Polish your steel for battle.

Claymore volume four doesn’t deviate much from the packaging of the previous three volumes. The DVD jacket has the shiny, monochromatic illustrations and screenshots. The front cover features Galatea with an image of Clare in the lower right corner. The DVD’s menus host ripping background music tracks and full screen images taken from the disc’s episodes to showcase the basic menu functions. The English voice cast is one of the best I’ve heard in a long while, and is every bit as enjoyable to listen to as the original Japanese.  For some characters, the English actors are even better.

Simple truths.

It’s become fairly orthodox with Claymore DVDs to have textless songs and Funimation trailers. The trailers on this disc include Trinity Blood, Ghost Train, Beck, and several more. In this volume, episode sixteen is available with English commentary. The best extra feature, by far, is the interview with the show’s art director, Manabu Otsuzuki. Personally, as an artist, I found this to be the best interview offered in the series so far. It was interesting to get just a small glimpse of what art directors in animation have to do and manage. However, Otsuzuki’s interview is also more vague than the previous ones due to his seemingly humble nature.

Continuing on a perilous path.

Claymore twists farther in terms of plot with each successive DVD. Some might write it off, at first glance, as another notch in the bedpost of demon slaying anime titles. But truly, the heavy action and battles take a backseat to what the story is truly centered on—the strength of human will. Viewers won’t be able to keep from finding themselves relating to the characters and their motives on an emotional level. Volume four is no exception to this, and the plot continues to thicken for our heroine(s). It’s this level of story depth that makes it unwise to attempt to simply jump into the series on this disc. It is definitely the sort of series you have to watch from the beginning. But I can promise that it will be worth the backtracking and will be a consuming viewing experience.