Summary:

Believing Clare to be Awakened, Ophelia chases her down in the forest and almost immediately activates her Yoma powers. To her surprise, Clare responds by suppressing her own energy, which makes Ophelia at first think that she’s giving up. When Clare is able to block all her swings, Ophelia realizes that Clare is actually reading the flow of her energy to predict movements, so she decides to try something different. All of the sudden, despite being able to still sense the attacks, Clare isn’t able to respond to them anymore because Ophelia’s sword seems to be warping a little. After one particularly devastating slash, Ophelia reveals that she doesn’t have a nickname like Phantom Miria or Windcutter Flora, but she’s trying to develop one with her rippling sword technique so that she will be known as Rippling Ophelia. Clare quickly realizes that Ophelia is vibrating her arm at incredible speeds to achieve this effect, and she decides to try to attack Ophelia from behind. Ophelia, however, barely flinches and promptly chops off Clare’s sword arm. Clare manages to grab her arm, but she then takes another huge slash across her chest that sends her tumbling down the nearby cliff.

Clare eventually drags herself out of the river below and is still alive despite her arm, but unfortunately, Ophelia has followed her down. Ophelia had figured out that Clare had tried to make it look like she was done for, though she gave it away by being concerned about her arm even at the end. She then goes on to explain how there are offensive and defensive types of Claymores, and the offensive ones like Clare can’t completely regenerate. Since she’s not going to wait for Clare to reattach her severed arm, Ophelia quickly shreds it. This leaves Clare no choice but to try to fight with her remaining arm, but she’s unable to do any damage. Seeing how hard Clare is fighting, Ophelia guesses that Clare has either a promise with the boy or revenge that she still has to carry out. She then cuts off Clare’s other hand and tauntingly suggests that not being able to die because there’s still someone to protect is a foolish delusion of the weak. Ophelia gets ready to finish Clare off, but a cloaked stranger suddenly arrives to interrupt their battle. Clare tries to warn this stranger about Ophelia, but when Ophelia attacks, it’s the stranger who is surprisingly able to block all of Ophelia’s attacks.

In one motion, this stranger hits Ophelia on almost every part of her body. This also uncloaks her, and Clare recognizes the person as none other than Quick Sword Ilena, the same person who had been sent to kill Teresa. However, Clare loses consciousness soon after and when she wakes up again, she finds herself in bed in Ilena’s cabin. After Ilena tells her that she blacked out after attaching her hand and has been asleep for a week, Clare panics because she has something she has do, but Ilena shoves her back onto the bed. Ilena knows that Ophelia isn’t dead, and without her sword arm, Clare now has to fight with only her other one. After telling Clare to think about her place, Ilena heads outside to practice her technique on a tree. Clare comes out once she’s eaten a bit, and, because Ilena asks how Clare knows her name, Clare recalls everything that happened with Teresa. This causes Ilena to question if Clare has Teresa inside of her and deduces that Clare wants to go after Priscilla. She warns Clare against it because Priscilla’s power is overwhelming, especially for someone like Clare who is only one-fourth Yoma since she took on Teresa’s blood instead of going through the normal procedure.

To prove what she means, Ilena takes off her cloak to show that she’s only got one arm left after the brief encounter with Priscilla. Having barely lived through it, Ilena had gone into hiding by suppressing her Yoma energy and now admits that she had been afraid. Clare, however, still wants to continue on and explains that she couldn’t do anything else Teresa’s death because of how Teresa was everything to her. She had to move forward because she wasn’t strong enough to forget about everything and live as a human. Hearing all this, Ilena decides that Clare is fit for battle and prepares to teach her how to use the Quick Sword technique. After a bit of training, Clare is able to somewhat imitate it, but only for a short period of time. As Ilena explains, the technique is accomplished by releasing all her Yoma energy into one arm so that just that arm awakens. Despite being exhausted from trying it, Clare isn’t ready to quit and claims that the style is most suitable for herself. Meanwhile, back in the forest, a heavily injured Ophelia cries out to her brother who she remembers had died protecting her. Her anger at Clare and towards the Yoma who killed her brother causes her to use so much of her Yoma power that she regains consciousness a little later feeling really good, but very hungry for human innards.

