First things first. My "reviews" system is explained on a blog entry. Which can be found through my profile.
------

✦Story
To sum up the story. The biggest downfall for me was that after first main arcs. (until the first big boss was defeated) it was superb and it was the part that had Anime as well., which I've seen twice. But Anime ending felt rather unsatisfying thus why eventually popped Manga into my plan to read. Anyhow, after those arcs it started expanding with characters too much and it became fairly erratic, grand and chaotic, which lead to confusion and inconsistency.

It's a great battle shounen with some more focus on world and character building, while still offering the great fights, characters and power stake increases. I rather have soft spot to spirit type of powers in Anime, which is one of the reasons why I loved this title.

But nevertheless, as mentioned it somewhat strayed off from the path of storytelling and progression. Where eventually It felt like watching some sort of a political drama Anime.

Another quirk about battle shounens that if they have some sort of romance entanglement or bait to it. They usually don't go anywhere or are absolutely irrelevant. But since this Manga is more character and story oriented and offers us a rather blatant love interests, we do get some nice moments. But biggest issue here is, that finale to that aspect...felt rather underwhelming and loose-ended.

Anyhow, story did suffer a bit after the primary first arc, but in the end it was still very enjoyable world.

✦Art
It's a bit old-styled Art. But still pretty cool. Especially world, powers and creatures were very pleasant aesthetically. While character design was cool enough and fairly oldschool. Nothing too amazing.

✦Character
Long story short. Plenty of characters. Main teamup being a thick headed powerhorse with many hidden talents and other being a school president type of a stubborn skill master.

A lot of side-characters and other characters of high value. While for the most part they were enjoyable and fairly interesting. I felt that I got tired of most of the characters and their depth reasonings fairly dull.

✦Enjoyment & Overall
I got romance, I got cool powers, I got spirit fighters, I got cool world and action. So by the end of the day it means that I did enjoy this Manga a rather big portion of the time. Biggest flaws being a bit tedious characters, needlessly expanded story and layering and a bit disappointing "wrapping it up" storytelling.