This weekend I spent much of my time reading many, many volumes of Claymore by Yagi Norihiro, after repeated recommendations from people whose taste I trust persuaded me to give the series another try. Those of you who have been reading this blog since way back when will remember that I was a bit underwhelmed by volume 1. I actually didn’t think volume 1 was much better the second time around, and volume 2 wasn’t very good either. However, starting with the origin story in volume 3, the series gets increasingly awesome. It’s such a pleasure to see familiar shōnen tropes like “I will protect my precious person!” and “I will learn new techniques and get stronger!” used in a story where the vast majority of the cast are women.
Nevertheless, though Claymore’s women characters get a much better deal than they would in most other shōnen series, the series’s treatment of gender remains flawed. Yagi gives his readers truly compelling women characters–smart, strong, independent, driven–that subvert a lot of the shōnen genre expectations for the women characters to be token, disposable, or both. But who is he really writing for? Or more specifically, who is he drawing for? Fifteen volumes in, I’m ridiculously fond of Claymore’s women warriors, but I still have a sneaking suspicion that Yagi’s target audience does not necessarily include me.
[Warning: The remainder of this post will have some spoilers.]