Preview

For those of you who might not have heard, I did indeed pick up Claymore and drop D.Gray-man.
I kept thinking about how Clare was going to recover and somehow win or escape, but that didn’t really happen. Instead, Ophelia cut off both of Clare’s arms (well, technically one arm and one hand), and in the end, Clare was still only left with one working arm. I thought that would gimp her quite a bit, but Ilena’s appearance in the teacher role means that Clare will invariably get more powerful, at least to the point where she can handle Ophelia. It happens almost a bit too conveniently, but it reminds me that this is indeed a shounen-oriented action type show. After getting watching her get beat around so much this week, I’d really like her to finally start kicking some ass again.
Speaking of which, it seemed pretty obvious to me that Ophelia was too cruel and sadistic of a Claymore not to turn fully evil by Awakening. From the very beginning in last week’s episode with how she toyed with Clare, you could tell that she wasn’t going to become an ally, and her lust to kill the Awakened has now led her to become one. In any case, I think Shinohara Emi does a fantastic job voicing her in that sickingly sweet but evil way, and I’m looking forward to next week’s episode which promises Clare fighting the Ophelia in her Awakened form along with the appearance of Rafaela.

79 Comments

  1. xellos but would you agree that at time new generation can be strong than older ones. I guess what Miria said kind influence my though. Miria said the gap between 6 and 5 was huge. It kind maybe believe that the current generation may has surpass the older one.

    dxanato
  2. Really good to see this show here. And people it’s Irene not Ilian. That’s not even a case of Engrish pronunciation. It’s just wrong.

    The series seemed to have covered alot of material in just one episode though. I had thought maybe they’d just cover the 1st fight and have Irene show up dumdumdum style right at the very end. But I guess if they want to fit everything in they’ll have to cram. But I really don’t see how they can make an entire episode out of just the Clare vs Ophelia round 2 fight next. The 2nd battle wasn’t quite as intense or protractable as the 1st. My opinion of course.

    Zzz...
  3. Dxanato: There is reason why there is huge gap between 5 and 6. If you haven’t read the manga I won’t spoil it for you. I will just say that #5 is a very special case.

    Xellos-_^
  4. to Mosmos

    Rafaela makes a cameo appearance right after the end of the Ophelia Arc. And the Rifu (spelling) arc occurs after the Ophelia arc. Like I said this show is just speeding through Ophelia’s story.

    Zzz...
  5. Two words: IRENE-SAMA~!

    Thank you. ^^

    And I really can’t remember a main character of a shounen anime shown to be in this much peril of their life. Not in Bleach when Ichigo got run through by Byakukya the first time did I feel a sense of ‘Oooooo, they’re gonna DIE!”

    This really drives home what makes Claymore so different from other shounen series. Even though Clare’s the main character – the fact that she can die just like the rest is always apparent.

    Arakan7
  6. everytime Clare gets that superpowered look, something always comes along to get rid of it…

    on another note… can’t wait to see Clare’s new look… hint hair up, almost human…

    Slade
  7. You DO realize a Claymore that get its head cut off dies? they can re-attach their cut limbs or even regenerate then (if they are defensive types) but they cannot do that if they lose a vital point (they die, end of story).

    Drakron
  8. weird . . am i the only one who seems to like Ophelia? *shrugs* anyways, raphaela is coming out! yipee! thanks for blogging this! now i really can’t wait for this episode to be subbed . . . T_T

    greg
  9. I loved this episode, but I made the mistake of watching it while I was eating dinner. I hope none of the other posters on this site made the same mistake that I did. I almost choked when I saw the bit where Clare got her other hand chopped off.

