Claymore.
- Prior to her own transformation, Roxanne dukes it out with another recently-turned Awakened Being. That being is composed of what looks like several female bits of various scale stacked together randomly to create a Creepy Centipede. Which proceeds to momentarily kick Roxanne's ass. And Roxanne is still more terrifying than her opponent. It does NOT help that Roxanne's completely human face is straight out of the Uncanny Valley.
- Even though it's not as graphic as its spiritual forefather, there is a pretty disturbing amount of Eye Scream in Claymore. Need examples?
- Rafaela gets her left eye clawed out when her older sister, Luciela, awakened after an experimental soul-linking attempt went horribly wrong.
- Galatea blinds herself in both eyes in order to hide in a city that bars Claymores from within its walls.
- When they were up against the Abyss Eaters for the first time, Helen gets her eye scratched out. Luckily for her, she was able to regenerate it later.
- Another Claymore during Roxanne's time has a missing eye from an unknown cause, but it happened before she became a Claymore. And then Roxanne mimicked her by gouging her own eye out.
- It's implied that when she was slashed to death, Cassandra had one of her eyes sliced in half.
- In the anime, which was far more graphic than the manga, Noel got impaled through the eye by an awakened Priscilla. It was made extra squeamish in this format.
- All of Cassandra's scenes with Roxanne in 120 after she awakens. Nasty. Just... ew.
- Even though the anime adaptation is a pretty accurate representation of the first nine or so volumes of the manga, there are just some scenes that are made all the more squeamish when put in full color and motion.
- When Clare, Miria, Helen, and Deneve are sent to fight a voracious eater, which actually turns out to be a male awakened being due to the organizations "misinformation", Clare, Helen, and Deneve are all struck down. Miria fights the monster with her phantom technique, but she is eventually pinned down by the awakened being, which then proceeds to impale her with its tongue, making her writhe in utter agony as it supposedly probes around inside of Miria.
- Sophia and Noel's deaths are depicted quite gruesomely in the anime.
- We find out what goes into making Yoma and Claymores in 126. It involves vivisection and brain parasites. In that order. Sweet dreams.
- We see Clare's body very nearly split in half in 129. Yikes.
- We see Riful's naked waist and legs going out for a nice leisurely stroll in chapter 132.
The series has officially gone Surreal Horror now. - Every time one thinks an Awakened Being can't get more disturbing looking, Yagi proceeds to prove us wrong. Case in point: here.
- Dae's casual reveal of the Organization's old modus operandi of finding Claymore recruits/test subjects by deliberately traumatizing children with exposure to yoma is probably the creepiest thing in the entire series. Dae in general is arguably the scariest thing in the series.
- We find out something else about Priscilla in chapter 142 because she wasn't frightening enough: because her village wouldn't send food to her family after the yoki attack, she was stuck in a house for an entire month with just her and her family's corpses. And YES, it seems she did end up eating some of her YOMA-INFECTED FATHER'S CORPSE during that month she was all alone. So terrifying and yet so tragic.
- Kind of mitigated when we see that Priscilla's survived being chopped into tiny pieces and is somehow attacking Raki!
- Chapter 153: Priscilla's mental breakdown results in a physical one. She is now nothing but a twisted mass of limbs bursting out of the remains of her original body. The grape-like collections of displaced breasts only make it worse. It is truly awe-inspiring how Yagi manages to turn naked women who would normally be attractive into such terrifying Eldritch Abominations. It's hard to even consider the nudity gratuitous most of the time when it's usually the result of completely believable Clothing Damage and the fact that it's often made so horrifying.
