Yuuki Aru Mono yori Chire
The Valiant Must Fall

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The Valiant Must Fall is a dark samurai manga for those who dig deep into the works they're reading. More casual readers may find themselves lost while following the linear storyline.

Most everything in this manga has an explanation for why it happens, as it should be. However, these explanations are often so deeply hidden that you often won't discover why something happened for quite some time, if you're lucky enough to find out at all. This makes it hard to determine how good the story truly is, but from many situations that I am able to discover the reasoning and ties for, the story is ... relatively average. The story line is quite linear, with many plot points happening just because they develop the story's plot. Undeniably, these plot points are interesting in what happens, but often predictable and progress too fast to properly set up the next plot point.

However, the speed of the plot is intriguing, as it creates this feeling that it leads up to something and that the main story is yet to be seen, but as of the time of writing, this has yet to be revealed. I highly encourage you to do more research to see if this has changed.

The art is quite nice, being detailed, but rough around the edges. That, along with heavy shading, elevates the dark themes and story. During more calm and comedic moments, characters will often turn chibi, which is used scarcely in this manga. They feel more impactful because of that. It's an enjoyable break in the heavily dark notes the author plays, just to go right back to playing an ensemble of death.

The characters are relatively generic, with their defining features usually being their powers or combat skill. A few times, I had trouble knowing which character was speaking or preforming an action, as their character designs and manner of speech are often very similar.

Overall, I found this series to be relatively average. The fast speed mellows out the dark tones, and the large amount of extra reading and thinking required to understand the characters and their actions is too much for many normal readers. In fact, the physical volumes contain a multiple page historical commentary at the end in order to give show background on the series.
If you're interested in dark samurai mangas with large amounts of required reading, this is the manga for you. However, if you aren't interested in extended reading or just want to get some quick enjoyment, you may want to look somewhere else.