    Being unfamiliar with the manga, I have no idea what to expect from Raphaela. I know she isn’t a sadist like Ophelia, but does she share the same views regarding Awakened Beings? If so, Clare is in a lot of trouble.

    Yuri Rocks
  10. Irene is back and still great. Nice to see her get a fight which she could win. Frankly Teresa and then an awakened Priscilla was a little much. Great episode though.

    FlareKnight
  11. Do you guys think the organizaiton already knew that orphelia was going to awaken? I mean at the beginning of ep 12 when the guy tells her that shes hunting an awakened being that was a former single digit warrior and “very strong” I think he was talking about orphelia sicne she’s crazy as F*** and awakend in the last scene of this ep. . .and the awakend thing orphelia fought earlier was a little girl. . .and got owned pretty easily by orphelia. . .what do you guys think?

    jackson burger
  12. @ greg:
    I like Ophelia! She’s one of my favorites:)

    I can’t wait to see this episode. I already know what’s gonna happen but still.. I wanna see it animated 😀
    Atleast Ophelia got to kick some ass in this episode. Too bad Ilena showed up XP

    PhantomMiria
  13. see? see? Claymore is great!!! Ahem, .. now that I’m outta my crazy fanboy state, the screenies look amazing. Can never comment enough on the colors (great contrast) and amazing background work. Absolutely fantastic!! Gonna get the eps now to see if the animation itself is of its usual greatness.

    Thanks for blogging this!

    Jayars
  14. @RagnaB:
    Show Spoiler ▼

    Next fight will be awesome (at least it ws in the manga) and you’ll find out
    Show Spoiler ▼

    Thanks again @Omni for blogging this!

  15. WOW people cant resist dropping spoilers “I SEE THE MANGA HAS RUINED U GUYS ALSO” hehe. this is how a series should progress ,FAST AND SWEET!.

    P.S= i want clare to don her demon teeth and devour my innards.mmmmmm!

    BROOKLYN otaku
  16. Priscilla had the rank of 2 for fairly short time. She was only been active for few months and prove to be able to be of rank 2. Had Priscilla had few more year under her belt she may had take the 1 rank. Teresa would be 2 if thing had not gone like they did.

    Show Spoiler ▼

    dxanato
  17. Great you picked this up, much more interesting than D. Gray Man.
    I kinda feel that the manga is better than the anime, but the anime is still great to watch, with an amazing cast. I’m dreaming of Claymore having fighting scenes animated as well as Seirei, it would look so awesome o.o

    Only a note on the names, the girl is called “Irene”, which is a perfectly normal name (and the pronunciation is the german one), but was changed to Ilena in the English edition of the manga, for whatever reason. The Katakana really cannot be read as “Ilena”, Ilene at the most.

    Same for “Rubel”, who is actually called “Ruvuru” with no “b” at all. And his name is most likely based on the Louvre museum, like all the other names of the organization’s members are art-related as well.
    Here as well, no idea why the English version changed it, but in the Italian version (by a Japanese translator) his name is “Luvr”. If you don’t know how “Louvre” is spelled in Katakana of course, it is pretty hard to see the link.

    Minikui
  18. Yep, I agree with ida. Things are going to get much, much better. The next arcs will blow anyone away!

    Show Spoiler ▼

    krazy
  19. Ahh all the spoilers, and people messing up the spoiler tag lol

    Thanks Omni for picking this show up. It’ll be more worthwhile than D-gray man is for now. Only thing is now I won’t get to know when D-Gray man’s fillers are over, unless I watch it myself 🙁

  20. i wonder . . . (for those that have read the manga(trust me, major spoilers in this one))
    Show Spoiler ▼

    yay! i’m not the only ophelia lover!

    greg
  21. @greg
    Show Spoiler ▼

    AloneinVoid
  22. @greg
    Show Spoiler ▼

    @AloneinVoid
    Show Spoiler ▼

    Sahakiel
  23. @sahakiel
    Show Spoiler ▼

    AloneinVoid
  24. My views
    Show Spoiler ▼

    dxanato

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *