The world of Claymore

[NoSanninWa]

A discussion of the world of Claymore. By necessity most of this thread is still poison to anime watchers, but those who read the translated manga released by Viz know enough to read most of it. I am going to have to insist that spoiler tags be properly titled to let people know the required knowlege level for clicking your spoiler tag: Anime, Viz translated manga or Japanese manga only. If you can specify the exact volume that your spoiler encompasses, that would be best. It may be best for most anime watchers to restrict themselves to discussing the world of Claymore in the Speculation & Theories (for first time viewers) thread, but we are going to try to behave ourselves in case such members enter here.

This discussion may include, but is not limited to:
World geography and political structure.
Society's cultural and historical background.
The Organization's history and methodology.
Church structure, power and religion.



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[toxic_trance]

Hmm..cool thread..but it would definitely be nice to know the government structure. Because, there doesnt seem to be any kingdom, each village is pretty much of an individual unit. Then again..existence of money ensures the existance of trade. The organization is more like a security facility.

I wonder how the money is regulated and how come people have a common currency even though they arent under one kingdom.

As for religion, there seems to be only the hint of Rabona city till now. Didnt feel any class distinction like rich or poor. There seem to be only a common middle class every where. Society rules are pretty strange for that matter in the anime.

The organization kind of rules everyone but doesnt really impose authority. They are making money, but for what i dont know. Maybe to make claymore hi tech machinery is needed..but who makes it..i have no idea.

Frankly, quite a confusing society...but hech i dont mind the beautiful girls patrolling the area :heh:

[Tempest35]

It is weird.

If they had kingdoms, I'm sure that each castle/kingdom/fief would have 3-5 Claymores stationed there round the year and they get deployed from there as requests come in from the populace. But then, the girls would be paid for in terms of being 'rentals' than say 'free lance'. And then it would be easier for rival teams to spring up...and the chance that a kingdom would attempt to utilize the Claymore for their own purposes.
Not to mention that a Claymore might get too attatched to anything other than the Org.

[Anh_Minh]

I'm not sure money is regulated at all. They seem to be using sticks of precious metal. They may have some kind of common "standard weight", but rather than trust any kind of "face value", for big purchases, it's likely merchants actually weigh the sticks on a scale. For small ones, guestimating should suffice.

[Zu Ra]

Just to be on the safer side irrespective of major or minor spoiler I will keep the post in spoiler

Organization's Methodology.

The organization acts pretty high handed IMO . On a ethical level they do treat claymores as entities rather than family or humans. Lot many instances of Top Ranked Claymores gone bad could have been avoided

Just take the case of Priscilla and Teresa there was no need for the execution . Teresa just wanted to be but unfortunately it wasn’t acceptable to the organization . The whole fiasco if handled intelligently could have been avoided .

As the world changes Rules need to evolve and this was a special case . They could have bent the rules if they did not want to break them .

[Negativedark]

Well I need to finish up what I'm working on over in biology before coming here and digging in. Be warned though a lot of it is going to have Manga spoilers.

[SimplyEd]

Dito. A lot of field work is required for both, the biology and the "world" thread.

I'm somewhat looking forward to taking a closer look at the faith of the world, especially the lore concerning the twin goddesses. I'll have to reread a great portion of the manga for that...and i usually get headaches after the 10.000th kanji :D

[Zu Ra]

I'm somewhat looking forward to taking a closer look at the faith of the world, especially the lore concerning the twin goddesses. I'll have to reread a great portion of the manga for that...and i usually get headaches after the 10.000th kanji :D

Where does this myth originate from ? I too am intrested in the Godess Concept as Noir has a similar concept but with maidens

[TinyRedLeaf]

I might end up enjoying this thread a bit more than the biology thread (no offence to all the regular contributors there of course :heh:). Looking forward to what your "field research" turns up. It's going to resemble an archeological project, I suspect, because there is so little hard evidence to work on, that most of the time you'd have to fill in the blanks with educated guesses. :p

I have a few theories/suggestions:

(1)
The lack of kingdoms is not unprecedented in real-world history. Think Dark Ages, between the fall of Rome to around the time of Charlemaigne's "Holy" Roman Empire. This was a time of total anarchy throughout Western Europe. Loyalties were entirely personal in nature, rather than national. That is, tribes of warriors followed the strongest leader, and leadership wasn't necessarily hereditary.

It could well be the case that the World of Claymore (WoC -- not as catchy as the acronym of a "you-know-which" game out there, but it'll do :p ) is going through a similar Dark Ages period as well.

More likely, it's probably at the stage where it's gradually recovering from that Dark Age, because the individual towns seem wealthy enough.

(2)
Monetary commerce certainly exists, which suggests that someone is issuing the "common" currency. But from the single picture we've seen so far, they're just bars of gold with no official stamp on them. So, it's more likely to be a commonly accepted exchange system, perhaps based on the weight of the bars, rather than on the concept of "legal tender".

(3)
What caused the Dark Age in the first place? Aha....maybe an epidemic of Youma? Long, long before the Organisation came into existence, and definitely a lot longer before Claymores came into existence.

The origin of the Youma was probably well known at one stage, but it has since been lost in the mists of time. My speculation? They probably came from the East. No particular reason why, other than that there is where the Organisation is based. Plus the suggestion from the manga that the East is virtually a wasteland -- sounds like the scars of the original Youma epidemic, if you ask me. :p

If I could be allowed to imagine further, my preferred real-world analogy would be Huns that came from East, and thundered down towards Western Europe, leaving utter devastation in its wake.


I'll leave it at that for the moment. Make what you will of my suggested angles for further field research. ;)

[B-day]

This thread is getting more and more interesting:cool:

I am thinking about the security. As we can see, normal town people are no match to yoma, only the holy city has it's own security guards and system. Other smaller towns have no professional security personal(at least not visible so far). But travelers between towns and cities are common, look at the roads , wagens and hotels. And the "single" currency also means trade/commerce between towns is well established.
The security/safety of travelers are essential for trade to flourish, I think the yoma/awakened beings problems are not as bad as it seems. The only reliable way to get rid the yomas is to call a claymore and pay a hefty sum, I can't see this is a weekly occurence. Indeed I think "yoma in a town" thing is quite rare. But, besides yoma, there are bandits roaming around. So there must be some kind of law enforcement/ security arrangement between larger cities/ castle and nearby smaller towns.

Some thoughts on Yomas,

1)Although yoma is on top of the food chain, their numbers must be very small compares to human.

2)Yoma doesn't produce many offsprings, for yoma has a very long lifespan(immortal??), if they produce a lot of offsprings, a small number of claymores will not able to control their population.

3)so far, neither manga nor anime has enough information about the gender of yoma(if they have), many of them seems to be male(sounds like). I wonder if they have any female. I'm really curious about their way of reproduction.

[toxic_trance]

Well..as far as i know..if a yoma has no restriction on a dead or an alive human, there is no reason for it not to take over a female. Plus, ep 1 clearly had a female yoma if u remember ?(the one who dressed as a female)

[Negativedark]

Alright, I'd like to discuss religion. The first parts will be stuff that's been seen in the anime, then I'll put some more in spoiler tags.
Well Religion is present in the Claymore world. We know of at least two dieties that were worshipped at some point, the goddessess Teresa and Claire. It's not clear if they are still worshipped or if this is like greek mythology. Either way it really isn't uncommon to name someone after people in myths and scriptures. It's not clear if they are the dieties worshipped at Robona cathedreal, if they are part of a panthoen, or if the religion of Rabona is closer to christianity.
Now we do know a little bit about Rabona Cathedreal. Claire and Raki's cover for going there, and their means of contacting the priest who hired them was that they had been on a pilgremige, and it seems that Rabona Cathedreal is the end of the pilgremige. The organization includes priests, Bishops ans an Archbishop. It seems semi simeler to the Catholic church, but less influnceal than the church was in medivel europe. It is unclear if Rabona is the center of the faith, or just an important stop. If not there may be a pope in charge, located in another city.
Whatever the case is, holy power is apparently not a problem for Yoma. The one hidding in the cathedreal had no issue with all the crosses and the like. So it seems you shouldn't try praying if a Yoma is going to eat you.
Now I'm going to bring up a few points from later in the manga.Two more things have been mentioned thus far in the manga. Claire actually does pray to the God of Rabona when seperating from Raki in volume 7. This indicates that there is a god worshipped in Rabona.
Later in Volume 12 Yuma mentions that the goddessess Teresa and Claire are mentioned in Rabona's scriptures. So it seems the church is in fact Polythiestic.

[SimplyEd]

Well, as much as i'd like to say that uncovering details about the faith in the world of Claymore was anything like archeological digging in the sand and bringing forth lots of artifacts, it's actually more like painstakingly searching for mere pebbles and crumbles with a magnifying glass.


Let's see what i've got so far:


The human populace seems to actively pray for salvation to a pantheon of various deities, of which only very,very few are somewhat known to us readers.

We know of the Twin Goddesses of Love, Teresa and Clare (i know of a coincidence when it knocks me out of my socks!), who are usually depicted as seemingly one-winged angels (it looks that way, though i'm not so sure anyway), pure with fair hair, plainly clad and leaning against each others backs.

There is another depiction of a more warlike scene, where a two-winged variant carries a large sword, walking across a battlefield. Wether it's one of the twins or a completely different entity, i have no idea.
This scene especially, reminds me of a Claymore, and it's actually not that far fetched that such myths and legends are founded upon hear-say about ancient Claymores or similar variants.

The various depictions of goddesses especially, are somewhat common, although the active trade with such antiques in recent times seems to be rather unusual. There doesn't seem to be much of a market outside of the clerical domains.

There is at least one large Holy City, Rabona, which could be described as a more bustling "metropolis" compared with other small towns and rural villages we usually get to see. Holy Cities are under the "protection" of the clergy and their troops of faithful soldiers. Anything that's seemingly out of place, unnatural is shunned and met with hostility.

There's a known custom of a pilgrims journey to receive divine blessings.
The clergy itself is largely equal to that of the real-world examplary of christian customs and setups.

As in the real-world, faith mainly derived from times of misery and inexplicable phenomenons and a felt lack of salvation.
The fact that Holy Cities are usually armed to the teeth, brimming with well-trained troops seems to further the notion that faith alone won't solve anything at all.

Still, it's something that people can turn to when nothing else seems to work anymore. The clergy looks upon Claymores with great suspicion, even hostility, yet the plain folk don't have so much leeway to outright shove them away. That's because Claymores are their worldly, tiny flicker of hope and protection, even though they are stigmatized by the teachings and practises of the clergy.

So far, there's no proof for a "living divinity". No hard evidence for a real, "natural" antithesis to the youma plague. The only direct opposition are the artificially created Claymores.

In other words, the majority of the populace outside the great cities would probably rather count on the Claymores, rather than their faith, even though they are afraid of them just as well.
The clergy and their troops can barely muster enough opposition to keep normal youmas from their territory, let alone the various small towns outside their reach.

All in all, even when humans tend to their faith, there's barely anything other than a grim outlook for life. It's good enough for minimal spiritual condolences, but certainly not enough for actual safety or salvation.

It's actually neither very beneficial nor outright useless, but rather neglegible for every day life, since there is virtually nothing that normal humans can do about their predicament. Hoping for divine intervention seems pointless, and that's where the Org and the Claymores come into play.

As for the afore mentioned theoretical correlation between Claymores and the pantheon:

It actually makes a lot of sense that former variants of faith have merged with worldy expressions of various ancient Claymores. Their abilities are vastly supernatural and it's quite easy to see that people back then weren't that aware of a Claymores true origin.
Even in recent days, people are only aware of normal Youmas and Claymores.
Awakened are mostly considered to be Youmas as well.

As for the corresponding names of the Twin Goddesses and our dear main heroines..well, this is either going to be a major revelation in the future or just something to get the best out of creative minds among fandom.

My bet is still on the former^^

I'll take a break at this point, but will probably keep this post updated somewhat, if i'm comeing up with further thoughts, or if there's more added lore in the future chapters.


Looks like Negativedark had something similar in mind. I hope my little rant adds nicely to your exposition^^

[Defiled one]

Cough..cough...Tip of the icebergue...:heh: ^Looks like you are also finding out what is happeing in there.

[SimplyEd]

Cough..cough...Tip of the icebergue...:heh: ^Looks like you are also finding out what is happeing in there.


It's quite easy to enlarge the tip to full mountain size with an obscene amount of speculation. I'm just afraid that i'd be "discussed to death" shortly after ;)

[Anh_Minh]

Fact: there are plenty of roads, and inns, and at least some cities, which means traders and travellers.
Fact: it's been remarked by Raphaela that there are yomas in the wilderness, and that they're a hazard.

(I don't remember, has it been mentioned before that? If so, maybe this could all be taken out of spoiler tag...)


Conclusion: there are two types of yomas. One is the one Claymores are hired against. They're smart, can take the shape and the memories of the people they eat, and are nigh unstoppable by normal humans. The other type isn't nearly as bad. It probably lacks the impersonating abilities of the former, and while they remain dangerous man-eaters, they can be defeated by human beings. It may take several armed men and people have to travel in groups, but it can be done.

Reasoning: if they were all of the first type, traveling would be practically impossible, or maybe the wilderness yoma would be so rare they wouldn't be worth mentioning. I mean, as long as you stay in your village, you can hope the yomas will eat your neighbours instead of you, while waiting for the Claymore to arrive. But if you're lost in the middle of a nowhere, everybody in the group could be taken by a few yomas who decide to gorge, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it. You'll just never get to your destination. And even if you only lose a few people at each trip, helpless to prevent passing yomas from grabbing a snack, let's say you have a 1/20 chance of getting eaten at each trip to the nearest city... Those aren't good odds. You've got a roughly 60% probability of dying before your tenth round-trip. Also, nobody would welcome your group for fear of you bringing a yoma impostor in you midst.

Speculation: the term "yoma" may cover several related species. Or the two types may be one species at different points in their life-cycle. Maybe once one of the second type has eaten enough people and absorbed their intelligence, he becomes of the first type and may decide to set up shop in a populated area as a fake human.

[Tempest35]

now they are starting to sound like Zerg larvae... :twitch:

[Deathkillz]

the organisation structure...the more i think about it the more i can draw parallel between this world and the one from black cat ~ i can relate the claymores to the chrono numbers as they are all assassins of the sort ~
working for good rather than evil (or so they seem to be) claymores as warriors that act like knights (or black knights) ~

i guess the time frame of the claymore world is still pretty medieval (with people using flaming torches and sharp pitchforks to drive away witches kinda thing) ~
and with that time frame comes the classic example of the church being in control and a huge influencing factor to the peasants ~ to the church anything that is unnatural is deemed "the devil's work" even if it is a devil who saves lives...they are superstitious as well as paranoid (thats human nature fo ya...they often shun things that they dont understand or are scared of...) ~

[Hypernova]

I got a theory on the Org that's rather cliche to the max:

This is one of those post apocalyptic stories and the yomas are either mutants or old bio weapons. The Org is what's left of the old government and they biologically enhanced them selves to live forever (It's pretty clear none of the elders are human any more) while continuing to experiment with this new strain that appeared after the war (yomas).

While the land are mostly composed of city states the Org act as a shadow government since they have the most advanced technologies with Claymores as super soldiers. They funds themselves buy getting paid to get rid of wild yomas and also through extortion. Some of the yomas in the wild are probably released by them and sent to the towns as Tersa has implied and was not denied by her agent.

Geographically it's probably Europe and the eastern wasteland refers to the regin near Kazakhstan.

[hollywoodlou]

Ok, we all know there are 47 "posts" and the 47th post is the weakest outpost of them all as stated in ep 10.

Does this mean the 1st post where #1 Claymore operates is the most dangerous outpost of the 47? If #1 is the strongest in the org, that's what they need for this outpost...IMHO.

[TinyRedLeaf]

This is one of those post apocalyptic stories and the yomas are either mutants or old bio weapons. The Org is what's left of the old government and they biologically enhanced them selves to live forever (It's pretty clear none of the elders are human any more) while continuing to experiment with this new strain that appeared after the war (yomas).

While the land are mostly composed of city states the Org act as a shadow government since they have the most advanced technologies with Claymores as super soldiers. They funds themselves buy getting paid to get rid of wild yomas and also through extortion. Some of the yomas in the wild are probably released by them and sent to the towns as Tersa has implied and was not denied by her agent.


The thought of a sci-fi angle had crept into my mind before. Frankly however, I sincerely hope the manga wouldn't go into that direction. It'd be an awful cliche indeed. :heh:


Keeping it medieval doesn't require too much stretching of imagination though. My guess is that the Organisation was originally some kind of independent mercenary group that went on a Crusade into the East, in the vain hope of reclaiming the Wasteland for humanity.....and probably became corrupted by the youma influences in the end.

In other words, think of the Organisation as the Temple Knights of Solomon, gone horribly wrong. Historically, the Temple Knights were an independent force, answerable only to the Pope in theory, but practically doing as they pleased in practise. That wasn't a bad arrangement though, because no matter how misbehaved some of the individual knights might have been, as a whole the Temple Knights, together with the Knights of St John, were highly disciplined forces that formed virtually the bulk of all Christian military forces in the Levant at the time.

What happened though was that over time, kings, princes and even the Church began despising the Temple Knights, and rumours began spreading that they were secretly practising satanic rituals (true or not, it's hard to tell now). And then, there was the growing jealousy about the Temple Knights' wealth -- at the height of their power, the Knights were as good as bankers for the whole of Western Europe.

Sounds familiar? :p

Conclusion:
The Organisation was possibly an independent company of mercenaries that went on a Crusade long ago to reclaim the East. They managed perhaps to win some limited victories. Perhaps that accounted for their wealth in the beginning -- humans sponsored the Crusade as far as they were able to.

But in fighting monsters, the original Organisation members slowly became monsters themselves (in both literal and figurative senses). Out of despair from not being able to match the demons, some of them may have began experimenting with hybridisation.


Hence, the 1st Class of male Claymores was formed. And we all know now what happened to them.


Still, the shrewder ones among them realised that they had a money-making machine in their hands, and began hiring out their warriors to any miserable town out there plagued by stray youma. They needed that money to carry out further experiements perhaps?

[NoSanninWa]

The thought of a sci-fi angle had crept into my mind before. Frankly however, I sincerely hope the manga wouldn't go into that direction. It'd be an awful cliche indeed. :heh:In fiction, including anime, the cliche is the right answer 95% of the time. However Claymore consistently manages to surprise me and avoid cliches so I believe that expecting the cliche is a good way to fail.

[Hypernova]

Another mystery is the size of the organisation. I can't recall many workers around their base. So far all we have seen are the elders and the agents. The only other guy I recall is the dude that dragged Teresa back to the training centre.

[stormy001_M1A2]

Well, I still sticking to my idea that the organization was patterned on real world private military contractors like Blackwater or KBR in Iraq.

[NoSanninWa]

Well, I still sticking to my idea that the organization was patterned on real world private military contractors like Blackwater or KBR in Iraq.
I'm afraid that I cannot begin to belive that. Real world military contractors concentrate on getting maximum intel about any situation and then convey it to their agents. They never say something like "There's a problem so figure it out and deal with it." Real world military agencies don't send their troublesome agents into a battle that they should not be able to win. They just fire them.

The Organization doesn't really behave like they are just mercenaries in the youma extermination business. Just watch how Ermita behaved sending Galatea to observe in episode 11 and imagine real world military contractors behaving that way.

Obviously some of the differences are based on differences in enemies and technology, but I am having trouble finding similarities between mercenaries in our world and Claymores. I'd appreciate if you could point out some of these similarites that seem so obvious to you.

[Anh_Minh]

Here's how I think Claymore classes happen. Be warned that it's all guesswork based on a remark that Helen and Deneve were in the same class, and the Black Card chapter, so take it all with a grain of salt. And a manga line stating Theresa was part of the 77th class, warrior 182.

Shortly after they come to the Organisation, Claymore trainees are grouped in "classes". Those classes train together and live together. At one point they "graduate", become full Claymores, "ready" to be assigned an area. But they're not. They're put on stand by somewhere, waiting for one of the 47 active Claymores to die or awaken. Then, they're sent on the field.

I put "ready" between quotes earlier because really they're not. They're directly sent to an area on their own instead of being assigned to a veteran Claymore who could teach them the ropes, so the mortality rate for newly assigned Claymores is very, very high. They don't know all the tricks youmas will use, they haven't learnt to trust their senses yet, and information isn't communicated as well as it should, even when it's not secret... For example, the distinction between offensive and defensive Claymores, or the new policy regarding Awakened Beings in vol 12, or a precise description of Awakened Beings and how they differ from normal youmas...

I'd say that in addition to all the trainees who don't even make it to graduation, most Claymores don't survive their first few missions. Which is why there can be hundreds of Claymores in a single class, while there are only 47 active Claymores at any one time. It also means that, among those 47, there are many classes represented, and a Claymore will only have a handful of classmates, making their bond rare and special. It's quite possible that with Elena, Clare killed the last of her classmates. Or that Helen and Deneve are the last survivors of theirs.


It'd be nice if we could tell how much time passes between the formation of successive classes. It'd help establish the age of the organisation. But there's no clue. Don't believe Wikipedia's 7 years, it came out of nowhere. And there could have been many classes between Theresa's graduation and her demise, and between her demise and Clare's graduation.

If it's one year per class, that would put Theresa's graduation (and I think they must have sent her on the field shortly after that... why wait, since she was so great?) roughly 80 years after the beginning. Add to that the length of her career, and however long it's been since she died... The Organisation could be as young as 100 years old.

[TinyRedLeaf]

The Claymore warriors, from what we can see, are essentially mercenaries hired by isolated towns to kill random Youma.

Other than that, we have very little information about other military forces in the WoC. As others have written, what few forces that do exist are confined mainly within individual towns and cities, such as the soldiers of Rabonna. So, as usual, I turn to real-world precedents for the Organisation, as presented in Claymore. I would have preferred to compile my own notes from various sources, but lacking the time to do so, I'll just paraphrase from Wikipedia instead. Accuracy is therefore not fully guaranteed. :heh:

But oh well, this is meant for fleshing a fictional world anyway, so accuracy is not strictly necessary in the first place, haha. This info might still be useful for those who are looking for resources to build their own world for role-playing purposes. :)

Swiss mercenaries (Reisläufer)

Swiss mercenaries were soldiers notable for their service in foreign armies, especially the armies of the Kings of France, from the Later Middle Ages into the Age of the European Enlightenment. Their proven battlefield capabilities made them the most sought-after mercenaries of the time.

Entire ready-made Swiss mercenary contingents could be obtained by simply contracting with the various Swiss cantons. The Swiss also hired themselves out individually or in small bands.

Swiss mercenary units were deployed in deep pike columns that also contained halberdiers. They usually relied on a straightforward steamroller assault that would crush lesser infantry in close combat and were invulnerable to the effects of a cavalry charge. However, they were vulnerable to firearms if they could be immobilized.

Until roughly 1490, the Swiss had a virtual monopoly on pike-armed mercenary service. However, after that date, the Swiss mercenaries were increasingly supplemented by imitators, chiefly the Landsknechts.


Landsknechts

Landsknechts were European, most often German, mercenary pikemen and supporting foot soldiers from the late 15th to the late 16th century, and achieved the reputation for being the universal mercenary of the European Renaissance.

They were formed in conscious imitation of Swiss mercenaries, and eventually contributed to the defeat of the redoubtable Swiss, whose battle formations, overly-dependent on hand-to-hand fighting, became vulnerable to the increased fire power of arquebus and artillery.

The majority of Landsknechts would use pikes, but others, meant to provide tactical assistance to the pikemen, accordingly used different weapons. For example, an experienced Landsknecht could wield a zweihänder (a two-handed sword as long as six feet) instead of wielding a pike as did more recent recruits. These great war swords could be used to hack off the heads of enemy pikes; or more likely to knock the pikes aside, creating disorder among the tightly arranged enemy pikemen in order to break through their lines.

Other Landsknechts would use the arquebus, the precursor to the musket. When the Landsknechts were first formed, arquebusiers composed up to an eighth of the total number of soldiers, but the number gradually grew to be about a quarter.


Early firearms

Despite the proven armour-penetration capability of early firearms such as arquebuses or muskets, they were also very inaccurate, slow-loading, and susceptible to damp conditions. In other words, they were of very limited tactical use in fast-paced battle.



On a closing note, has anyone noticed the lack of domesticated animals in WoC, other than the occasional horse and donkey?

Just curious. Of course, it could simply be that the mangka was too lazy to draw them, but I'm entertaining the speculation that there may have been alternative ways to detect youki other than with Claymore warriors. ;)

[NoSanninWa]

I'm not sure why you want to compare Claymores to mercenaries. The job they do is totally different. Mercenaries are hired to fight against foreign military units or to provide secuity for a location. In either case the thinking is as a group.

By contrast, Claymores are hired to hunt and execute single individuals. While they might work as a group to fight Awakened Ones, they obviously aren't trained for it. Even in a group they still think and fight as individuals.

[TinyRedLeaf]

It depends on how broadly you define the term "mercenary". :)

Broadly speaking, a mercenary is simply a soldier who fights for any country or group that pays them. The Claymores certainly fit in this definition, even if they do not fight in the mass formations of historical mercenaries.

For a world that seems severely lacking in professional military forces, the Claymores are quite possibly the only soldiers that any community can turn to in times of trouble, albeit in this case, for the narrow purpose of Youma eradication only. As presented in the anime and the manga, this seems to be the only security threat that individual towns face, other than human banditry.

[dxanato]

In the Paradise City arc of the story we saw Soldier and Guard quite able to fight. The only problem is the fact they can't really tell who or what Yoma may look like. This is a bit of a monopoly the Organization has going. You can compare to Terminix who kill bug here in the states. The Organization does the same for their world for price course.

[Amirali]

It is weird.

If they had kingdoms, I'm sure that each castle/kingdom/fief would have 3-5 Claymores stationed there round the year and they get deployed from there as requests come in from the populace. But then, the girls would be paid for in terms of being 'rentals' than say 'free lance'. And then it would be easier for rival teams to spring up...and the chance that a kingdom would attempt to utilize the Claymore for their own purposes.
Not to mention that a Claymore might get too attached to anything other than the Org.

That does remind me.............where do the Claymores go in between requests? From what I've seen in the anime, they're always going from town to town killing yoma or Awakened Ones. If they have time off, do they just stay in the wilderness? How are the claymores organized to police each area? Also, how does the organization pass the requests to the Claymores so fast? I know that a handler follows each Claymore, but that still leaves the question, how does the organization communicate with the handler so quickly?
If someone could bring in example of military communication networks in medieval times, and how patrolling soldiers would be deployed to police a large area that could shed a lot of light on the issue.




If I could be allowed to imagine further, my preferred real-world analogy would be Huns that came from East, and thundered down towards Western Europe, leaving utter devastation in its wake.
I'll leave it at that for the moment. Make what you will of my suggested angles for further field research. ;)

What I was hoping to see more of on this thread is speculation about the geography of Claymore, similar to what Tiny Red Leaf suggested. How large is this world? The only empirical evidence we have is:

1) The number of areas/Claymores (47)
2) The time taken to travel between different parts of the continent for various campaigns/missions(I haven't read manga so don't know whether the number of days is explicitly mentioned or at least indicated)
3) The time it generally takes to respond to a yoma request.
4) Claymores don't seem to march exceptionally quickly on regular patrol. We know this because Clare was able to keep up with Teresa, and Raki with Clare. The handlers are also (generally) able to keep pace. Their marching speed could probably be approximated as equal to(and not more than) some of the fastest infantry in earth's history. This could help in calculation.

[Anh_Minh]

That does remind me.............where do the Claymores go in between requests? From what I've seen in the anime, they're always going from town to town killing yoma or Awakened Ones. If they have time off, do they just stay in the wilderness? How are the claymores organized to police each area? Also, how does the organization pass the requests to the Claymores so fast? I know that a handler follows each Claymore, but that still leaves the question, how does the organization communicate with the handler so quickly?
If someone could bring in example of military communication networks in medieval times, and how patrolling soldiers would be deployed to police a large area that could shed a lot of light on the issue.

My guess is that all their money is used to maintain hundreds of carrier pigeons.

And maybe some kind of pony express for the handlers.

[dxanato]

4) Claymores don't seem to march exceptionally quickly on regular patrol. We know this because Clare was able to keep up with Teresa, and Raki with Clare. The handlers are also (generally) able to keep pace. Their marching speed could probably be approximated as equal to(and not more than) some of the fastest infantry in earth's history. This could help in calculation.

Well we got a couple events that may say otherwise.

1) Clare late arrival for the male awaken hunt. Clare got there a week late. It would only mean that Clare got slow down by having to stop many time to let Raki sleep and eat. Claymore doesn't need to do rest or eat to often. Claymore can travel almost none stop between city by the fact they don't need to stop.

2) Clarice travel to north. She maybe the close Claymore to human and her late arrival can also prove that that Claymore who true 50% can travel unhindered therefor able to travel faster.

3) Clare late arrival to Ophelia and Clare awake hunt. Clare arrival very late mainly cause she want to leave Raki at save city but none where good place or safe for Raki.

Teresa and Clare both had weak spot for kids. They may not had shown it but were well aware they were been follow. They both slow down to make sure they took care of individual who travel with them. Clare even make sure Raki had a room before she is to leave for the male awaken hunt. Their concern for their well been can be hinder that is not common for other Claymore in traveling long distance.

I guess knowing that cause Raki and human Clare require time to sleep and eat and it taking week worth of travel something the size of Australia or Europe would be a fair comparison. This course just my opinion base solely that something the size of Asia, Africa would take much longer time to travel.

[Amirali]

Teresa and Clare both had weak spot for kids. They may not had shown it but were well aware they were been follow. They both slow down to make sure they took care of individual who travel with them. Clare even make sure Raki had a room before she is to leave for the male awaken hunt. Their concern for their well been can be hinder that is not common for other Claymore in traveling long distance.

I guess knowing that cause Raki and human Clare require time to sleep and eat and it taking week worth of travel something the size of Australia or Europe would be a fair comparison. This course just my opinion base solely that something the size of Asia, Africa would take much longer time to travel.

Thanks for correcting me about the distances. Hmm........a week's hiking, and that too at a human pace (so that Raki could keep up). I think 50-60 miles a day is a pretty fair estimate of how much hiking raki could manage(someone plz correct me if that's off) Then that's around 350-400 miles in a week? Of course, they didn't travel from one edge of continent to other, but that's still much smaller than Europe or Australia. If anyone has hiking experience, or some sort of firsthand experience of how long it takes to cover these magnitude of distances by foot, that would give us a much clearer idea.

[dxanato]

Do not discount the harsh environment that this to location have. All path are never a straight line either. Remember the human Clare near fell to her dead and Raki pass out walking in dessert like environment. I know for now day we can consider hundred of miles in hours but honestly even in medieval time it took days to cover vast land in Europe. The forest and mountain range make for harsh land to travel. Roman where amount the first to build road to speed travel but even then it still was slow compare to our own travel speed we have now.

You almost must remember that path that Clare and Teresa took may not have been the fast but safe route to travel. Claymore can have many short cuts that would not be safe for human travel. We only know of Yoma but in the Manga reference are made of while animals in the forest.

This course is all subjective anyways the area that Claymore would be large as one the state in the USA or small as county in the US. I am sure only the author know how larger he would want his world to be.

[Kinematics]

What I was hoping to see more of on this thread is speculation about the geography of Claymore, similar to what Tiny Red Leaf suggested. How large is this world? The only empirical evidence we have is:

1) The number of areas/Claymores (47)
2) The time taken to travel between different parts of the continent for various campaigns/missions(I haven't read manga so don't know whether the number of days is explicitly mentioned or at least indicated)
3) The time it generally takes to respond to a yoma request.
4) Claymores don't seem to march exceptionally quickly on regular patrol. We know this because Clare was able to keep up with Teresa, and Raki with Clare. The handlers are also (generally) able to keep pace. Their marching speed could probably be approximated as equal to(and not more than) some of the fastest infantry in earth's history. This could help in calculation.

We also know that in general they don't need to rest much. Clare arrived at Raki's town after 3 straight days of travel. While Earth infantry might get 10 hours of marching in per day after packing up in the morning and setting camp for the night, a Claymore pretty much has the full 24 hours for up to about a week(?). Basic marching speed is around 2 miles per hour. A fast walk is about 4. Going with 2, that means they can easily move about 50 miles (80 km) per day. With Raki or chibi-Clare in tow, Clare and Teresa won't be moving that fast (total travel per day), though.

When Clare arrived at Raki's town, she said she'd been travelling for 3 days. 150 miles (240 km) is around the distance between New Orleans and Mobile (a couple large cities near me), a bit less than the width of a single average-ish state. A week's travel (350 miles/560 km) would be about the length of a state. Thus my impression has been that each Claymore's territory is around the size of an average US state. With 47 territories (and none of those territories being tiny like the states in the northeast US, or overly large like California or Texas), plus a section of the continent in the east being a wasteland, I would guess that the continent that they occupy is around the size of North America (maybe not as much in the far north/Canada and south/Mexico ends).

[Kinematics]

Regarding Anh_Minh's speculations on class sizes:

In volume 3 of the manga, Teresa is referred to as the 77th generation Claymore, warrior #182. There are two ways to interpret that: either she's the 182nd candidate in her class (and thus classes are very large and weeded out rapidly), or she's the 182nd Claymore candidate, period, over 77 generations (in which case there are about 2.4 Claymores per generation). The latter seems to fit certain information better than the former.

First: Clare + Elena -- Elena is known as Clare's only friend. In the anime flashback, there is no indication of anyone else nearby; they are in an isolated cell (with the other cells around them appearing empty), and seem desperately alone together.

Second: The lack of familiarity with the other Claymores of the organization. Clare knows nothing about the top 5 Claymores, and Helen and Deneve appear equally unenlightened when Miria provides that information. Likewise, Galatea appears to know almost nothing about the group that she's observing.

If there were very large classes, you'd expect a fair bit of familiarity with a large number of other Claymores, as more information would be shared among all of the classmates, and certainly the 'top' Claymores should be known. On the other hand, if Clare and Elena were the only two from their 'generation', there is no particular reason for them to be aware of the other active Claymores.

The Organization does not appear to have a very large staff. There are personal agents for each Claymore, though it's possible each one may serve multiple Claymores. The staff necessary to produce and train 182+ Claymores within a single class run, plus supervise them after graduation, would be enormous. I do not get the impression that they could pull that off.

Given a production rate of 2.4 Claymores per generation, I would expect a generation to be 1 year, as it's likely that a couple Claymores die each year; that would allow them to maintain a fairly steady population. If the generation period was longer, it would take them too long to replenish from any significant population reduction (such as what happened around Priscilla).


So, given all that, it appears that the Organization is fairly small and tightly controlled. Producing just a few Claymores per year (where it's probable that some occasionally die in the process) is all they can manage (or perhaps, all they need). A small organization also lends itself better to keeping secrets. If they elders are in fact not really human anymore (quite probable), they're probably not very inclined to bringing in enough new people to manage a larger organization either.

[Anh_Minh]

Nah... The organisation buys all the orphan girls it can get its hands on. That's a lot more than two a year.

So IMO, there are big classes, and very few survivors.

As I said, they either die while still training, or within the first few missions. But yeah, I agree that among the 47, there are very few of any given class.

[Amirali]

. Thus my impression has been that each Claymore's territory is around the size of an average US state. With 47 territories (and none of those territories being tiny like the states in the northeast US, or overly large like California or Texas), plus a section of the continent in the east being a wasteland, I would guess that the continent that they occupy is around the size of North America (maybe not as much in the far north/Canada and south/Mexico ends).

True, but then there are "wilderness" areas where there aren't any human settlers, and hence no claymores assigned there. Adding those back in, you could say the north america analogy is even better.

not really a spoiler, but just in case:
Hmm.......all this suggests to me that Claymores + organization would be at an immense tactical disadvantage against Awakened ones. 47 claymores are pretty thinly spread around the continent...........it would probably take several weeks to collect them together (at minimum, a couple of weeks). On the other hand, a winged awakened one like priscilla (or even one that can run very fast, in a horse like form for instance) could get from one side of continent to other in 4-6 days.The potential for flanking; attacking on mltiple fronts etc is immense.........they'd run circles around claymores (although given their strength, they really don't need to)

[Kinematics]

Brought over from thoughts on general population made in the Biology of Claymores thread, since it's really more appropriate over here.

Doing a little working backwards and forwards for this. Obviously speculation, but I tried to work in both directions to make sure the numbers at least made sense.

Anh predicted a total human population of 450 mil. I'm going to use 470 mil so that I can put 10 mil per territory.

First, in a medieval setting, about 90% of the population is rural. That means a total city population of about 1 mil per territory, and 9 mil rural. If we take the useable continental size to be about the size of the US (per previous speculation), with the east coast non-useable, but adding some in from Canada and Mexico, we can do a rough comparison on population distribution.

The US has a population of about 300 million. That means Anh's speculated population is already 50% more than modern US. Further, the reference he uses is for the entire world population, not European population. At the height of the European population boom before the bubonic plague and other issues, the population in Europe is estimated to be around 70-100 million.

Typical mid-sized states in the US currently have a population in the 2-8 million range, with 5 million fairly common. A total continental population that had 10 million per territory would be more populous than some of the densely populated mid-sized states. This does not seem likely.

Extremely rural states such as North and South Dakota, or Montana, have populations of under 1 million each.

The cities and towns seen so far indicate a population density appropriate to middle-ages Europe, not more densely packed such as you might see in China, which would have lent itself to higher total population levels. Towns are also population clusters, with long distances between them, rather than largely spread out single households. That was typical in medieval Europe for issues of safety and community. Thus we would not expect a large source of the population to be isolated out in farmsteads and the like.

From all of this, I would postulate that the proposal of the Claymore continent's population to be near 450 million to be wildly overestimated. It may conceivably be possible for the entire world population, but since we know only of the activities on a single continent, such speculation is meaningless.



So what sort of population distribution might we be able to expect? Well, we know we have at least 3 general sizes of cities: small villages such as Raki's home town; mid-size towns such as where Raki woke up after his trip across the desert, and a few other examples across the series; and large cities such as Rabona. I would tentatively classify their probable populations as 1000, 5000, and 50,000. It's also possible that there are some major metropolises (equivalent of London, Paris or Venice), but we haven't seen them yet.

I could see anywhere from 2 to 5 large cities per territory, due to how much general space each city plus supporting towns would need. Each city is likely connected to a dozen towns, and each town to a couple dozen villages. That would put the territorial population at about 400,000 per large city.

4 large cities per territory would put the continental population at about 75 million, close to a high-end medieval Europe (which is physically smaller than the US, but also more densely populated, city-wise). For the given tech level, I find this total population far more believable.


With the stable 50/1000 birth/death rate Anh used, that's 80,000 deaths per year per territory spread across 1200 cities/towns/villages.

Yoma incidents appear to be rather rare. The elder of Raki's village had never encountered a Claymore before, and all the villagers appear to be very superstitious of these creatures that they had heard about but never seen (silver-eyed witches). Combined with the high economic cost of hiring a Claymore which would likely bankrupt a village if they had to hire them very often, it seems quite possible that any single village is unlikely to encounter a yoma more than once every 10 years or so, maybe even as long as 20.

With 1200 communities per territory, that would work out to 60-120 yoma incidents per year, and give a single Claymore 1-2 incidents per week to resolve. That seems very much in line with the pace that things seem to proceed at.


Each incident will involve multiple deaths. In the manga on Clare's second assignment, 27 people were killed by 5 yoma in a month. I would guess that there were at least 10 deaths (including guards) in Rabona to make Father Vincent that desperate to call in the Organization. And then there are massacres such as the town Ilena/Sophia/Noel/Priscilla cleared out. Overall I would guess an average of at least 10 deaths per incident.

That would make 600-1200 deaths per year due to yoma. Since there are likely also numerous deaths where the yoma was never caught (yoma in bandit territory, or just constantly travelling), I'll bump the total up to 1600 per year, which makes 1 death per 1000 living humans due to yoma, and an overall death rate of 2% caused by yoma (as far as immediately visible causes go). For comparison, that's the same percentage of deaths as modern-day car accidents.

If the civilization as a whole is healthier (lower birth/death rate to maintain a stable population), then the percentage of deaths caused by yomas each year would be proportionally higher.


If each incident averages out to 2 yoma killed, and we take the lower number of incidents (60), that's 120 yoma killed per year per territory. If we again take a stable birth/death rate of 50/1000, that means each territory houses a yoma population of around 2400. If each of those eats 30 people per year, that's 72,000 people killed by yoma each year per territory. Unfortunately that doesn't jive, since there are only 80,000 deaths total.

If one quarter of all deaths are due to yoma, that puts the total yoma population at about 700 per territory. That would mean one sixth of all yoma are being killed each year. If they had a reproductive rate capable of compensating for that, the human population would have been overwhelmed long before the Organization showed up.

Further, with even just 700 per territory, the number of incidents per year should be far higher than indicated above. The only conclusion I have is that there must be a very low, stable yoma population (probably no more than 200-300 per territory) that do not reproduce or maintain that population through standard methods, and have a maturity period of no more than 2-3 years.

Pretty much anything with a strong yoki presense should be senseable by someone like Galatea. Therefore it's unlikely to be a yoma production factory, yoma being born from the fruit of some unnatural tree (cf: Twelve Kingdoms), or communities of yoma making babies. It may conceivably be some sort of dimensional rift, but that explanation has other problems.

Another wildly speculative possibility is that the yoma are spiritual/supernatural creatures at heart, and killing the body just releases the spirit to be reborn elsewhere, maintaining the population.


That's enough for now, I think

[Anh_Minh]

I agree that 450 millions is a lot. I gave ideas to bring that number down.

However, I disagree on the estimation of the size of the Claymore continent. We simply have no way of knowing how big it is.

We know a Claymore may have to march two or three weeks between missions, but does that really represent the size of her territory? Or just a small part? Or does she actually cross boundaries to pick up the slack of another who hasn't been replaced yet or is away on a team thing?


Also, ten deaths per accident seems rather high. Rabona was exceptional. In the case of a single yoma... They eat once every other week. Give it three deaths before they call the Claymore, another one while she's on her way... That's four. Some stuff will bring up the average (like youmas working in groups, or Awakened Beings, but ten seems rather high.)



If one quarter of all deaths are due to yoma, that puts the total yoma population at about 700 per territory. That would mean one sixth of all yoma are being killed each year. If they had a reproductive rate capable of compensating for that, the human population would have been overwhelmed long before the Organization showed up.

Not necessarily. They'd just have needed some self-regulation mechanism. (Like killing each other for territory, or having a low birthrate when resources (ie, human population) were low.)

[dxanato]

I got another though about this world of Claymore. I guess this shown a bit more in the anime than the Manga but just about every inn they stay has room services. Even crappy inn offer room service. I wish more inn/hotel in out world would take a page from them.

[AVPlaya]

I like the theory of a medieval city-state model. There are no kingdoms but each city more or less govern and police themselves. It's also similar to ancient Greece. The rural townships hire arms for hire to beat off bandits and Claymores to fight off Yoma.

I think the Org is like a secret organization with actual power in this world. They seemed to have designed the world in their own liking and want to keep it this way.

My own theory on Claymores is that both them and Yomas are something created by the Org. Yomas are released periodically to terrorize the population and keep them scared and decentralized, while on the other hand they send out Claymores to collect "protection" money as a form of taxation. It's a very classic Mafia Model of underground economics. This model ensures that they're always in control, and that everyone pay them taxes voluntarily without complaints.

But the chink in the Orgs armor are Awaken ones; they are powerful and they no longer listen to the Org. Not sure why they started to organize - was it to overthrow the org or to dominate the other Awaken Kings? Maybe a bit of both...

[Amirali]

But the chink in the Orgs armor are Awaken ones; they are powerful and they no longer listen to the Org. Not sure why they started to organize - was it to overthrow the org or to dominate the other Awaken Kings? Maybe a bit of both...

Hmm..........or perhaps the awakened beings are secretly in cahoots with the Organization, and the main purpose of the claymores is to have the powerful ones periodically awaken and become evil? Sorry to all those offended by reckless speculation.

[Hypernova]

A large population require a matching infrastructure to support them. Given how these people live a rather medieval way of life and value total population shouldn't be more then 100mil. From their view of claymores and what not they don't appear to have sufficient medical tech to maintain high population density given that we don't see any form of sewage or running water. Which would increase rate of disease.

We can pretty much assume that the lowest populated unit is the town, we seen from Raki's case that strong as a yoma it didn't just go wipe out the town. The only case where we see that is when we had 5 of them together. Thus we can say that the average yoma can be taken down by enough men in a town say 30~50. By extension anyone living in farms would get wiped out as they lack the critical population density to have safety in numbers. This also puts a limit on food production as the only land usable are those close to town thus putting a limit on supportable population. And indeed most of the land we see in the anime don't have any signs of human presence.

[AVPlaya]

Hmm..........or perhaps the awakened beings are secretly in cahoots with the Organization, and the main purpose of the claymores is to have the powerful ones periodically awaken and become evil? Sorry to all those offended by reckless speculation.

It's possible but I don't see how that will help the Org for people to know there are super-powerful beings the Orgs can't beat or control. I believe their true identity is hidden from the public, right? BTW not offended in the least..

Which raised another question by me... The Awaken Ones are really powerful Yomas the Orgs can't control. How did they control all those powerful Claymores? They perfectly loyal until the org betrays them; not a single one wanted to overthrow or destroy the org until they've awakend. Any of the single number Claymore can wipe out the entire Org and take over the Yoma Extortion Business, but they don't. If a Claymore learned all of the Org's methods, they don't really need those ugly men. They are the real power of the Org... or are they?

Maybe the Org is more powerful than we think... but if that's the case why do they need the Special Twin model Claymore to defend themselves against the invading Awaken Army? If they are not THAT powerful why don't some of the powerful and smart single number Claymores like Teresa just take over? Mind control? Hypnotism? Why do they need those greedy, selfish, murderous MEN? There sure are a lot of secret yet answered in this world.

[khryoleoz]

That's an interesting question. We can probably guess that the org exercises a form of psychological control to assert their will over their warriors and get them to comply. If the psychology of Claymores are not too different from or are even identical to humans', then we can make pretty accurate assessments by sheer inferences from human psychology.

Granted, we don't know what kind of living entities comprise the executive body of the org. If they're human, then they are by nature weaker than their warriors. Because their world, just like our own, is ruled by the strong, they need some power that is solely and exclusively at their disposal that gives them leverage. And this power is essential in order for them to exert reciprocal consequences to any action of a Claymore that is at variance to their expressed will to whatever degree, even only if they must operate on the theory that they will never have 100% of their warriors in complete obedience producing perfectly accurate work.

I don't quite buy the mercenary parallelism to the Claymore vocation. By definition, a mercenary is distinguished from a soldier in that he works in a military capacity for pay. It could be that as social pariahs, money would be of no value to them. But either way, with the variety of Claymore's we've met and of the few whose motivations we learn about, I have yet to recall one who fits the bill of mercenary.

[Mord]

You should remember that most did not become claymores willingly. Clare is probably the closest to an actual mercenary, while the others are more like slaves forced to act as mercenaries.

Clare willingly went to the organization so that she could accomplish her various goals, and as far as the readers knowledge goes, she is the only one that has willing joined the organization.

Also while they may not have much use for money, we have seen on a few occasions that at the very least they have quite a bit. As a child Clare was worried about the cost of the clothing that Teresa had bought her, and later on Clare left Raki with a quite a bit of money which prompted him to take up three bars and say that it would be more then enough for a week.

[Echoes]

I image they carry a certain amount of money with them at all times, to pay for certain living expenses (not that they have many) along the way. It would also make sense that the organization would promote a "better safe than sorry" policy, and make sure all Claymores keep some money with them in case of emergencies and such.

[Amirali]

I don't quite buy the mercenary parallelism to the Claymore vocation. By definition, a mercenary is distinguished from a soldier in that he works in a military capacity for pay. It could be that as social pariahs, money would be of no value to them. But either way, with the variety of Claymore's we've met and of the few whose motivations we learn about, I have yet to recall one who fits the bill of mercenary.

Over here, I'm relying more on fantasy novels than actual history, so if anyone has more specific information please share it. Just because an organization is mercenary/materiaistic, that doesn't mean the relation between its members and the organization is also so.

I've read novels where a mercenary band has a materialistic/monetary relation with their clients, carrying out jobs for the highest bidder and such. However, the members of the band themselves weren't loyal to their leaders just for a paycheque........rather they were loyal because a) they were grateful to their organization for looking after them or b) out of a sense of comradery or c) out of ideology to some organization philosophy or d) some combination of the above. Take example of berserk........Guts was loyal to Griffin and the mercenary Band of hawk, even though the money was never important to himself. Other Band of Hawk members were different of course which is why this isn't the best analogy, but I hope it helps illustrate my point that you could have a mercenary organization with nonmercenary members :p.

So my claim:
Nature of Org relation with Villlages = mercenary
Nature of Org leadership relation with Claymores = loyalty , gratitude , ?
Overall nature of Org + claymores = mercenary group.

[Echoes]

I see your point, however...
If Claymores are not allowed to leave the organization, and have to work for them basically until the end of time, I would consider it more of a slave organization.

For instance, Irene got killed for simply leaving the organization, and it's obvious that the organization enforces strict rules of conduct.

[Panzerklein]

Of couse, Org don't want to deserted Claymore become free protector for human or turn into enemy of Org and to keep the secrets of Org.

My opinion, Org is an Underground organization to make profit and control the world for them own. I think that because, if a town don't pay for Org after a mission, a large of Yomas will come and destroy that town after a few days. It see Yoma have a good organization and a good intelligent like CIA (they know which is the town have no protection in a short time and lauch an attack).

[khryoleoz]

So my claim:
Nature of Org relation with Villlages = mercenary
Nature of Org leadership relation with Claymores = loyalty , gratitude , ?
Overall nature of Org + claymores = mercenary group.

You just had to pick an example rich in complexities. :) The Berserk analysis is all true. I'll respond to the points with which I have contention for now.

The first thing we must do is agree to a definition of the word mercenary. The definitions given by the dictionary permit for something as broad as any hireling. Many times arguments fall apart when we fall into the trap of equivocation, where the meaning of the word changes however slightly as we advance propositions. If we are to define the word along the conditions for which the Band of the Hawk would satisfactorily be called such, then the Organization does not meet the conditions.

Here are some contrasts.

1) BotH was a private military outfit, employed by nations for the purpose of waging war against other opposing nations. The Org by its origin and apparent purpose is security sans civic police, or crudely put highly advanced pest extermination.

2) BotH itself had a clearly identified, departmentalized internal organization of its members and definite leaders appointed charge. Guts commanded the Raiders. Caska, Corkus commanded their own separate companies with specific purposes. All are subordinated under the general leadership of Griffith, who by federal representation accepts the mission that the King bestows upon him. With one sole exception, members are recruited voluntarily, and throughout their careers rewarded stature (and presumably financial increase) depending on quality of performance and/or merited favor (the two are separate but may have a causality relationship). This at least potentially can foster loyalty among its members. They bear semblance to a military unit by their organizational structure, and they functioned in a military capacity operating in military affairs. In other words, they were mercenaries until their formal induction to the kingdom as its army.
On the other hand, the Org seems to target candidates whose lives are broken by the pests it's meant to exterminate, and acquired for conditioning. The Org ranks its "warriors" according to demonstrable power or a shift of balance therein, regardless of meritorious acts in missions, which at most earn pardons for any other rules broken. If one is really strong, she is told to awaken in the hope of turning back, then branded devil if she doesn't but is left alone only because they can't own her ass yet. Groups are organized in simple terms, a mix of high and low rankers and the highest ranked leads. This organizing seems often improvised and developed depending on whether it is the AB or the group members that need to be whacked. Ultimately, its warriors are aware of their dismal fates that mark the end of their careers. Consequently, the Org can more easily breed dissenters. Echoes' call seems more accurate, in that it is a slave trade organization. Rubel hints at this in a somewhat incriminating way when he explains to Clare that Raki was captured by such and contrasts what happens between orphaned boys (who are taken to the north) and girls (who are taken east). Makes me wonder where the Org headquarters happens to be located, given that the North, West, and South are territories occupied by those of the Abyss.

My summation [yes, more math], Org^Claymores = sweat shop (specializing in pest control). Otherwise, Teresa whom I adore would be wearing a medal, instead of being judged so inequitabily for vindicating human justice!

[Amirali]

You just had to pick an example rich in complexities. :) The Berserk analysis is all true. I'll respond to the points with which I have contention for now.

The first thing we must do is agree to a definition of the word mercenary. The definitions given by the dictionary permits for something as broad as any hireling. Many times arguments fall apart when we fall into the trap of equivication, where the meaning of the word changes however slightly as we advance propositions. If we are to define the word along the conditions for which the Band of the Hawk would satisfactorily be called such, then the Organization does not meet the conditions.

Echoes' call seems more accurate, in that it is a slave trade organization.

My summation [yes, more math], Org^Claymores = sweat shop (specializing in pest control). Otherwise, Teresa whom I adore would be wearing a medal, instead of being judged so inequitabily for vindicating human justice!


Some of my thoughts below. I beg pardon if I retread ground that Echoes and khryolez have covered:

1)Nice work with the BotH and Claymore contrast; it brings out some key differences between a conventional mercenary org and the organization............the primary one I see being that initial membership in one is voluntary, in the other it isn't as you rightly point out. Also, the hierarchy of the Claymore org is more akin to slave labour.........you have the Men in black controlling the soldiers from afar, instead of say, having leading claymores appointed as captains and generals with eventual promotion offered to highest level of org. (And that would be an interesting show in itself, to see claymores organized in that manner). Calling the org a sweat-shop is charitable, considering that most people join a sweat shop join of their own free will, unlike the Claymores.

2) The fact that the org has strict rules seems reasonable; many militant groups punish deserters with death for example. Same goes for punishing killing humans like Teresa did..........regardless of whether the act was justified or not, she had fair warning in advance of the law, and the org doesn't want to go around picking fights with humans unnecessarily(be they lawful citizens or large bandit groups). A soldier who doesn't obey orders or breaks rules is a liability. Also, the Org is arguably justified in taking out Claymores who have awakened or are even very near-awakening , like Clare and co. If the Org hadn't sent Galatea after Clare , she'd have been awakened by Riful easily.
Every specific action that the Org has taken against its Claymores could be debated as a necessary step that many reasonable, if not idealistic, mercenary organizations might take. Its the general approach and hierarchy of the Org that strikes me as cruel ; the way they slave recruit Claymores as children and give them no authority or reward for their services. (P.S: Its a common practice in some African conflicts to recruit child soldiers, as they're more loyal and more easily brainwashed)


3) I think we're all agreed, barring some minor differences, on the role of the Org viz a viz its clients. They're mercenaries, private security force or whatever other term we may call them..........its clear what they do: provide some limited security services, in terms of undertaking missions, for money.

[Bikerider]

So I saw in the Anime during the Slashers arc: Helen says there are 47 claymores, one for each area on the Contenant. Single. A contenant. Now later on in chapter 50
Rubel says the orphans from the contenants: plural, are gathered up. Girls sent East and Boys sent North.

That tells me that there are more than one contenant on the Claymore world. AND humans live on more than one. BUT, Youma seem to be on only one. This one where the Claymores are. That is unless, there are no Claymores on the other contenants to control Youma. I'm thinking the Youma are being erradicated one contenant at a time. This contenant being their last refuge. OR.. it could be the other way. They showed up first on this contenant and have yet to spread to the others. I'm thinking the later. This is because the organisation has not been around for long and there have not been many claymores created. I'm thinking if I lived on that world, I'd be more inclined to go to a youma free contenant.

[Claymorefans]

I have a question, is there any money that like bars in the history ?

[dutchman]

Hello all,

After watching ep. 18 2 times (raw and subbed) I suddenly noticed a possible meaning to the colored hilts of the claymores. In the manga it was of course never visible. But in the anime I think some already noticed this.

But in this episode with so many girls gathered it suddenly made sense.

It appears based on the day light scenes (in the dark / cave scenes it not good visible).

That :

Blue = meant for single digits , Miria, Jean en Flora all appear to have blue hilts

Red = Is not for rank but for the offensive type of claymores, you see Clare, Helen having red hilts.

Green = Defensive type of claymores you see Deneve, Veronica having green hilts.

A bit of a problem is Udine however .. she wears both colors...

What do you guys think does it make sense of is it just a coincidence?:heh:

I haven't gotten a good look at Ophelia's hilt since i don't posses those episodes. But it should be blue since she was also a single digit.

[TinyRedLeaf]

Ophelia's hilt was blue. She was Number 4, so....that's possibly why.


As for Undine's different coloured hilts.....well, one of the swords doesn't actually belong to her.

[Panzerklein]

A bit of a problem is Udine however .. she wears both colors...

What do you guys think does it make sense of is it just a coincidence?:heh:



You will know why Undine's second claymore have difference color after they defeat 3 awaken ones and her true form is amazing

[throrine]

i'm not sure if this is the right place for this.

This is on how yoma view us and why they act so human in their since of eating what taste good to them.

The yoma that had been abusing clare when she was a child. What was the reason for that? The towns folk even say that they knew the person abusing her was probably or definatly was a yoma but they were to afraid to do anything about it. Adleast that is what i recall i dont have the 1st episode anymore.

This could be a showing that some yoma have just as many emotions and bad habbit as humans do. Perhpas that yoma wanted to torture her in his down time. Maybe hes just a child abuser? Perhaps yoma view us as a souless race. Just as we view animals without souls ( adleast most ppl do imo). To them we are just something that looks tasty and depending upon the writers decition on perpetuating the species, a ends to a means for continuing the species

Perhaps human emotions are flavoring to yoma? A good reason for why the one who assulted raki in the beginging ( as his brother ) even bothered to tell him before attempting to eat raki. Raki began crying completly filled with devestation over what has happened. Perhaps thats a good taste for yoma?

[Davidj]

Based on what little I've seen I reach these conclusions:

1. The architecture may be medieval but the social order is not. There are no feudal lords, the religion is a Crystal Dragon Jesus polytheism, the towns appear to be be run by something like a town hall democracy or elected council, the holy city being an exception to the rule.

2. There are no magicians. The superpowers of yoki are the only powers they have that we don't and they are only really useful for biokinesis and certain kinds of extra-sensory perception.

3. They aren't as primitive as they look. However they combine yoma and human, it implies a far greater understanding of the biology of their foe than I'd expect from a mock-middle ages setting.

4. Yoma also appear to be the only alien lifeforms we see.

5. That there are only 47 patrol areas suggests to me that the humans live in a geographically limited area and aren't expanding. This could be because yoma predation is keeping humanity constrained. Or it could just be a small world after all.

[Bikerider]

I think that the men of the organisation: The leaders, handlers, teachers, are not humans and not Youma either. They may be a third race of beings: ones that are immortal.

[hollywoodlou]

I think that the men of the organisation: The leaders, handlers, teachers, are not humans and not Youma either. They may be a third race of beings: ones that are immortal.

I've asked this question in the Q & A thread as well: NOW, if you are a watcher and the amount of times you go around the countryside, day or night..."assisting" your Claymore with duties such as collecting $$, replacing uniforms etc>>

you increase your chances of being Yoma food. Yet, there has not been a recorded event of a watcher being fatally wounded by a yoma. The watchers have got to be NOT human. I mean, if I were Ophelia's watcher, I'd be scared of that nutcase.

[throrine]

well who really knows how strong they are.

here is my theory....

The organizations men are seemingly immortal, with enough time and practice you could learn to evade natural predators, and if you are infact immortal you could become very good at it. Scent maskers with certian perfumes and simply walking in such a way that your tracks are either unfallowable to a yoma of low intelegence or simply leave no tracks at all.

They could also be practice swords men for all we know. After all men are the main trainers for younger claymores as is my understanding. They probably have a number of claymores in researve to teach claymores after a certain age/level of training. So it isnt unresonable to say that a younge claymore is as strong as a normal yoma. I mean when the searious first started claire was kicking yoma ass and taking names. And shes supposidly the weakest of all claymores via her rank.

If the trainers or other men can adleast spare with them and survive they qualify to have a chance against a yoma.

Let us not forget that it would seem ( sence there is a lack of evidence in historical events in this animes world ) that before claymores arrived humans were defending themselvs against yoma. They obviously were succeding in enouch instances that the race didnt die out.

