Claymore Episode 13 — The Endless Gravestones, Part 2

Claymore episode 13, bitches!

Clare is running like Forrest Gump in a forest (LOL YOU SAW WHAT I DID THERE) but psycho Ophelia catches up. She taunts Clare about her slowness in her super fast atomic leg running technique. Ophelia and Clare both release yoma powahhhh but Clare voluntarily stops it, leaving Ophie-chan a bit confused. She goes to attack Clare but she is blocking everything! Ophelia then realizes that she did that so she could read Ophelia’s yoki flow. So smart!

HOWEVER, Ophelia shows off her sword’s ability. She cuts Clare multiple times as Ophelia’s sword looks like it wiggles rapidly in the air. Clare knew where the attacks were going to be but she still could not defend as she gets deep cuts in both her shoulders.

The attack is known as the “Rippling Sword” according to Ophelia and it is an attack she spent a lot of time devising. She wanted to be known as “Ophelia of the Ripples” but she felt the nickname wouldn’t work because no one has ever survived her Rippling Sword.

Clare tries to do a sneak attack on Ophelia…but it failed. Ophelia cuts off Clare’s right arm and then slices her through the chest. Clare falls into a stream below.

Just when Clare thought she could attempt to reattach her arm after she finds a place to rest, Ophelia is right there (oh snap). Ophelia takes Clare to Claymore School (not literally for you dense people) by telling her how some Claymores are better at offense and some are better at defense—the ones better at offense can reattach limbs if they are cut off but cannt regenerate them from scratch (like Deneve can do). To further prove this point, Ophie-chan cuts Clare-chan’s detached arm into pieces. Clare is like “yo, bitch, wtf?!?!?!” just as we see a mysterious cloaked person in a different area of the forest…

Clare tries to fight lefty but she is no Phil Mickelson or an Ikkaku Madarame; her left arm lacks any semblance of strength found in her right and Ophelia is able to block her attacks with no effort and is able to cut Clare even further.

First Clare is missing an arm but now she is missing a left hand as Kenpachi Ophelia cuts it off just as Clare tried to reach for her sword.

But mystery cloak lady comes in just as Ophelia is about to pwn Clare with the finishing move. Ophelia is pissed that her fun was interrupted and goes to attack cloak lady…

BUT SHE BLOCKS EVERY ONE OF OPHELIA’S ATTACKS! EVEN HER RIPPLING SWORD! And all that without even moving a muscle! Oh shit son… Then cloak lady pwns Ophelia by cutting her 92739283927580274985294735243975 times with sword swings coming out of nowhere…Sound familiar?

Yep! It is Flash Sword Irene, who apparently didn’t die when Priscilla awakened.

Clare wakes up in a bed in some posh cottage in the forest…turns out this is where Irene has been hiding out ever since the Priscilla incident. Her right arm is still gone but her left hand is reattached now. Irene comes back with food but Clare still wants to go back out and fight. Irene stops her and is like “yo u aint gettin outta this place in the state u in, and that crazy bitch is like still alive so just take the L and eat your fruits.” She also tells Clare she can’t even defeat weaklings in the condition she is in, you know, with the missing arm and all. Yea, DISS.

We further see proff that Irene still has her power: she pisses off the environmentalists and Ben Gibbards by using her Flash Sword to cut down a tree and tear the trunk into pieces. Hey, at least it shows she can efficiently gather firewood effortlessly…

More flashbacks of the Priscilla thing, as Clare tells Irene what she learned about the whole incident. Irene then reveals to her that she faked her death and went into hiding in a faraway land beyond the reaches of the Organization. Her suppression of yoki for all these years has made her undetectable to other Claymore spidey-senses (i guess it is assumed sexy Galatea can’t sense Irene’s presence either). Irene learns that Teresa’s flesh is within Clare’s body; as a result Clare is only 1/4 Yoma and 3/4 human…basically making her rather weak amongst the Claymores.

During this chat, we also learn that Irene lost her left arm in the Priscilla “I’M ABOUT TO BREAK” awakening…so she and Clare both have a thing in common. Irene asks Clare why she is so stubborn; she tells Irene that Teresa was everything to her and she must continue to move forward. She felt she wasn’t strong enough to forget everything about the past. Irene gives Clare her sword back and tells her she will teach her the flash sword technique.

Back in the forest, Ophelia is going all emo, thinking about her deceased brother while still in pain from surviving Irene’s wtfh4x attack. We can tell she was close with him and he promised to protect her in the past before he got pwned by a Yoma. Ophelia then goes insane as we see her releasing her inner Yoma powers to rather dangerous levels…

Back to Clare training…she nearly awakens and has to stop. Irene can still block everything from Clare, which means Clare needs more work on her flash sword. Irene reveals that the flash sword technique is essnetially letting the yoma power force the arm to awaken, as opposed to letting it generate a full awakening. A strong will is needed in order to restrain the full release of yoma power to just that one arm.

Meanwhile back in the forest again, Ophelia comments about how wonderful she feels and how she is hungry for human guts…Does this mean what I think it does? Uh oh…

My thoughts…well, this episode was another good episode as we learn that Irene is still alive and has the power to pwn Ophelia. There were various points in the episode where it looked like Clare was going to be done for before other factors played a role in saving her ass. Plus, Ophelia’s apparent awakening in the end does not bode well for Clare, as she had a hard time fighting her to begin with.

Animation quality did not look as bad as it did last week, thankfully. The fighting sequences were beautifully animated once again, showing Madhouse’s skillz in super duper fast frame rate animation. Only gripes I have this week are the music (there was that scene in Irene’s crib where a track of music played where it was better off without) and weird scene direction; the transitions from Clare’s training to Ophelia talking to herself seemed very awkward…as in they transitioned between the two scenes too quickly. That’s how I saw it, at least.

Next week (no screencaps) we see titties (this show may not be hentai but it sure likes to push the boundaries) and the one-eyed Claymore Rafaela!

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