A typical mafia action story with a dash of shoujo.

I can imagine this being a decent story when it came out. Similar to Jurassic Park or Alien, if you view this title with a modern outlook, it's mediocre at best and has numerous aspects that I would consider generic. Honestly, if I am more versed in the mafia genre, I would drop this title without a second thought. But since I am not, it was refreshing for me; though it did not take long for that feeling to subside.

Art is alright for my taste, nothing too special but every panel isn't clumped with decorative details like the majority of shoujos of that era, which is greatly appreciated. Though it was clumped with walls of text instead because holding the readers' hands is simply second nature.

Characters are mostly 2 dimensional, with the exception of Ash since your enjoyment will depend entirely on that character. Some might consider him bland since you can essentially boil him down to a tragic backstory character who had to become flawless to survive. He is so god damn flawless to the point of redundancy. Geopolitical knowledge? ye. Hacking? yup. 200 IQ? got that. Dog-like sense of smell and hearing? wait this is getting weird. He is so perfect that his only weakness is, you guessed it, friendship. In a fight, next to no one can beat him. From a floor of goons to a train full of goons, just call Ash. There is another weakness he has but honestly, it's the author recognizing the repetitiveness of the story and decided to throw the readers another bone to chew on for the second half. The weakness I was talking about stemmed from having to be so flawless. It's basically a textbook princess stereotype, someone who has to be flawless despite having internal problems looking for someone for comfort. You can already deduct how most of the conflicts will be like considering there is an immortal plot armored character with a meek friend.

Like I have previously expressed, aside from Ash, there isn't any other characters worth commenting on. Eiji? I wouldn't consider a timid character existing for the sole purpose of making Ash feel a bit more 3d interesting. Even if there are interesting characters, their intentions and purpose are all laid out on a silver platter for the audience. There is no sense of mystery or any reason for the readers to think too much about them since they will be explained anyways. There's a character named Yut Lung who seemed to be dangerous despite looking the opposite. I thought he would be worth a dime but in the end, his intentions are explained to us in sections spanning several volumes then compiled together at the end for easy digestion.

I ought to end the review before it becomes a full rant. I guess the high score for both the anime and manga had my hopes up. I commented mostly on the characters since that was the lifeline of this manga. If you are really bored and don't mind a bit of shoujo in your action flick, this might interest you. If you are looking for something amazing, this ain't it.