But considering how many humans to yoma kill ratio was ( id say 10humans to one yoma death adleast) they were slowly losing in numbers alone. So like all humans in a setting with a natrual predator they saught a way to make a weapon that could slay such beast with easy. ( gun for wild animals is a good example i think)

there is also the theory that the men in the organization are not human themselvs but immortal remnants from a high tech bioengineering program lost to time due to some cataclismic event. maybe androids or some other "monster". Going with this idea the yoma are their first creations, claymores second, and awakeneding beings could be a accident.

Or awakened beings could be the true weapon they were seeking. Much like the guyver story line, these beings went into battle constantly, actualy craving it. eventualy going insane and uncontrolable. Like the creatures that are spliced from animals or something in the guyver storyline, they were infact made to fight the guyvers but are obviously no where nearlty as effective.

hm... copyright infringment?

edit: i forgot to paste this in i dunno why. anyway i think this goes with what i am talking about here, i dunt beleave it is off topic.

what yoma are.

Now another theory is based on that this world ius actualy a world left over from a prosperous, war filled, high tech world. Where yoma are the bioengineered super weapon. They can devour human bodies entirely, leaving not but a puddle of blood ( i.e. hiding a body) if the brain is eaten they gain everything the person was, a perfect spy in that sence.
They can literaly change their form into either gender, perhaps showing that they favor no gender/have no gender, which would go with the idea that they are geneticly made and their for not ment to procreate naturaly. Later experiments lead to the discovery of how to make claymores and from that of course came awakened beings. Perhaps these creatures ravaged the world in rebellion against their masters? Its not like we havent seen this story before - battle star galactica . Its clasic and it works.

This would even go with a A sexual reproduction theory about yoma. Or perhaps like some frogs in real life, the yoma will adopted a gender in order to give birth. Maybe this is something their makers didnt want them to figure out but obviously there is no end to normal yoma in the world of claymore. Maybe the organization is making them, but there is also no proof of that. but it certaintly would make since if they wanted to have a bussiness/monopoly on the market.

another theory is that yoma are former male humans. Take note of what rubel said. "the north always needs new troops" Maybe this is in relation to a war being fought with another country over a mountain range or maybe it is in relation to a yoma breeding program in which men are infected with some sort of yoma'ness and become the normal gut eating yomas we have seen.

Another Subject. What are awakened beings

Well i dont think they are yoma or humans. Rather they are super human creatures. They have intellegence but their world is based around strength in arms/yoki/numbers. They remember everything about who they once were. They however know that they are no longer who that is. The organization has grained into their minds that awakeneding beings are monsters that need to be killed, being told that over a large portion of your life time, even after you've awakened can make you beleave it.

AB's see yoma as weak and annoyingly unreliable creatures. humans are even weaker than yoma, dont heal as fast, arnt as fast general and cannot fight as well. Adleast that is how they have seemed so far.

Isely and prisc certaintly seem to have made a friendship with raki. Though this may just be because prisc likes how he smells. or maybe they dont need to eat humans and see nothing wrong with having relationship with humans in general. With the time jump who knows what has developed.

[maian330]

If [a Claymore] is really strong, she is told to awaken in the hope of turning back, then branded devil if she doesn't but is left alone only because they can't own her ass yet.

Say wha? I don't recall the organization ever wanting Claymores to awaken except in its soul link experiments...

[Prongs]

I thought it was not competly medieval

1 it was noted on vol 1 that raki village have coalmine. I didn't have any Knowlegde about medieval state exept that coal mine is used on the dawn of Industrial age.

2 the orgs is somehow looks similar to CIA for me. that means they have managed SOP (Standar Operational Proccedures) that was resembles on the way they operate, claymore registry, the experiment division.

3 the prepanation operation is possible in Industrial age example a pirate false legs

that was brings me a conclusion that they were on the dawn of industrial age. and because there no kingdoms was noted on this manga that doesn't mean there aren't kingdoms. maybe in future we can found one of them. A AB's Kingdom maybe?

[Panzerklein]

Technology which be used to create Claymore maybe is a DNA techonoly of the lost world :).

[maian330]

Regarding Teresa being referred to as the 77th generation Claymore, warrior #182:

There's another explanation for that 182 number that hasn't been explored yet. Think of the Claymore symbols. How many of those symbols do you think they have total? I suspect that they recycle those symbols during the activation of a trainee (and the creation of a new sword). Suppose that each of these symbols was designated a number. Do you see what I'm getting at now? Teresa was merely assigned symbol 182, thus making her warrior 182. Kinda like NBA player numbers (IIRC).

[Kerin]

Hi everyone!
Iam working on 3D character of Miria in Max and I would need your help, Iam currently done with figure and now I need apply textures and cloth modifiers, but Iam kinda confused with Claymore armours, I can understand that shoulder pads and boots and bracers are from metal (also perhaps armour around waist), but rest is confusing, Iam not exactly sure about upper part of armour when they get rid of armour it almost look like satine pyjama *grins* But in another seqences it looks like some kind of sturdy leather breastplate , I would love any suggestion from you thanks!

[dutchman]

Hi everyone!
Iam working on 3D character of Miria in Max and I would need your help, Iam currently done with figure and now I need apply textures and cloth modifiers, but Iam kinda confused with Claymore armours, I can understand that shoulder pads and boots and bracers are from metal (also perhaps armour around waist), but rest is confusing, Iam not exactly sure about upper part of armour when they get rid of armour it almost look like satine pyjama *grins* But in another seqences it looks like some kind of sturdy leather breastplate , I would love any suggestion from you thanks!

Not sure if it helps. But you could use these pics as reference. They were posted on this site earlier.

http://www.koichan.net/mt/src/1187018540857.jpg and http://www.koichan.net/mt/src/1187018398933.jpg
Also it appears that what they are wearing under the armour is indeed some kind of skin tight pyjama (but hey I am not complaining) :p

[hamstar]

at this point in the manga the author can go in any direction if he wants to. A lot of animes have their plot start out as medieval or fantasy but take a turn for science fiction or post-apocalyptic toward the end.

I hope this isnt the case.

[Kerin]

Thanks Dutch! These are wonderfull ;)

[stormy001_M1A2]

The closest real life example to Claymore's world is 17th Central Germany where Protestant and Catholic nations fought for religious supremacy. The 30 years War involved powerful Hapsburg family which based on Spain opposed by Machiavellian Cardinal Rechieliu who is Catholic but decided that France must support Protestant small duchies in Germany and arrival of Sweden under command of Gustav Adolph, the Lion of North. At this point there is no singular nation state of Germany, it is consisted of polygot small kingdoms ruled by princes with not much political presence which quite close to Claymore's small governmental holdings and presence. There is Holy Roman Church in this time period which represented by Holy Rabonna Church in Claymore's world, a powerful but stand off political entity on its own.

After the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, 25 percent of German population were killed with 50 percent males were butchered. This war also saw ascension of early forms of PMCs (Private Military Contractor) like Wallenstein and Pappenheim which closely resembled top leaders of Claymore's Organization. We also saw mercenaries like Swiss pikemen, Zweihanders (closest warrior example to Claymore operators) . Italian crossbowmen and many more. They only fight when paid by their client, much like how Claymore operator is doing. Theresa said it blatantly, "You pay me to kill one Yoma, I will kill one despite I sensed there is 2 of them in this place. You want me to kill 2, then pay me to kill 2". One of the PMC general, Wallenstein grown to be so powerful that he personally equipped 30 - 40 percent of Catholic Army on his own expense and have strong influence on the warmaking policies of the Catholic cause, which resembled the deep influence of the Organization of Claymore in the story.

Weapon technology of Claymore is very impressive, the operator's sword never seem to break which suggested high level of metallurgy. In 17th century Europe, swordmaking technology also reached its zenith before it is superseded by gun technology.

Hence my early comment of Claymore operators reminded me of PMCs that we see now operating in Iraq and Afghanistan.

[Panzerklein]

May be season 2, 3 (if have), we will see Musket and Canon :D.

BTW, in real time, Highlander (Scotland) and Zweihander in Medival age, Berserker (Germania) in Roman age are scary two-hand swordman before guns show up their firepower. After invasion of Mongol Empire, Zweihander is ended slowly with Knights age and was replace by return of Regular Soldiers age which was lost after the fall of Roman Empire.

[Jenya]

I think that the watchers are analogs to male yomas (successful experiments on themselves). That would explain why other yomas don't sense and attack them.

I cannot speculate on origins of the organization, but it's clearly evil.
They could be aliens and combination of their blood with humans would produce yomas.

[chibamonster]

Good point Jenya. There must be a reason that the abyssals + lots of awakened + an army of youma haven't destroyed the organization. I think collectively they should be able to stand against it. Maybe it's just not an issue for most of them. They are pretty much loners anyway.

It would be twisted if the organizations men in black were the fathers of the youma race.

[kureshii]

Possibly. There must be a reason why none of the Claymores have tried to lay a hand on them yet.

But it's also confusing to speculate about their true intentions. I guess I'll just wait for further episodes + the manga to speculate.

I'm liking how contrast/bad luck seems to be a recurring theme. Case in point: Miria warns the Fab Four about the Top 5, and adds extra emphasis on one of them - guess who Clare meets next? And at Pieta, just after Flora comments on the raising of the group's combat potential and someone wishes for all to return safely, guess what happens next?

If you want to add more, you can even comment on the initial trouble Irene's arm gave Clare in the battle against Duff. It's like saying "well, in the worst case scenario I guess it would end up like this, but things couldn't possibly be that bad" and then having said things happen, or "with any luck things might turn out this way" and then having the opposite happen. It's a nice change from most series where even the slightest chance of success turns into 100% (although you can argue that Clare is such a miracle herself, hehe)

[FuzzyWuzzy]

Ok the world of Claymore is basically a big cliche that every freaking story from the beginning of time has touched already. However this doesn't mean it's not that good. So what do I mean? It's like star wars galaxy mmorpg for me. It's a game where people get to make a story of their character.

Guess what kind of story most people have in the game. It's the same as claymore.
"My character has a very sad childhood. He is an orphan. His parent's were killed by blah blah blah. Now he is an outcast of society and he is an overpowered super duper one shot killing machine."

I love claymore, just saying the world of claymore doesn't have originality. It's the same as batman, eragon, lotr, spiderman, and many other stories that were told and being developed right now.

[Jenya]

I second that, Fuzzy. Yet Claymore sometimes crosses the line and immortal characters die. This makes this anime interesting, although I hate the special Raki treatment.

This holy cow crusade to enemy's territory is so much cliche that I realised what was going to happen the moment Raki went alone to the north. It killed the fun.

[kureshii]

Agreed, but one thing makes Claymore a bit more special.

In other series, while exceeding your limit means you lose your life or suffer permanent incapacitation, here it means you turn into the enemy. It changes the game mechanics somewhat and makes things a little more interesting as well.

But that's not what attracted to Claymore anyway. I just got a little sick of watching anime where characters have outrageous hairstyles and costumes (though I understand that's a mainstay of anime, sometimes it's just a little too much to take).

It's refreshing to watch a series where all the warriors look the same and use the same weapon, and are forced to differentiate themselves via character development and fighting style. It's not the only series that fits this criteria of course, but it's certainly living up to expectations so far, and I'm not going to complain just because "it doesn't have a new, original world".

[BaalChaamon]

and why would Raki venture to the cold north anyway?i mean who does that? he could have just stayed in a town nearby after splitting with claire.


That aside, i wonder if what Rubels comment ment Boys are sent North and the Girls East, where the Org. is located....and in the North its Easley
maybe his food supply? :D


And why dont the Abyssal ones just destroy the Org. They must expect that at one point the Org will try to eradicate them or by some mistake someone stronger than them will emerge...so whats with that apathy?

The Org. members clearly are non-human and they are powerful enough to keep their Claymores in check..or they apply some brainwashing methods. Also, why do the Claymore stay loyal to them when they are encaged during their training?

[DazarGaidin]

I really like this thread :)

I don't know if its the translation or what, but anyone notice teresa mention bacteria and infection? Is this common information or something she knows from the organization. I mean most people can observe infection resulting from an untreated wound, but it wasn't till recently we discovered bacteria and such being the cause. Also, clare mentions lengthening her vocal cords to change her voice and actually does it easily...and then the whole claymore grafting process. Clearly they have medical science far above the rest of the world.

Plus the invincible claymore swords and alicia/beth's apparel. This had to have come from somewhere. The 'lost technology' theory from a futuristic time/pre-apocolapse era is looking pretty strong. (horded by the org of course)

[kureshii]

Or we can explain it all using Yoki, lawl.

j/k... But judging by the setting, and the kind of houses we see in the towns, I wouldn't say their general standard of living has benefitted much from it. Seems like medieval times, but maybe with better weapon technology.

[Bikerider]

I think there is a mention that the north is mainly into mining. That's why they need boys.

[FateAnomaly]

Agreed, but one thing makes Claymore a bit more special.

In other series, while exceeding your limit means you lose your life or suffer permanent incapacitation, here it means you turn into the enemy. It changes the game mechanics somewhat and makes things a little more interesting as well.

But that's not what attracted to Claymore anyway. I just got a little sick of watching anime where characters have outrageous hairstyles and costumes (though I understand that's a mainstay of anime, sometimes it's just a little too much to take).

It's refreshing to watch a series where all the warriors look the same and use the same weapon, and are forced to differentiate themselves via character development and fighting style. It's not the only series that fits this criteria of course, but it's certainly living up to expectations so far, and I'm not going to complain just because "it doesn't have a new, original world".

This pretty much sums up my opinion as well. Surprisingly i really love Claymore despite the cliche plot.

I like all the claymores so far. I hated Priscilla originally for killing Teresa but then i realized she too is a victim of the organization. So now i only hated the org.

I think the org are either 1/2 yoma 1/2 human or ABs who have suppressed the yoki for very long and for some reasons choose not to reveal their true strength.

The claymore swords also puzzled me cos it seemed incredibly tough. (It doesn't chip or require sharpening and their are no replacement swords seen so far) My theory is that it is made similar to the way Dauf makes his rods.

[Spectacular_Insanity]

^Again, I mentioned this in another thread, but i wish they didn't look quite so alike. Despite differences in personaily, some of them are either very similar or don't stand out enough and I get them mixed up or forget about them entirely, until another character brings them up. I mean, even differnt haircolor would help me tremendously in recalling who's who in that huge cast.

[kureshii]

Well, I had little problem identifying characters, except minor ones or newer ones (Veronica and the other Pieta little-uns). Teh rest of them had sufficiently distinct hairstyles or behavioural characteristics that made them easily picked out.

[Beansy]

Considering that the Claymore's main method of travel seems to be just walking around on foot, and that they were able to gather half of them for the battle of Pieta in a relatively short period of time, my guess is that there is no way that the "continent" they patrol is the size of Europe or the continental U.S.

I'd guess it'd be more like the size of Germany, except that there is a valid counterargument in that the lattitude varies enough for there to be both a very cold northern area and a temperate zone in the south.

Those two things are kind of inconsistent with each other, unless it had just turned winter when the Battle of Pieta happened and it also happened to be winter the next time Pieta was shown. A possible reconciliation is just that the "north" is also at a very high altitude like the Alps in northern Italy.

My guess is that the mangaka just hasn't really clearly defined the world of Claymore in his own head. For example, the town Raki came from has a coal mine. In pre-industrial societies, mining for coal was generally very small scale and quite rare. Not an outright anachronism, but certainly a bit strange. It's nice that these Extra Stories coming out are filling in some of the storyline blanks, even if we still don't know the process by which a Claymore is made, but it would be nice if he could fill us in a bit more on the world they lived in. Yukito Kishiro, the author of Battle Angel Alita/Gunnm, went to great lengths to explain the mechanisms of the world he created, and included copious notes on these things in the tankouban releases. I don't think Norihiro Yagi cares an eighth as much about that sort of thing.


Seems like medieval times, but maybe with better weapon technology.

What better weapon technology is this (mystical stuff aside)?

[kureshii]

What better weapon technology is this (mystical stuff aside)?Mainly in the weapon's materials and construction. We've never seen a Claymore's claymore break, after all...

[Kalinas]

They sharp their claymores. Clare started sharping hers in ep2 I think, on the campfire with Raki when he was eating.

1. Biology:

About yoma... I wrote this in another thread, but I will repeat myself. How come there are no female yomas? And how yomas can talk and know the common language?

Also I think that Yoma's species is something very new in the world of Claymore. If Yoma was a monster that has always been living on the planet among humans, then the human race would be extinct till now!

Since humans can't detect and can't match yoma physically, they are just free targets for yoma. It's like putting cats into a house full of mice. The cats use their hеightened senses to detect the mice, which are biologically lower. And as in Claymore, the Yoma are the superior species, where one or more yomas happen to be in a town of humans. Humans can't detect the yomas (mice can't detect cats, cause they walk and move without making sounds and can lie in wait for long hours (just like yoma takes a human form and stalks prey) ) and humans can't beat yomas (a mouse can't win in a fight with a cat, the cat is stronger and faster, like a yoma compared with a human)...
... thus, my point is that yoma are a new species that have arisen around the same time that Claymores did (According to the 3rd law of mechanics by Isaak Newton, every action has a counteraction :P)

And it is true that the Organization has extremely high biological knowledge in order to do these experiments. About the member in the Organization, I think they are some kind of Awakened Beings or something of that kind. They are not human for sure. You know that by their appearance. About immortality, it's not necessary to state that the Org members are immortal, since Claymores themselves are immortal.
claymores live until they get killed or awaken, I don't remember who said that
About the Claymores' obedience, I have no idea how that happens. Telepathy or something like that? Or the Organization's rules are extremely cruel and strict, in order to keep Claymores good girls. They probably inculcated them that if they break the rules, there will be no exceptions and they will be punished or killed immediately.

My conclusion is that Yoma is a creation of humans and the Organization are those who made this experiment. I guess they tried to make a super-warrior via genetic experiments, thus leading to a failure and this failed experiment is the Yoma. However, the Organization continued with their experiments and achieved what they wanted - a supreme warrior - a Claymore, which they now use for fighting yomas (which I do not know how multiply).
Teresa herself hinted that the Org sends the yoma to towns when she told the townsmen what would happen if they don't pay. Later she did the same thing with Erumita (the guy who gives her the missions. I think that was his name).
And btw, in the manga, the organization's leader himself (or one of them) said that the best claymores are those who have lived for not too long and not too little. After that they become more aware of the world around them and start thinking about stuff. Claymores like Miria, Galatea, and probably Teresa. Irene is also one of the more curious ones ;) .


2. Geography:

Well nobody can ever know how big the world of Claymore is, but we can make some guesses. On a planetary basis, I think the planet has the size of about Earth, basing on the climate. I think the land where Claymores live, the 47 parts, are all in all as big as a middle-sized country like Spain, France or Germany. IMO North America is just TOO big. The average human speed is 5 km/h. If we use Spain's surface which is roughly 500 000 km² and divide it into 50 areas (the roughly 47 in Claymore) it means 10 000 km² per province. In ep1 Clare said she had walked 3 days almost non stop from a town to Raki's town, meaning she had passed 360 kilometers, including rough terrain and not straight roads. This is a little more than one-third of a one-tenth of the overall territory of Clare's province. It's absolutely not much at all.
And don't be mistaken by Clare's one week delay before her AB hunt. The hunting spot was probably in a distant province, having in mind that Raki had to sleep at least 7-8 hours a day and overall resting time about 3-4 hours a day.
Also, we can't deny the existence of other countries or continents in Claymore's world. We also can't say that Yomas have only one living place and emerge from there.

Another thing: (I don't consider it a spoiler since its from episode 2) When emo kid Raki was walking through the desert with Clare, he felt hungry, and said he hadn't had anything to eat since morning. In the beginning of the episode, Clare was fighting yomas in a town, and after that they both left the town and went into the desert (btw, they were walking in the sand and the sounds of Clare's footsteps were like she was walking on rocky ground or road :P ). So we will consider the yoma hunt in the town as being in the morning. So Raki didn't eat from morning till afternoon, and they have been walking roughly 6 hours. At average speed of 5 km/h that's 30 kilometers deep into the desert. And yet Clare killed a giant lizard. What the hell was this abnormally big reptile doing in the middle of the sands, if there was not a water source nearby (not the town. It can't go find water in town). => Thus, the territories of the lands are small. But there can't be a SMALL desert with such fine sands as those in ep2, which makes me think that at least half of Clare's territory is wasteland OR this whole scene was the author's mistake and he never thought about the reality of his work.

And anyway, what do the 47 "states" have to do with the number of the Claymore? How come there are "difficult places" and "not difficult places" to hunt yoma. Yoma is the same everywhere.

3. Technology:

I don't know if the claymores are made in a special way, but after all, they never hit something hard with great power. All they use their swords for is cutting limbs and maybe other claymores. They don't try using their inhuman power to hit something so hard (like rock or other other metal or steel lol) so that the claymore will break.

But I think that the buildings and towns are too good for that age. It's like the bricks in the buildings are perfect :) . And btw, I remember someone said there are no sewers and running water. Well, there was that fountain of Clare and Teresa, which means there ARE ;) .

4. Religion:

I agree with the comparison of Rabona with Rome and the Pope . It has some logic in it.

5. Other:

I was wondering how does Jean make her special sword attack? Her hand is not made of rubber, so that when she twists it, it will immediately turn back around into it's primary position. It's meat, the most that she can do is brake her bones and joints.

And how come Duff has a limitless amount of material to create perfectly shaped drill sticks from whatever part of his body?

AND finally, how come all claymores that have awakened have a different awakened shape? Who designs their outlook? (the Author, lol :P) For example Ophelia is a mermaid and Jean is a butterfly :P I think it's weird that everyone has a different color, form and abilities.

So... what ya think? :D

[Yorae_paladin1]

They sharp their claymores. Clare started sharping hers in ep2 I think, on the campfire with Raki when he was eating.

1. Biology:

About yoma... I wrote this in another thread, but I will repeat myself. How come there are no female yomas? And how yomas can talk and know the common language?

Also I think that Yoma's species is something very new in the world of Claymore. If Yoma was a monster that has always been living on the planet among humans, then the human race would be extinct till now!

Since humans can't detect and can't match yoma physically, they are just free targets for yoma. It's like putting cats into a house full of mice. The cats use their hеightened senses to detect the mice, which are biologically lower. And as in Claymore, the Yoma are the superior species, where one or more yomas happen to be in a town of humans. Humans can't detect the yomas (mice can't detect cats, cause they walk and move without making sounds and can lie in wait for long hours (just like yoma takes a human form and stalks prey) ) and humans can't beat yomas (a mouse can't win in a fight with a cat, the cat is stronger and faster, like a yoma compared with a human)...
... thus, my point is that yoma are a new species that have arisen around the same time that Claymores did (According to the 3rd law of mechanics by Isaak Newton, every action has a counteraction :P)

And it is true that the Organization has extremely high biological knowledge in order to do these experiments. About the member in the Organization, I think they are some kind of Awakened Beings or something of that kind. They are not human for sure. You know that by their appearance. About immortality, it's not necessary to state that the Org members are immortal, since Claymores themselves are immortal.
claymores live until they get killed or awaken, I don't remember who said that
About the Claymores' obedience, I have no idea how that happens. Telepathy or something like that? Or the Organization's rules are extremely cruel and strict, in order to keep Claymores good girls. They probably inculcated them that if they break the rules, there will be no exceptions and they will be punished or killed immediately.

My conclusion is that Yoma is a creation of humans and the Organization are those who made this experiment. I guess they tried to make a super-warrior via genetic experiments, thus leading to a failure and this failed experiment is the Yoma. However, the Organization continued with their experiments and achieved what they wanted - a supreme warrior - a Claymore, which they now use for fighting yomas (which I do not know how multiply).
Teresa herself hinted that the Org sends the yoma to towns when she told the townsmen what would happen if they don't pay. Later she did the same thing with Erumita (the guy who gives her the missions. I think that was his name).
And btw, in the manga, the organization's leader himself (or one of them) said that the best claymores are those who have lived for not too long and not too little. After that they become more aware of the world around them and start thinking about stuff. Claymores like Miria, Galatea, and probably Teresa. Irene is also one of the more curious ones ;) .


2. Geography:

Well nobody can ever know how big the world of Claymore is, but we can make some guesses. On a planetary basis, I think the planet has the size of about Earth, basing on the climate. I think the land where Claymores live, the 47 parts, are all in all as big as a middle-sized country like Spain, France or Germany. IMO North America is just TOO big. The average human speed is 5 km/h. If we use Spain's surface which is roughly 500 000 km² and divide it into 50 areas (the roughly 47 in Claymore) it means 10 000 km² per province. In ep1 Clare said she had walked 3 days almost non stop from a town to Raki's town, meaning she had passed 360 kilometers, including rough terrain and not straight roads. This is a little more than one-third of a one-tenth of the overall territory of Clare's province. It's absolutely not much at all.
And don't be mistaken by Clare's one week delay before her AB hunt. The hunting spot was probably in a distant province, having in mind that Raki had to sleep at least 7-8 hours a day and overall resting time about 3-4 hours a day.
Also, we can't deny the existence of other countries or continents in Claymore's world. We also can't say that Yomas have only one living place and emerge from there.

Another thing: (I don't consider it a spoiler since its from episode 2) When emo kid Raki was walking through the desert with Clare, he felt hungry, and said he hadn't had anything to eat since morning. In the beginning of the episode, Clare was fighting yomas in a town, and after that they both left the town and went into the desert (btw, they were walking in the sand and the sounds of Clare's footsteps were like she was walking on rocky ground or road :P ). So we will consider the yoma hunt in the town as being in the morning. So Raki didn't eat from morning till afternoon, and they have been walking roughly 6 hours. At average speed of 5 km/h that's 30 kilometers deep into the desert. And yet Clare killed a giant lizard. What the hell was this abnormally big reptile doing in the middle of the sands, if there was not a water source nearby (not the town. It can't go find water in town). => Thus, the territories of the lands are small. But there can't be a SMALL desert with such fine sands as those in ep2, which makes me think that at least half of Clare's territory is wasteland OR this whole scene was the author's mistake and he never thought about the reality of his work.

And anyway, what do the 47 "states" have to do with the number of the Claymore? How come there are "difficult places" and "not difficult places" to hunt yoma. Yoma is the same everywhere.

3. Technology:

I don't know if the claymores are made in a special way, but after all, they never hit something hard with great power. All they use their swords for is cutting limbs and maybe other claymores. They don't try using their inhuman power to hit something so hard (like rock or other other metal or steel lol) so that the claymore will break.

But I think that the buildings and towns are too good for that age. It's like the bricks in the buildings are perfect :) . And btw, I remember someone said there are no sewers and running water. Well, there was that fountain of Clare and Teresa, which means there ARE ;) .

4. Religion:

I agree with the comparison of Rabona with Rome and the Pope . It has some logic in it.

5. Other:

I was wondering how does Jean make her special sword attack? Her hand is not made of rubber, so that when she twists it, it will immediately turn back around into it's primary position. It's meat, the most that she can do is brake her bones and joints.

And how come Duff has a limitless amount of material to create perfectly shaped drill sticks from whatever part of his body?

AND finally, how come all claymores that have awakened have a different awakened shape? Who designs their outlook? (the Author, lol :P) For example Ophelia is a mermaid and Jean is a butterfly :P I think it's weird that everyone has a different color, form and abilities.

So... what ya think? :D

actually humans would not be extinct if yomas lived with them since ancient time cause if there only biable food source died off they would face extinction too before that they would try to eat each other.

[FateAnomaly]

I agree that Yomas are probably created by the org too. They are probably related to humans or made from humans otherwise there is no reason why they only eat humans guts. (Humans guts is no different from other guts nutrition wise)

(Anyway the cat and mice analogy is not very good since mice are still around):heh:

I also don't think the area that claymore governs is all that big too. It will take too long to get anything done. (3days to travel, 1 hr to do the job :heh:) It doesn't really make too much sense maybe they ran when we aren't looking.

While all yomas are the same, the concentration and threat level may not be the same. Maybe an area has more ABs. It could also mean the importance of an area rather than the danger level. A rich town probably has higher priority than a poor one. From what i read though they mostly don't stick to their area anyway. Its purpose is more for ranking i guess.

(Not important but there's no way for a kid to travel 5km/hr for 6hrs through a desert)

The sword they use are really strong and durable from what i see. It can take all sort of abuse. Jean even use it as a drill. It also doesn't chip when clashing with each other. (Teresa and Priscilla fight comes to mind) The org doesn't provide replacement swords either. (The replacement store in Pieta don't have any). The Fab 7 is still using the same sword after 7 years. All signs seems to indicate that it has a lifetime guarantee.

How Jean does her trick is of course biologically impssible:heh: But basically its like Helen extending arm/leg. They convert their hands into tentacle like appendages.

I have no idea why they look different but it does makes things more interesting:D

[Valerian Mengsk]

Any ideas about what Rubel has up his sleve. He has been shown having ideas contrary to the leadership of the org, as well as keeping secrets from them. Could it be that he is interested in taking over, or maybe he has his own version of the futrue that he wants to take place other than the status que that the org seems to embrace.

[Bikerider]

a rough chronology based on some Claymores and their possible ages.

Rafaela hears about the Zema twins taken by the org. She may be around 20 years old at this time.

Rafaelea meets 10 year old Teresa in the woods

Teresa becomes an active Claymore at 18: Zema twins (Alicia and Beth) are now 8 years old (if they were born same year Raffy met 10 year old Teresa.

Say Teresa is an active Claymore for 10 years. (I believe she is active for closer to 30 years) When she dies Zema Twins are now 18 years old. They are old enough to become active Claymores. They take the vacant #1 and #2 spots from Teresa and Priscilla. Galatea probably rises from the lower ranks to become #3 at this time. Raffy takes #5. This leaves #4 for some other Claymore. Ophelia will later claim this position. Clare at this time is 12 years old.

Clare becomes an active Claymore at age 18. Say she is active for 5 years before the War of the North. That makes the Zema twins 29 years old. They are the oldest of the living Claymores, with the possible exception of Galatea who may be the only Claymore in service since Teresa's time and Raffy.

