It’s a mystery why it has taken so long for me to watch and read Claymore. I’ve been hunting for high fantasy anime that can scratch the same itch as the original Record of Lodoss War OVAs for years, and while Claymore is more shounen-fighting style dark fantasy, it leans closer to my craving than most Isekai or video game influenced anime currently being produced. Perhaps I missed the day my university’s anime club had played the introductory four episodes, assuming they had shown it at all, but this show has only been on the fringes of my anime radar. I’d occasionally see it on streaming services, but for some reason I never gave it a watch.

However, as much as I enjoyed finally watching the anime and reading the manga, I certainly found the earliest arcs of the narrative more enjoyable than the latter. This has less to do with the quality of the characters or plot and more to do with the prominence of that shounen-fighting sub-genre in which this story occupies. In fact, I have Claymore to thank for helping me understand why I have lost interest in arguably the most popular anime and manga genre: shounen-fighting stories are exhausting.

If you’re not quite certain what I mean by “shounen-fighting”, I’m referring to works such as Dragon Ball Z, Naruto, Bleach, and My Hero Academia. Much like a Kung-Fu flick, the primary draw to these works are the fights. Unfortunately, the pace of these stories is to primarily focus on fights or training arcs with barely any reprieve. All plot and character development occurs while fists and blades are clashing, or while protagonists are endeavoring to develop some new technique or surpass the current limit of their power. Once one phase ends, the next must begin. The bulk of all narrative is in the fighting, posturing, or training. If you’re lucky, there’s an episode where the characters visit a ramen shop or something, though you’re more likely to just get a beach episode these days.

By the time I was in College and Naruto was the new hotness, I found this formula to be tiresome. Now that I’m an adult, I find it outright exhausting and the one thing holding Claymore back from “surpassing its limit”.

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There are times I have to wonder if my contrarian nature is somehow programmed into me, or if it is a mere coincidence that my tastes often rub more mainstream proclivities the wrong way. To say that I enjoyed Soulstice more than I enjoyed any lone Devil May Cry game is no doubt going to cause many character-action aficionados to scoff, and I most certainly had a better time with it than I had the first two Bayonetta titles. One might even call me “basic” for this feeling.

Admittedly, there are no doubt aspects of Soulstice that hold it back from being “as good” as, say, Devil May Cry 5 on a technical, objective level. Writing, for starters. Building upon the drama established in Devil May Cry 3 and familial lore added in Devil May Cry 4, there’s some sense of climactic finality to Devil May Cry 5 and its memorable characters that leaves fans old and recent with a level of catharsis and closure, and all delivered with a bombastic sense of style that other games fail to approach the imagination of.

Which, perhaps, would be one of the first perceived “failings” of Soulstice. It is far more subdued than its character-action compatriots, relying less on the roller-coaster zaniness and “how much more kuh-razy can these narrative loop-de-loops get?”, delivering instead a somber tale of a young warrior woman and her spectral sister’s bond. Briar is sardonic in expression and speech, contrasting with the innocent optimism and youthful wisdom of her deceased sister. Their mission is to investigate and put an end to the corruption and collapse of one of the world’s great three cities, a dimensional tear having opened above from which wraiths descend upon the populace to slaughter, contaminate, and possess.

Despite the abundance of demons or apocalyptic conflict in Devil May Cry or Bayonetta, respectively, the jovial wit of our protagonists always conveys a sense of fun in the carnage and makes a mockery of the villains responsible. The characters, setting, and narrative of Soulstice do not possess such levity, but I can assure you, the gameplay itself is such a delight that I believe it deserves to be held as an equal sibling to such franchises.

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