Wow, been a while.
Various motivations have had me catching up on the JP release of Claymore (up until last week I'd still only read the Viz releases), and it's some amazing revelations coming out.
What I find interesting and amusing is how well some things jive with speculations made a year ago (eg: World of Claymore thread), especially in regard to the production rate of Claymores.
Some thought Teresa's 77/182 number meant long generations and lots of candidates per generation. Instead it's pretty clear that it was the short generations and few candidates per generation that I expected (2.4 new Claymore per year on average).
The lab started 100 years ago. Teresa was generation 77, thus probably year 77. Tack on another 5 years til she met Clare, 10 years til Clare shows up in the manga, and the 7 year timeskip, and that puts us at year 99. The numbers can be tweaked a bit here and there and the "hundred years ago" comment still pretty much holds true.
I speculated on the size of the continent being the size of the United States, or possibly a good chunk of North America, due to the travel time within territories. It's obviously not nearly that large. A land mass of that size would be a prime target for resources for a land at war.
Something I'm sure has been mentioned at some point, but I can't actually recall at the moment, is that Japan has 47 prefectures - the same number as the number of Claymores on active duty. Total land area in Japan is around 375k square km. An island/island chain 1200 km x 300 km would be on the lower end of what I think would be an appropriate size for the area, yet at the same time small enough to not get too much attention from countries at war in a land the size of, say, Asia.
You could probably double or triple the size and it still wouldn't gain too much notice. Something the size of Australia would be 20 times the size of Japan and easily able to accomodate a large and diverse human culture as well as the climactic variances. The question is whether something that large would start to attract undue notice by the enemy states, something you wouldn't want in an experimental laboratory. At best, I think the known Claymore world/continent/island is around 5-10 times the size of Japan, and I'd be more inclined now to consider it 3-5 times the size of Japan.
@Awakened:
On the idea of Clare vs Miria, I think that's a false comparison. Clare undoubtedly has the greater physical potential, and it could very well be that she's reached a point now to be on par with Miria (in fact, I find it quite likely). However, what would determine the winner in a true contest between them (as opposed to just a raw sparring match) would be planning.
Clare has shown herself to be a good tactical thinker. Put in a situation she knew she couldn't win (the fight with Ophelia and the AB), she got the hell out of Dodge, and also came up with a moderately clever ploy to ditch Ophelia entirely.
Miria, on the other hand, is a strategic planner. Put in a situation she knew she couldn't win (far more hopeless than Clare's), she came up with a plan to save as many lives as she could while at the same time getting the Org off their tail. It also failed somewhat, but more due to unexpected interference (Rigaldo) than poor design or lack of execution (as in Clare's case).
Given a particular objective, I'd certainly place my money on Miria to be able to accomplish it if she is given enough time to research and plan. Thus Clare vs Miria becomes a bit like Superman vs Batman (though not as extreme). If you look only at raw power, Superman wins; however the reality is that more often than not Batman would win due to superior planning and strategy.
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From older speculation threads:
Quote:
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Originally Posted by thorine
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.
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Can anyone remember where Rubel said that? I'm going to have to re-read the series to look for other hints that point at the recent revelations. Have to completely rebuild the world in my head, look for more things to speculate about
And regarding Miria dying: Now that the seed has been planted, I can't see it turning out any other way. Taking down the Org is Miria's goal, and she will do anything to accomplish that. It doesn't take a genius to know that it will be far from easy, with many of them put in life-threatening situations. Therefore the final battle is almost certainly going to involve Miria sacrificing herself to both save the team and destroy the Org.
Doing so also removes the "Seat of Infinite Wisdom" from the team. As it stands now, we can realisticly expect Miria to know a bit about pretty much everything. Destroying the Org (along with most of its archives) is most likely going to be the stepping stone for moving the team to a new continent (in order to gain the keys they need to ultimately defeat Priscilla), and with the physical power-ups they have received, their greatest weakness will be lack of information, planning, and leadership. If they can't depend on Miria to take care of that for them, it will require them to grow up and branch out a bit more as individuals.
(Can just see it now: "Undercover" Helen with trench coat and shades, plus her partner "Ice" Deneve, trying to dig for information in a small-town bar...)