I found the story extremely engaging, and really made you want to read even more, which was exactly what the author had intended. At times, though, some of the drama was unnecessary. That is a problem that is commonly found in shoujo manga- Obvious attempts to make you cry can be slightly annoying at times. As a person who's cried hundreds of times reading manga, it's hard to phase me after so much experience.
As for the art, I found it beautiful. Without the plagiarism, I would give it a nine, but there are just some things that you can't change. That said, the panels were very well thought out, the character designs are attractive and memorable, and the splashes and the 2-page color spreads were absolutely beautiful, and definitely usable and great for desktop backgrounds or phone lockscreens. Everything was very pretty and nice to look at, and I simply love Suetsugu-sensei's style. Shoujo generally can have either beautiful or ugly art, and this is definitely one of the beautiful examples.
There were a lot of... Questionable changes in Midori's personality over a short time frame. I understand that after Tokio and Hashiba coming into her life, she's bound to change, but that raises the question of- Does it really make sense for the change to happen so quickly? After being traumatized by several permanently scarring events in her life, she's introduced as someone who doesn't like to interact with other people at her school, and doesn't really care about her life or other people in general. A few chapters later, she's able to talk to everyone and SMILE with no issues at all. You may not agree with me, which makes sense, because even I'm not sure if I agree with me, but I feel like the changes were to sudden.
I highly enjoyed this series, as it put me through a lot of conflicting emotions, and really really recommend Eden no Hana to both newcomers to anime and manga and veterans. Shoujo lovers, especially, would be about to tell that this is a diamond in the rough full of you cliche, shitty, shitty characters and storylines.
Overall, it's a beautiful manga that will take you by the hand on a wonderful journey, but also feel conflicted about the whole plagiarism thing and whether to give it a high score. Although I gave it a rather mediocre score of seven, it's probably something I'll remember for a while.