Now there's a 7 year jump in time. The Zema Twins are now 36. Clare is 30 years old. Galatea is 18+ what she was before Teresa was killed. Say 20. So Galatea is probably around 38. Raffy would be around 56.

I believe Teresa was an active Claymore for more than 10 years. I think around 25 to 30 years. That would put Rafaela in her 70s or 80s.

If Clare is an active Claymore for more than 5 years, closer to 10 or 15 years, then Galatea and the Twins would be in their 40s at least.

[Valerian Mengsk]

Too bad it is all guess and check, but a decent job anyway.
I do think that Theresa was on-duty for only 10-15 years, seeing as Claymores outlive there "usefullness" around that time. Otherwise they would have too much time to begin questioning the organization, which is a big no-no.

Like I said, guess and check and personal opinions. *shrug*

[tenken627]

I agree that 450 millions is a lot. I gave ideas to bring that number down.

However, I disagree on the estimation of the size of the Claymore continent. We simply have no way of knowing how big it is.

We know a Claymore may have to march two or three weeks between missions, but does that really represent the size of her territory? Or just a small part? Or does she actually cross boundaries to pick up the slack of another who hasn't been replaced yet or is away on a team thing?


Also, ten deaths per accident seems rather high. Rabona was exceptional. In the case of a single yoma... They eat once every other week. Give it three deaths before they call the Claymore, another one while she's on her way... That's four. Some stuff will bring up the average (like youmas working in groups, or Awakened Beings, but ten seems rather high.)


The Rabona incident seems to be an irregular case. Rubel has stated that the yoma at Rabona needed to eat much more often in order to transform himself into a corpse every night. It seems like the transformation into a a corpse uses much more energy than transforming into a human for some reason. This large appetite is largely the reason why a naive Clare thought it was a Voracious Eater at first. Eating ten humans within several days seem to be an irregularity rather than the normal feeding habits of a yoma.

I agree that normal yomas do not feed as often, maybe two or three humans within the span of a week or two. Then a village will finally send for a Claymore.




Regarding the state of the Claymore world:

I agree that the WoC (World of Claymore) is in a similar situation to the medieval city-states during Europe's dark ages. There does not seem to be any sovereign nations or countries. The only large organizations with some sort of actual power that we have seen so far is the Organization itself, and the Holy Rabona Church. Everything else is pretty much a small self-governed village or city.

The difference between medieval Europe and WoC is that in medieval Europe, there was constant warfare between feudal lords and between other factions.

In the WoC, there does not seem to be any human on human strife. The only time we see any humans attacking other humans is the bandit attack, but there will always be bandits in any form of human civilization.

Yomas are pretty much the main thing humans worry about. Enough to pretty much stop all large human conflict and wars. The lack of any true governance may be attributed to the yomas themselves.

I'm actually surprised how well off some of the cities looked when travel and trade would be pretty much halted due to the fact that it seems like many yomas seem to inhabit the wilderness.

At the top of the food chain, yomas have no predators to keep their population in check except for Claymores. And at most, there are only 47 Claymores at any given time. We've seen Priscilla take out yomas in a very large group by herself, but that is supposed to be an irregularity since Noel, Sofia, and Irene were in awe.

Exactly how many yomas are there in the world? Even with the Claymores killing large amounts of them, the yoma threat does not seem to be diminish in the world. But, if the world was truly overrun by yomas, human civilization would cease to exist.

[chibamonster]

I think there really are not that many youma. A normal human might go their entire life without seeing one. Raki never saw one or heard of claymores until a youma ate his parents. I am guessing most people in their world live their entire lives without seeing one, being affected by one, or dealing with one. Rabona seemed to have gone a very long time without having to deal with any youma as they had to break their tradition and request a special mission. They had at least 7 years until Agatha showed up. AB sightings would be even more rare for humans.

The reason there seem to be so many youma and AB's is because that is what claymores deal with all the time. They sense them and find them. They also deal with ALL of the irregular cases, like a youma hive, or one in rabona, or groups, etc. How many unaffected towns do claymores walk through to their destinations? Probably quite a few. Really I think youma are fairly rare it is just that the even more rare claymores are the focus of the story. It does not seem the human population is at any risk of extinction in the WoC. Towns are in much more danger of being annihilated by an AB than by youma but youma/AB's might not be any more common than natural disasters.

[lsley]

I agree with you there chiba.
Even if there are a bit more yoma, they could be more clever than the ones we have seen. If they just eat one human then go to the next town, no town will send a request to the organization or if they do it a bit tricky the towns won't even realize that it was a yoma (kinda: eat some guy take his shape and memory and tell "his" friends bye bye I wanna see something of the great wide world).
There could be even more yoma then we think, just not eating humans. It's said they are the perfect predators bla bla, but most predators aren't too specific in what they eat, so maybe humans taste way better than animals, but many yoma are just too afraid of claymores, thus eat animals, this could be an explanation for the yoma hives, which would be really strange if we assuma that there are so few yomas that most people don't have a yoma incident in their town for their entire life.

[tenken627]

That could be true and that the world really isn't overrun by yomas.

But, we've seen scenes after scenes with large groups of yomas in the wilderness.

It seems like usually, a village is attacked by only a single yoma or a very small group of yomas. The Organization charges a significant amount of money for each yoma killed, so a group of 5 probably will bankrupt a small village.

The only time we see a village utterly destroyed by yomas is the village where Irene, Noel and Sofia meet Priscilla. Maybe this is a village that didn't pay the Organization's fee? Teresa insinuates that villages that don't pay are wiped out by large groups of yomas. But, then why would the Org send in Claymores if there are no more inhabitants in the village?

[lsley]

Maybe there was a request by a big rich city like Rabona who were annoyed of vanishing merchants or something like that.
And i guess it's normal that we allways see these groups of yoma. I mean, we're watching claymore, not a webcam wich is put in the claymore world :p

[tenken627]

And i guess it's normal that we allways see these groups of yoma. I mean, we're watching claymore, not a webcam wich is put in the claymore world :p

What I mean to say is that yomas are alone or in very small groups in villages, but in larger groups in the wilderness. They aren't anti-social creatures like Awakened Beings.

[chibamonster]

I remember watching the news a few years back where they had a story on a kid with an eye disease I had never heard of. They said it affected 1/100,000 people in varying degrees. Then they interviewed the specialist doctor treating the kid and he said, "Yeah it might be rare but I see it here every week." Claymores are specialists, especially the single digits, who deal with those rare and unusual cases. Claymores are much more rare than youma yet we see dozens of them because they are the focus of the story :D.

We do not know how big each of the 47 areas is but if one person walking can take care of most of the requests then the number of confirmed youma attacks would be very low. That or many villages do not have the money to call for a claymore but if that is the case we will never know about it because as lsley said, it is a story about claymores. It seems they always have somewhere to go, but I really wonder what they do when there is a slower season. I am imagining claymore hot springs.

There is also the issue that most people would never know there was a youma if the youma were smart though. Good thing most youma do not seem to be smart. Even Agatha, eating much less than normal in Rabona, was enough to get Galk and Cid's attention.

[Bikerider]

Youma attacks may be even rarer when 4 claymores can take off from their areas to join AB hunts.

And Alicia and Beth never patrol their areas. So there is at any one time 41 claymores covering the 47 areas.

[tenken627]

Well post-time skip changes things up a little bit.

We should assume that at least some of the 47 areas assigned to Claymores covered the Northern lands of Alphonse, since it was still inhabited by humans before the time skip. With the destruction of humanity in the north, there no longer should be 47 areas.

The Organization still has Claymores in the North, but they don't seem to be assigned to any individual areas, they just seem to be organized into groups that patrol together.

I'm not sure about the average rate of yoma attacks in each area. It does seem like whenever Clare completed a mission, Rubel would be there with another mission right away. She didn't seem like she had much idle time. The same was true with Teresa.

It makes you wonder how many villages and towns there are in each area?

[chibamonster]

It seems that there are enough towns that each one has to get over their fear of claymores once again and claymores have to run through the same routine as always. Teresa was so ingrained with the repetition she said it even when she had left the organization. Rabona and Pieta are the first places we have seen claymores visit twice and those were both very special circumstances. It seems the claymores always have more work to do. I wonder how much repeat business they have though. Most towns could not afford to call claymores often even if they were attacked. It also makes you wonder how frequent AB hunts are. Clare went most of her career without one. I would guess that many of the lower claymores are the same.

[Cyclone]

What a convinient thread.
The world of Claymore just got a lot bigger

[yezhanquan]

She nailed the idea that the humans now don't remember the time where the yoma didn't exist. However, there was indeed such a time. The land which all the action took place was not the only place with humans or civilisation.

[Kinematics]

At 1 generation per year, Teresa of the 77th generation; +7 years to meet Clare; +7 years for Clare to graduate; +3 years for Clare to work; +7 year timeskip == 101 years.

// Baseline time //

Teresa is the 182nd warrior over 77 generations = 2.36 warriors per generation.

2.36 warriors per generation, if started from scratch, means 20 years to fill out all 47 positions, assuming no deaths. This seems unlikely.

If the first 5 generations had graduating classes of 10 (same as Clare's test class size), but didn't go through the killing tests, that would seem more feasible.

If 50 were produced in the first 5 years, and 132 in the next 72 years, that makes average warriors per generation 1.83. That assumes a death rate of 1.83 per year to match.

During the Luciela/Rafaela incident, they lost more than half their warriors. It was stated that that included trainees. If there was the usual group of 10 trainees, that means they lost at least 34 warriors (47/2 = 24 + 10 trainee replacements = 34). This was several years before Teresa's time.

Therefore we know that they need to have produced 47 (full initial set) + 34 (restoration set) = 81 warriors, before even accounting for normal deaths/replacements. With Teresa being #182, that means 101 warriors over 70-ish years, now putting us at 1.4 per year.

It seems very unlikely that the death rate for Claymores is less than 1 per year (especially if you add in the awakening rate). So even if you manipulate that graduation period above (once every two years, etc), it's already a stretch to consider 182 warriors being produced over a period of more than the 77 years a one-generation-per-year setup would give. Thus if the number given for Teresa is valid as a total number of warriors produced, 77 years is the upper limit of how far in the past (relative to Teresa) they started making Claymores.

// Differential time //

The unknowns that we have are the first three values in the first line above.

We know Elena started working after Clare, therefore she must have started at least 1 year after Clare. We don't know how long she worked, but I feel that Clare had not been operational for terribly long when she got the Raki assignment. I'll assume a minimum of 2 years for Elena to reach her breaking point, and thus 3 years for Clare to have been in operation.

We don't know how long it took for Clare to graduate, however we can approximate her age. I would guess perhaps 10-12 when she met Teresa. I would guess 14-15 in the opening sequence of ES4. Graduation was 1 year after the opening scene, so 15-16 at that point. Total time would thus be 4-6 years. [Thus age when we meet her is probably in the 18-19 range.]

We have almost no references to measure the time of Teresa's active period before she met Clare. However from her looks in the flashback with Rafaela, I would estimate her age at graduation to have been similar to Clare, something in the 15-16 range. Since Claymores mature but don't age, and Teresa looks perhaps 21, she must have served at least 5-6 years. Her jaded behavior gives the impression of a fair bit longer than that. I could see up to 10 years of service.

Overall range of time that I can see is 12-15 years (probable), with 17-20 years at the far outside. Adding in the timeskip puts the baseline total at 19-22 years out of the 23 years that would reach the 100 year mark that Miria mentioned, with up to 5 years upward margin.

// Lifespans //

Given a 1.4 death/year rate, with equal replacement rate, implies an average lifespan per Claymore of 33 years. That seems abnormally high, given the Org's stated goals and claim that Claymores that die before they get too old are the best. How long would it take for the average Claymore to start asking too many questions? 5 years? 10? 20? My personal take is that the longest I'd expect someone to work for such an organization without questioning the company line is perhaps 10 years, but that would require a higher death/replacement rate to maintain.

There's also the issue that the Org specifically wants data on Awakened Ones, which means that they'll want a relatively frequent rate of awakenings on top of the straight-up death rate. 1-2 per year would seem to be practical for experimental purposes.

If there was a distribution of awakenings, black cards and deaths each year to total 4, typical service periods would be 12 years, and would require replacements to be trained at a similar rate. However that goes counter to the data provided for Teresa, as well as the apparent training survival rate (short term; long term it's viable, with 2 per year most of the time, but occasionally needing to replace large numbers at once).

We know that the Org was replacing the Claymores of the Northern Campaign before they'd even technically died. Since 24 Claymores were lost in that campaign, it's reasonable to assume that they can pull large numbers out at once when needed, probably by forgoing the final lethal testing.

// Generations //

So lifespan analysis runs counter to baseline time evaluation. Thus I need to rethink what was meant by the description of Teresa.

With respect to scientific studies, there are two ways "generation" can be interpreted. The first is the obvious one: breed lab rats, examine the children for the traits you're studying, then breed the children and examine their offspring, etc. A generation is the offspring of a given set of rats, and lasts for the period between when they are born and when they have offspring themselves.

The second way it can be used is in reference to non-reproductive samples. If a set of materials and variant of microbes is used to produce a batch of alcohol, that can be considered a 'generation' as far as samples are concerned. Varying the source material and creating a new production batch based on information gained from the previous batch would be considered a new generation.

Claymore seem to be created in a way such that the second definition could be used. Saying that Teresa is a 77th generation claymore means that she was created using materials from the 77th iteration of the project. Such iterations do not need to coincide with real-time intervals (eg: 1 per year), and in fact do not need to start at year 0 (assuming Riful and/or Isley was near year 0). It's possible, probable even, that the first 10 or so iterations produced nothing at all, merely prototype samples to see if the idea could even work. It's just as possible that the first generations were the iterations done before the project was developed enough to warrant setting up the island territory as a lab.

Taken this way, it's also possible (but not very probable) that Teresa was using a non-current iteration of the project samples. The "cutting edge" may have been 80th generation at Teresa's time, and Teresa was created from a more stable previous branch.

Taken this way, it's quite possible that multiple generations of sample material are produced between any given batch of Claymore warriors, using the Org's many available test subjects as controls for very specific experiments that aren't viable within the mainline.


// Ch. 79 //

So let's reroute the thoughts back to what Miria said. In fact, she did not say that the lab started 100 years ago, as I originally interpreted. She said that the final consolidation of the war to two sides occured 100 years ago, and that it was only after that that they started the research that led to the production of what we consider Awakened Beings.

If we consider creating something like an AB to be 'on par' with the research needed to create an atomic bomb, we can assume it took them 5-10 years for it to reach a functionally deployable level. We can also consider a few years of failures (ABs turning on their own armies) to lead to setting up the isolated lab environment for refinement of the project.

Further, a few years at the start of the lab work produced male Claymores, before switching to female ones. Thus we can reasonably extrapolate that the initial generations of female Claymores occurred roughly 80 years pre-C79 (year 20 if we place year 0 at the time that the warring factions consolidated to just 2 sides). The Differential Time section above should still be valid, thus we can consider Teresa's meeting of Clare to have occurred approximately 20 years ago (year 80).

That puts the historical Claymore period pre-Teresa at about 60 years, and being warrior #182, that puts average production rate at about 3 per year. 60 years does seem like a relatively short time to be able to inculcate the knowledge of "yoma have always existed" into the populace, but given their limited communications tech it's perhaps possible.


// Extrapolations //

Given a 60-year timeframe and 10-12 year average lifespans, it's likely that they had 5 or 6 #1s during that time. We know of Riful, Luciela and Rosemary (Teresa would get her number after this time period). Riful's awakening occured early in her career, so a couple normal #1s in between each awakened #1 is possible, and perhaps reasonable. That's about 20-30 years between awakened #1s, which is long enough that I'd be willing to consider it "rare", as labelled.

If the Org knows what went into making a strong Claymore such as Teresa (generation sample 77), why not do it again? Well, in Teresa's case she can be considered -too- stable, and by implication perhaps too strong. While they knew she was strong, they didn't know her full strength (cf: Rosemary), but they knew that her breakdown (cf: bandits) didn't lead to an awakening, which was their true goal. Thus she was a failure, unable to become the creature they sought.

With Clare taking on Teresa's remains, perhaps they figured that they might get most of the strength of Teresa in a more emotionally unstable (ie: more likely to awaken) target, but that didn't work either. She was classified as one of the "partially awakened", incomplete samples that are unable to make the full transition.

For their goal of power levels, it's possible that they have already reached satisfactory goals. Their real problem is control. Teresa was too independant, Clare too headstrong, Priscilla too fanatical. Luciela had the power, but the control failed. As that occured several years before Teresa was recruited, we can presume that they achieved what they needed in terms of power by perhaps year 70, 50 years into the lab project (possibly a few years earlier). It took another 20-25 years to develop a 'perfected' version in Alicia+Beth, though to be fair the process was already known; they just needed time for the subjects to grow up and be fully developed.


// Review //

If my new conclusions run counter to any current known data, please point it out to me. I'm losing track of all the things I wanted to link this too.

[Archmagination2002]

That puts the historical Claymore period pre-Teresa at about 60 years, and being warrior #182, that puts average production rate at about 3 per year. 60 years does seem like a relatively short time to be able to inculcate the knowledge of "yoma have always existed" into the populace, but given their limited communications tech it's perhaps possible.


2 things.. Considering how the peoples tech base looks it seems to be the equivalent of the Middle Ages or so. The average life expectancy was 35 years.(It wasn't that uncommon to see people reaching 60+ years though.. it just that surviving the 1st 16 years of life was a crapshoot)

The 2nd thing is that Yoma had to come BEFORE Claymores and the male generation, so its a good bet that Yoma have been around 80+ years which makes it much easier for the Org to brainwash the people with the "Yoma have always existed" spiel.

[graywolf202]

Hullo. Just an observation. A recurring motiff about rabona is a twisted line with a straight line running across it. Interestingly, it looks like a "serpent hung on a stick" which is a "Christian symbol." ["Serpent on a stick" has the same meaning as "Man on the cross."]

[graywolf202]

Oh yeah. Here's one more. Clare mentions walking three days straight in ep 01.

Based on personal record, you can walk 6 kilometers in under 1 hour on rugged (but not hostile) and relatively flat terrain, under fair weather, no rest.

So (three days) x (24hrs/day) x (6km/hr) = 432 kilometers.

Or, if they do sleep for eight hours (three days) x (16hrs/day) x (6km/hr) = 288 kilometers.

[graywolf202]

Haha. So I'm the last one to post here until now.

Anyway, is someone here familiar with geography? Coz we now have a rough outline of the island (four star shape). And we know that it has forests, deserts, mountains, snow, and warmth.

Assuming that the planet of Claymores is like our planet (365 days a year, 24 hour days, magnetic north not true north, etc), I think it's not difficult (for the familiars) to put latitudes and longitudes on the island.

Oh well, for starters, I think the island is composed of four dormant volcanoes that become a single island after sea level dropped. Basis: gut feeling.

I'll post again when I feel like reading some geo books.

[Ryuken]

Geo was one subject that I avoided, not that I didn't like it but it just didn't come during that right time and place.:)

[graywolf202]

Ha. Made some progress.

PROBLEM:
Claymore world is supposed to be an island. We can assume then that land area is small; this is also makes sense if we consider that people can walk from North to South in apparently a relatively short period of time. Problem is you have a bitter cold North, warm South, mountain ranges in the West, deserts here and there... such a varied climate for a small island.

SOLUTION:
Got this pictures from wikipedia:

http://forums.animesuki.com/picture.php?albumid=1380&pictureid=16367.png

http://forums.animesuki.com/picture.php?albumid=1380&pictureid=16366.jpg

Look at the Nepal and neighbors, Pakistan, India, Mongolia and some parts of China. You have a fairly varied climate on a fairly small area. I'll read a few things then maybe post again.

One more thing, even if it is an island, it can't be that small coz I think the effect of the surrounding sea will swamp the other climate features. But I'm just guessing here.

[chibamonster]

Japan itself actually has quite varied temperatures. Kyoto was both freezing in the winter and blistering in the summer.

Some images of Japan.

http://travellingboard.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/japan-amazing-forest.jpg
http://www.skidream.com/images/resorts/97_148_Ski_Holidays_Japan_Niseko_1.jpghttp://www.time2pcs.com/images/ikei%20beach%20okinawa%202.jpghttp://www.city.tottori.tottori.jp/top/multilang/image/01dunem.png
Japan even has sand dunes. Tottori sand dunes I believe. And Japans north definitely has snow. They have a holiday in Hokkaido called "tiya kokkan no hi" or in english, "the day you change to snow tires".

[Cyclone]

Ha. Made some progress.

PROBLEM:
Claymore world is supposed to be an island. We can assume then that land area is small; this is also makes sense if we consider that people can walk from North to South in apparently a relatively short period of time. Problem is you have a bitter cold North, warm South, mountain ranges in the West, deserts here and there... such a varied climate for a small island.

Look at the Nepal and neighbors, Pakistan, India, Mongolia and some parts of China. You have a fairly varied climate on a fairly small area. I'll read a few things then maybe post again.

One more thing, even if it is an island, it can't be that small coz I think the effect of the surrounding sea will swamp the other climate features. But I'm just guessing here.

There's a very good reason for Nepal's (and the surrounding region's) climate. Nepal is smack dab in the middle of something called the Himalayas. You'd be amazed at how the climate differs from the base of Mt. Everest to the top :p.

Lot of things can affect climate in weird ways. For example in the middle of winter it's possible to go skiing (snow) in Lake Tahoe, California and drive west a few hours and go surfing. Things like ocean currents, altitude, air currents, moutain ranges, geothermal activity, and God only knows what else make this planet pretty interesting sometimes.

As for Claymore... I'd cut Yagi a little slack. Physical geography is a horrible subject (IMHO) and I'm perfectly happy to not grade Claymore in the subject. The diverse landscapes make the Claymore world interesting for us to read and Yagi to draw.

[Ryuken]

Nice @gray.:)

[graywolf202]

@Cyclone: It's not about being critical with Yagi's work. It's about solving a puzzle. Puzzles are fun.:)

@Chiba: Interesting post esp. about the Tottori Sand Dunes. Here's how that's interesting (info read from Wikipedia):

> most deserts are formed by mountains called rain shadows that blocks precipitation that should be going into the desert area

> the Tottori Sand Dunes on the other hand are formed from sand from the sea bottom brought up by sea and wind currents.

The idea of rain shadows are interesting in that it gives you forests, mountains and deserts in one package. Tottori Sand Dunes on the other hand give you a limited area of desert (30 sq km or about 5.5 km x 5.5 km, which may be a good or bad thing) in the edge of an island.

[shippU]

It's interesting that so far (and correct me if I'm wrong) we have not seen Claymores deployed in coastal areas, making one wonder if the Org deliberately keeps them away from those places or if settlements near the coast are relatively yoma-free. Of course, it could simply mean that the mangaka hasn't bothered about it in the first place.

The island doesn't necessarily have to be small; look at Greenland. Assuming the Claymore island is roughly its size or even half, it's a lot of ground to cover. Heck, even the UK which is pea-sized compared to Greenland is a lot of ground to cover on foot.

Which begs the question: what are the human inhabitants of the Claymore island in relation to the faction to which the Org belongs? Citizen subjects? A separate sovereign country which the Org has arbitrarily selected as its petri dish? Has this been answered anywhere?

[Sleepy Speculator]

I'll try to answer that...

I think it's kindof implied that coastal settlements are rather than populous, already decimated...

chapter 31 page 17? led to some speculation that the background was in fact the ocean/sea because Raki said it felt like they had walked to the end of the continent. (Gonahl). The settlement either way is certainly decimated.

Furthermore Miria states that ships that venture out for exploration do not return, and Cynthia states that the most populous human area is the central land. So the majority of human population/settlement doesn't actually follow the abundant coastline but is clustered on/in the areas furthest from the sea.

So to summarise yoma and claymores won't be seen in coastal towns (at least so far) because such settlements don't exist anymore.

As to your other question, it's unknown, though since the lands on the claymore continent (which looks like a cross) were named, it appears that there were 5 city states of sorts, consisting of Alphonse (northern territory ruined in the recent war) Lautrec (western territory, that seems relatively isolated) Toulouse (Central populous region where most humans live and most claymores are deployed, also where the saints capital Rabona is) Sutafu/Staff/ Whatever it is (ruined land or at least city in the eastern territory, where the org HQ is situated) and Mucha (southern lands which are the warmest and fought over by Isley/Luciella and steadily decimated by Abyssal Eaters and their battles).

The org wasn't shown to be affiliated with anyone but themselves and the lands seem to lack any conflict between each other or centralised government.

Okay now real opinion only follows...

It's likely that the 5 lands of the claymore continent were at least a tenuous part of the alliance which opposed the Dod's or at the very least neutral. It wouldn't make sense for the org to build their HQ in territory that was controlled by the opposition, or exposed to their soldiers. The price of the org moving in was the destruction of most forms of government due to the propogation of yoma. This is the reason that all the castles and fortifications that have been shown, are ruined, and no mention of taxes other than fees for yoma extermination has been made. Also no soldiers or organised guards (with the exception of Rabona).

With the governments removed, and the aristocracies decimated the people of the lands carry on trading and relying on the leadership of elected elders who no longer have to send their tithes to feudal lords who got eaten. The downside was the money was required to pay for the continual elimination of their only threat to life, which is yoma...

In essence they become the subjects of the org's protection racket, whilst nominally living in the ruined lands, that have in all but name ceased to be...
The org has taken over it's host much as the yoma takes the memories and face of it's victims...

[shippU]

Thanks much, Sleepy. It was one of those random questions that pop into the noggin when you're being plagued by dreams of Rubel :). Yes, it was Chap 31 that got me wondering, and those seagulls in the corresponding anime ep. I'd assumed it was the sea at first then fell into doubt because the terrain [where they fought the AB, and later, Ophelia chased Clare] was very un-coastal. Even given that Clare ran quite a distance with Raki. It could have been a large lake.

The lack of a dominant govt authority does appear to work in the Org's favour and if I read you correctly, the Org itself was probably responsible for the disappearance of such figures. It's interesting that they should have overlooked a village (and maybe others) acc. to Miria, when they seem to have been pretty thorough in other things.

Don't know how much should be read into the religious symbolism, iconography and general atmosphere of Claymore but I do remember thinking 'hmm, ascetic knight' when I first saw Clare onscreen. The less info we have on their world, the more it teases the mind...

With ref. to an older post by SimplyEd, does anyone know where the 'depiction of a more warlike scene, where a two-winged variant [of the twin goddesses] carries a large sword, walking across a battlefield' that he mentions is to be found?

[Sleepy Speculator]

:) i don't know bout that but there is the angel/goddess of Rabona that holds the pennant that is the holy symbol. It's seen also holding a sword on a battlefield with many (devils/horned helmet wearing bodies?) scattered beneath her feet.

chapter 5 page 1... or there abouts i think...

I don't know if it's supposed to be one or both of the goddesses or even something else entirely depicted, but it sounds like what youre looking for.

[shippU]

thanks again, Sleepy. checked it out and yes, it's Chap5. hm, you have an eye for detail n the memory to remember it :)

[yezhanquan]

And now, 7 years later, we still have absolutely NO idea what that pic is supposed to represent.

[revan5]

:) i don't know bout that but there is the angel/goddess of Rabona that holds the pennant that is the holy symbol. It's seen also holding a sword on a battlefield with many (devils/horned helmet wearing bodies?) scattered beneath her feet.

chapter 5 page 1... or there abouts i think...

I don't know if it's supposed to be one or both of the goddesses or even something else entirely depicted, but it sounds like what youre looking for.

All this talk about goddesses has me wondering if we're missing the significance of something going on in the latest chapter. Raphaela's youki is resonating with Claire's, as they have the only mixed (Double) youkis in the Claymore-verse.

Claire is genetically 1/2th herself, 1/4th Teresa human (thus making her literally related to Teresa) & 1/4th Teresa's youma side. But that was before she added Irene's arm to herself, which no doubt integrated itself genetically in some way. That would make Claire the genetic relative/descendant of not just Teresa, but also Irene.

Raphaela merged her body with her dead sister Luciella's. She is much like Claire, having the blood (and presumably youki) of two Claymores (one now a dead Awakened being). Just like Claire, if she doesn't completely awaken, this will make her a partially awakened being. Thus the partly merged Raphaela/Luciella has a youki that resonates with Claire's.

Then it hit me; these two beings, Claire & whatever emerges from the joining of the twin sisters, will literally be "two of a kind". Two of a kind, how nice, I'm sure they'll get along great...wait a minute. Two of a kind? Twins?

Oh no, how could I have missed it?!? Yagi's setting us up with the equivalent real-life tale of the twin goddesses Teresa & Claire!!!!!!! Think about it; there's no guarantee that the new being emerging will have exactly Raphaela's personality. She might have memories of both sisters, but what does she do when it comes to a name?

Well, Claire's there, what kind of a name would Claire suggest if the new being didn't like Raphaela or Luciella and wanted a new name? I think Claire would suggest the name that first comes to mind...Teresa.

Yagi is literally setting up the story of "Teresa & Claire", two twin "goddesses" who fight for good. If you don't buy it, just consider, why is it that Yagi seems to have an obsession with twins or pairing of people in the Claymore-verse?

[shippU]

I know what you mean, revan5, and it's been right under our collective nose all this time :p The twin goddesses motif should have been picked up on earlier to suggest a possible development in the story, but we just more or less forgot it. It has to be there for a good reason, and a Teresa-Clare entity seems the most obvious outcome of so much symbolism x)

As for the meaning of the warlike goddess figure - that's a forecast of the new entity: the twin goddesses merged into a whole and bringing justice and righteousness to the world...jk, jk.

[yezhanquan]

Well, it would seem to come full circle. Raphaela saw a young Teresa, and ends up using that name.

[Sleepy Speculator]

Don't get me wrong revan, it's a good enough theory but maybe the wrong thread for it... I like your theory, even though i don't think it's exactly right.

For more information on this i've posted previously in the spoilers/speculation and power and theories threads...

When it comes to the whole twin goddess thing though, i'll say i'm beginning to wonder whereabouts Clare originally comes from. The almost facelessness of her tragic past is either a) a plot element b) a metaphor for the generic tragedies all claymores share or c) considered an unneccessary plot element.

And despite the presence of religion constantly in the background, it's not really something really known about. Yuma certainly only vaguely heard about it. A strong contender for where Clare comes from would of course be the town that had the statue.