A terrible beauty.

It’s the shiny monochromatic DVD jacket that makes Claymore stand out on store shelves, and volume three is no exception. The front cover features an illustration of Clare in battle with an Awakened Being. The back of the jacket is the DVD synopsis and screenshots of Clare, Galatea, and Ophelia. Like the two discs before it, volume three of Claymore consists of basic DVD menus, full screen backgrounds from the cover and subsequent episodes, and awesome background music. The Japanese audio track is superb, but it also has a stellar English voice cast that just keeps improving as the series progresses.

More blood, please?

All Claymore DVDs seem to come with clean opening and ending animations. They also possess one episode with English actor commentary. In volume three’s case, the episode with commentary is number eleven. The commentary is enjoyable, but at this point it begins to feel like something Funimation just decided to add on to bulk up the extra features. Volume three also has a fresh list of Funimation trailers for D. Gray-man, Darker Than Black, Shin-chan, Shigurui, Baccano,  and Kurau Phantom Memory. The most interesting extra feature is the interview with the show’s sound director, Yasunori Honda. In it he talks about how the soundtrack, sound effects, and acting had to be as grand and beautiful as the show’s art. On a personal aside, he succeeded in achieving this effect.

I passed limitations, and came back…

Claymore proves to be one of those series that becomes more involving as it goes along. In this volume, the story takes a decisive twist and becomes about something more than just Clare’s struggle or the hard life that Claymores lead. At the same time, Claymore is refreshing in that nearly all of the characters are women of great strength and hardened character. You’ll find no wishy-washy shoujo heroines here. It’s also a fairly mature anime and earns its MA rating through the heavy violence, strong language, and occasional nudity. The story is engrossing and viewers will find no shortage of characters to either relate to or hate.