Claymore/Tear Jerker

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • The scene in episode 1 where Raki's crying next to his brother's dead body. It's bad enough that right before, Raki discovers that his brother has been possessed by the yoma that killed their parents. It's really driven home when the yoma mockingly tells Raki, "He's crying now. It appears this body's memories are crying for you. How touching!" when tears fall down its cheeks. Of course, to kill the yoma Clare has to kill Raki's brother. Fortunately it's a pretty quick death, but it's also pretty graphic. Afterward we see Raki sitting in fetal position crying next to his brother's dead body, and it's just gut-wrenching.
  • Undine's death was quick but also traumatising.
  • The entire Teresa flashback.
    • When a mute Clare sees Teresa's scars for the first time and regains the ability to speak, tearfully asking if it hurts and then going on to say that she knows Teresa is still hurting inside because Clare has the same pain. Teresa, up until now a borderline sociopath, completely breaks down, falling to her knees and clutching Clare to her as they cry together.

Teresa (to herself): [Clare] taught me something I thought I'd never learn, that even eyes like mine can still shed tears.

    • Then when Teresa is killed right in front of Clare by an awakening Priscilla. The death itself is honestly so much sad as it is shocking seeing as it comes right out of nowhere. The tearjerker is right after Priscilla kills/injures the rest of the group and leaves Clare all alone with her big sister/mother figure's decapitated corpse. There's no dialouge (other than an internal monlouge), just Clare crawling toward Teresa's severed head, tears streaming down her face and finally clutching the head in her arms as she sobs into Teresa's hair. Finally, Clare carries the head around with her until she finds an Organization member and demands he use Teresa's head as material to make her a Claymore. Her face is what sends the image home. Now that I think about it, the whole Teresa arc is really just one tearjerker after another with a few CMOAs and CMOHs thrown in.

Clare: "Ter...e...sa?"

    • Hearing Clare utter that name as she witnessed her Mother-Sister figure being decapitated right in front of her make me well up each time.
    • I actually felt really sad for Priscilla. She was just a kid who was manipulated by the organization to do their bidding, and they didn't care what the psychological toll was on her. You see Priscilla wanting to do the right thing, but it was like everybody was doing some tug-of-war thing on her and she herself was caught in the middle. When we see her screaming for her father when Teresa is hovering over her, it just hits you that she just wanted her family and that she just wasn't cut out to be warrior to begin with. Even though she caused Teresa's death and awakened into the most powerful being in the world Priscilla isn't really that much to blame in the end. She was just another victim.
  • Another moment: After Jean manages to pull Clare back from Awakening, sacrificing her own life in the process, Clare falls to her knees crying, and says 'I'm the weakest Claymore! So why are you the one who's dead and not me?'
    • It was the "NO! Your life is your own! It doesn't belong to anyone else!" line that really got me. So the Tear Jerker started before Jean actually died.
    • Shortly thereafter, we learn that the 24 Claymores sent to Pieta on a suicide mission had a secret plan of survival. Only seven of them survived, and Miria, the leader of the 24, who came up with the plan, beats herself up over this when the battle is over. The other survivors tell her it isn't her fault that so many were lost, and that they're grateful to her for the lives her plan was able to save, culminating in this.
  • Lets not forget Rafaela reuniting with her Abyssal One sister Luciela (the latter having just lost her battle against Isley and had reverted to human form). For goodness knows how long, Rafaela had waiting for the moment she would kill the monster that had been her sister herself, but when she see's Luciela in tears and open arms over her arrival, she drops her sword and hugs her. No wait it gets worse, it turns out Luciela's just trying to convince Rafaela to awaken so she can get back at Isley and take over the island. So Rafaela, snaps Luciela's back....while hugging her.
    • That's not just the worst part of it all. Luciela isn't just cynically trying to use Rafaela...she honestly doesn't understand that Rafaela wants to kill her rather than awaken so they can be together again...
  • From Chapter 107, Miria loses the battle with the new twins after her perception is altered into thinking she's fighting Hilda, the friend she killed after Hilda had awakened (and whos death triggered Miria's near awakening). Miria dies crying, thinking her friend is still alive while the Organizations Claymores kill her brutally.
    • Turns out she survived. Still sad though.
  • For me, it were the deaths of Isley and Riful. Even Evil Has Loved Ones...
  • When the first pair of twins, Alicia and Beth, fight to protect each other. And subsequently get curbstomped by Priscilla. It's heartbreaking when you watch a supposedly emotionless and mindless battle machine for the Organisation weep for her fallen twin.
  • The story of Cassandra. Alas, Poor Anti-Villain.
    • After finally killing Roxanne for good, she just looks at Miria's Claymores and... walks (crawls?) away. It is just so sad, how much the woman has lost by that point: her dignity, her friend, her life, her last shreds of humanity, and even her arch-enemy.