Short Synopsis: The Youma in the church is finally found. Now all that’s left is to defeat it.
Good: The final part of the episode was touching…
Bad: …but also cheesy and predictable.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10

The current arc of Claymore has definitely been interesting, but it’s been nothing special. This episode was mostly meant to bring Raki and Claire a bit more together, but they did this through a rather cheesy scene. Claire is about to permanently transform to a Youma when Raki comes to her and… well, I think you can guess what happens next. The fight itself also wasn’t really interesting. Okay, it did have a lot of blood, but I’d very rather much have the fights of Seirei no Moribito or Deltora Quest.

So, what was good about this episode? Well, the relationship between Claire and the two guards. At the end of the previous episode, I saw them as a bunch of idiots, but in fact, they’re just trying to protect their city, and don’t care whether they die or not. Claire was just as thoughtless as the two of them, by refusing to accept their help. I liked this. I also liked how the Youma turned out to be a corpse, instead of a monk. This just shows that they’re able to take any kind of form they please. Could they perhaps transform themselves to inanimate objects (like flowerpots, for example) as well? I doubt that, though.

Claymore definitely has potential, and I’m really looking forward to the arrival of Teresa, the rumoured turning-point for the manga. The current episode was nice, but when compared to the other episodes to have been showcased this season, it isn’t the best. I wonder if the rest of the series will change this.

Short Synopsis: This time, we find Ellis and Nadie in a local monastery, where the two cross-dressers from last time are out for revenge.
Good: Ellis was too cute.
Bad: The climax was a bit unbelievable.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10

Okay, so this episode was a bit silly, but it definitely was fun! The episode starts by throwing us right into the action, when the two cross-dressers from last episode have finally caught up with Ellis and Nadie. They don’t know about LA, so they blame the twosome for messing with their car. The three nuns who live in the monastery prove to be another very interesting case this time, solely because they take a step away from what you’d expect from a bunch of nuns. Ellis, armed with a pair of forks was also hilarious to see. ^^;

Obviously, there are many similarities between Noir and El Cazador, but there’s one fundamental difference: Noir started off mysteriously, and it took a very long while before the first mysteries started to get solved. El Cazador, on the other hand, has already answered a lot of questions in its first four episodes. This episode, for example, shows a lot of things about Blue-Eyes, while Rozenberg is also seen doing a few things here and there. Those scenes were a tad difficult to understand, though.

What is clear now is that Blue-Eyes and Rozenberg don’t have the same intentions or goals. It seems to me that Blue-Eyes is trying to find out what Ellis actually is, either that, or she already knows this, and tells this to the viewers. Ellis is some kind of witch, I’m not yet sure whether she was born one, or that she gained her abilities from the professor. What we also learned was that some strange experiments were performed on her, till she at one point begged the professor not to do them anymore. The professor promised he wouldn’t, which could suggest why Ellis killed the guy: he broke his promise, and she couldn’t take it anymore.

Blue-Eyes seems to be trying to figure out what Rozenberg is after, as she continues to spy on him. Lilio’s father, meanwhile, is seen to have made a phone call with Rozenberg, which suggests that they’re on his side. I kept wondering why LA didn’t appear in this episode, but it seems that he’s been trailing the other twosome. I suspect that the next episode will bring them a bit more in the spotlight.

Finally, what was up with that final sentence in this episode? Ellis isn’t god’s child? What could be the meaning after this?