There are already a ton of revies about this, so ill keep this as short as possible. I was wandering around Mars since its been published in my country, however i avoided reading it when i was a teenager as at the time it wasnt my main interest. I had heard good and bad things about it, but i never really bothered.
Now roughly 15 years later, i am looking for good josei and come across this one again and i decide to give it a go.

Honestly, i didnt expect too much. I was pleasantly surprised however, (and ended up bingeing the whole manga in 2 days) as the story gains some traction around book 3 or so. It starts out really cliché bad boy meets good girl and it seems pretty predictable. however as the story progresses, and more background is uncovered it gets interesting.

I didnt expect the manga to reach to those levels of psychologic entrapments or situations. Although never explained scientifically but rather understandable for teenage readers, the main focus is healing from difficult experiences and learning to cope. it shows different approaches to how people handle their respective experiences and for a manga that has romance as a genre its surprisingly deep and more faceted than some other josei ive read. it is also fairly well done, the characters still seem believable and quite authentic with their respective problems/past. it is also visible how their past experiences influence their daily behaviour. Although you might have to read quite far into the story for some people to make more sense, since some past events get uncovered fairly late.

The characters -although flawed (main hero is overly brutal, main heroine cries wayyyy to much) are still progressing and evolve to cope with their past experiences all the while some quite standard romance genre stuff happens.

All in all i can recommend you give it a try, the art is very nice -90s style but quite clean and not loaded with effects. The story is good overall, and gets better the more you contiune reading. the end was a little short or rather abrupt for my tastes, i like full closure and the good chapter "some years later".

i will give it an overall 8 rating, as it is for the genre still exceptionally good. The focus being mainly romance though and some minor flaws that make me give it not the full 10. It is however a very good josei and im sure it deserves its place in the top 5 of josei.