Anime — Claymore

A shonen series about girls with implausibly large swords who fight demons (and on occasion, each other -- and on other occasions become or nearly become demons themselves, to be fought) in a Japan-does-D&D-Europe fantasy world. That means the usual ration of power-ups, but for this one, not so much shouting of attack names -- just body parts falling off and gouts of blood under high pressure.

So what starts out as demon-of-the-week rapidly evolves into super-hero type fighting (but with deaths), secret origins, mysterious organizations and crossed agendas, and small armies of high-level beings on both sides, before the massive one-on-one battle at the end that all this has set up.

Entirely harmless, but marred by the most incredibly annoying male side character (worse than Shinji) I have encountered for a long while. Without the encumbrances of having read the manga, I was not disturbed by any shuffling of the ur-plot towards the end, but felt that it did its best to tie things up while leaving an eventual second series possible.