Claymore Episode 23—Critical Limit (part 1)

Clare, determined to defeat Rigardo for killing the higher-ranked Claymores, is willing to push it to the limit (word to Scarface soundtrack) as she wants to become stronger and more powerful like any shonen protagonist.

So how did Clare manage to save Miria AND cut off Rigardo’s arm? The answer is leg awakening and Clare’s legs take on a whole new look, looking like they have hooves and angled fins of some kind.

Clare’s new legs.

The new legs do give her a YUUUUUUUUUUGE increase in speed but she cannot control it, as she can only pretty much run in a straight line. Rigardo takes advantage of this by evading Clare’s attacks, forcing her to crash into buildings. He is trying to make her defeat herself; he needs any advantage at this point since he is missing an arm and Helen slices and dices it up, preventing him from trying to re-attach it.

Helen roleplays as Ophelia by mutilating Rigardo’s severed arm.

But as the battle progresses, Clare seems to be harnessing the power of her new legs as she is able to stop and change her direction of movement. Rigardo is amazed that Clare’s fighting ability has surpassed his expectations and it brings back memories of his playful sparrings with Easley in the past. Clare and Rigardo fight again as Clare’s speed makes her look like a blur of colors in the night sky.

Rigardo tries to keep up with Clare’s increasing pace.

As the surrounding buildings all get destroyed during the Rigardo-Clare battle, Raki enters, much to the dismay of 97.9734% of the Claymore fanbase. Helen tries to tell him to leave but Raki tries to convince her that he made a promise to Clare to see her again alive. He eventually sees Clare’s awakened legs and immediately recalls Easley’s mentioning that becoming an Awakened Being is a fate every Claymore faces.

Rigardo has Clare cornered and thinks he has won after trapping her under a bunch of rubble. But Clare surprisingly flies out relatively unscathed and slices and dices evil Simba to bits. As he dies, he comments to himself about how superb Clare was in her ability to finally gain full control over her new Awakened Legs.

It is quite CLARE that Clare is releasing a lot of yoma power. Oh yeah, she’s a LITTLE upset at Rigardo, too.

Don’t ask me how he had so much time to talk to himself as he was being killed within a span of mere seconds. I’m just a blogger…

RATING AND OPINION: I’m gonna have to give this episode a 8.6 out of 10. Yes, they changed how Clare defeated Rigardo and I wasn’t happy about it at first but it wasn’t *that* bad. The whole Raki thing does make me shake my head in disgust and I fear he will become more of an impediment in the future episodes (only three left).

Has it dawned on anyone else that they REALLY love to use flashback sequences a lot now? Once again we see the Clare-Raki kiss scene when Raki tells Helen about the promise he made to Clare. I personally think they could’ve done without it but I guess when you need a few seconds to fill, you gotta do what you gotta do. Plus they also have been using the first two minutes lately to recap what took place in the previous episode, another time-filling mechanism.

Animation was pretty good but there were some oddly-drawn faces here and there. The most glaring one was when Helen was yelling for Raki to leave Pieta because of the danger he was putting himself in. Helen was yelling at him to leave yet her face looked devoid of expression.

Upon first glance you may think Helen is calmly consoling Raki but she was actually yelling at him. This hasn’t been the first time that there have been “stonefaces” during scenes where a character’s emotions are supposed to be running high.

To prove my point, go to a mirror and yell, or at least make a scowling face, and take notice of how your face changes. Notice how your eyes seem to get smaller, your eyebrows angle downward, the area between your eyebrows gets wrinkled, and so on. I guess they didn’t originally intend for Helen’s voice to come off as such but emotionless faces during very emotional dialogue has happened a few times during the season. Also some of the “1000% sparking” effects looked like they were being reused a lot, and sometimes even one after another (with the only change being which side of the screen it was). But that alone wasn’t going to make the rating for this episode drop THAT drastically…

Pics (more can be found here):

 

1000% Sparking

 

What the HELEN are you doing here?!

 

Miria: What do you think about Raki?
Helen: meh

Next week can only be summed up with one picture:

GAL-A-TE-A! (clap, clap, clap-clap-clap)
GAL-A-TE-A! (clap, clap, clap-clap-clap)
GAL-A-TE-A! (clap, clap, clap-clap-clap)

 

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• Claymore Episode 14 — Qualified to Fight/Fit for Battle