This started kinda meh imo, it was immediately gripping for me at least, always a fan of instant immersion (thrown into action straight away), but the characters seemed shallow and unrelatable. Oh boi oh boi oh boi! That does not stay that way at all. This has some of the best characters from anything ever, almost everyone changes themselves on a fundamental level, becoming better, learning to trust in one another. All the character and relationship arcs are so impressively executed!
Why's the art a 9 instead of a 10? B/c I couldn't get over how stupid the MC's haircut looked, not a fan of that character design. Looked too pathetic. I wonder if it would have been more effective to one-punch-man-style it and give him a palette of faces, some rugged, some round, etc. so that when he means business HE MEANS BUSINESS.
But art is of minimal importance to me, what matters most is story and how that affects the characters involved. And they nailed that part. The story is gripping and, especially towards the end as they expertly construct this alright climax, edge-of-seat tension.
The romance in here is also perfect for me, it felt very natural, developing over time, and it's also an expression of freedom in a restrictive historical world. Just works for me dude, but I expect it's something everyone will love.
Everything's an upside, everything is flawless apart from: some asides aren't explored fully/enough (e.g. a couple of the key characters have been influenced by parental figures in their childhood but I don't think it's explored enough how much that really affected them), Sagara isn't given some opportunities to be a badass, which is a bit detrimental to the audience's image of him near the start, but I feel he's redeemed himself near the end, there's not enough foreshadowing/hinting at some "twists" that happen. When they do happen, it feels kind of like the writers got to that point and thought "why not?"
But my "disadvantages" are really really weak, this honestly was amazing and I feel is very underrated.
