Nowhere near as good as it's predecessor, 'Sanctuary', 'Strain' had put the writer to shame.

Our story begins when a cold-blooded assassin gets a job to kill a twelve-year-old prostitute and her mother, first mistake the writer made was that we were not familiar with the main character... At all. And at this point it is very dangerous to add a new character which does not benefit the main character and doesn't have a legitimate reason to be in the story, and so the writer in this way, gambled...


And lost.


It was almost shoujo-ey manga-ish from the fact that through incredible odds the main character meets the twelve-year-old prostitute three times in around two days. She falls for him, and then we find out that they are both from a rich, famous family. Can it get anymore shoujo manga?
At one point, the characters call the not-yet-teenage whore 'Kitten', seriously?
What kind of crap is that?
The hardcore main character meets her three times and he goes from 'just kill me and get it over with' to 'I wanna LIVE!', it's WAY too much and what's with everyone being obsessed with the KID, the not-yet-teenager KID, how come she became the focus of the story.
Because of her, even a 'true yakuza' turns into a coward?
What is this?
A cheesy sitcom?

The sad thing is, it's the same author as 'Sanctuary' that wrote this but it's nowhere near as good, NOWHERE NEAR.
The stories are very similar, almost parallel but 'Sanctuary' is out of this story's league.

If you even think you like this story, you better pass this up for 'Sanctuary'.
Even the art in 'Sanctuary' is much better then the art in this story.
You can see the difference in the effort put into the stories.

Just give it up and go read 'Sanctuary'.