XBlade

Let me start by saying I am only writing this review because there is no review for Xblade right now. This is just a quick one to help you out a little until somebody (hopefully) writes a better one.
Xblade takes your typical shounen fighting genre and makes it it's own. The basic story of it is not that original. I am referring to the "normal boy accidentally gains some type of power and is forced to fight and become stronger" type of story. As you read in the synopsis, Mana is a girl who turned herself into a sword. I won't say much about the story in detail, but there are a couple groups who are after Mana, so Haru and her must fight. If you want to know the all the details then read the manga or send me a message. I just don't want to give out any spoilers in the review. A lot of time is given to actually tell the story here, there is not just pointless fighting occurring in every chapter. There is actually a lot less fighting then what I thought there would be, but when fights do happen, you will not be disappointed. The action scenes do not go on for chapters at a time, but they are short to give it a realistic feel and are very violent. A lot of time is given to develop the characters and their relationship. Although, the characters themselves are not the most original. Haru is your typical kind of dumb toughguy and Mana is the spoiled bratty girl who is slowly warming up to him.
This manga really deserves to be more popular. The art is fantastic, it has such amazing fights and an overall story to back it up. It might be able to appeal to people outside of the action genre. So if that isn't really your thing, give it a shot anyway.

tl;dr: A messy battle manga with some good concepts but that doesn't resolve anything before ending completely randomly.

This manga is one that seems interesting enough when looked at in terms of small story segments, but overall it feels quite lacking. The plot I feel in general isn't that bad, but the way it's presented is incredibly messy. Nothing major is ever properly resolved over the course of the manga. It just keeps introducing more and more new elements without ever having a moment where there's a definite victory, an objective is fully reached, or even just a mystery finally being solved. The issue isn't as much that the story gets unwieldy from this, because overall it is pretty simplistic, though the jumping around can get confusing. Rather, the issue is that it doesn't really follow any sort of rising falling path, and hence the pacing feels really messy. In terms of characters, it also felt really messy, where there seemed to be some sort of attempt at establishing characters towards the beginning, but as it went on it seemed to just throw around characters randomly with most of them feeling quite flat and arbitrary. Proper relationship development felt non-existent because even though there were some scenes that seemed to be trying to show it, ultimately they had no impact. The action is drawn well enough, but it lacks the structure and growth necessary for a shounen manga oriented around the action. He does get stronger, but it isn't framed well enough to seem substantial to the reader when it happens, and ultimately it doesn't feel all that exciting when it happens, which is a major issue because the excitement from these scenes is supposed to be a cornerstone of such manga. The way the manga ends is terrible, even taking into account that there's a sequel series, as it doesn't really end at a cliff hanger, or even suggest what direction the sequel series will take, but rather just ends randomly with a whole bunch of plot threads hanging around. The art was okay.