Story 9/10
The story itself is really good, very interesting and innovative. I love the ancient legends about Japan and the fact they mixed it with today's culture. The final saying
about the whole thing being against destruction of environment had a good sense too but I wish it was described better. I wish Soko shown more struggle about the oni from the beggining, not just focus on the human side. Like this, her devotion at the end seems fake.
Art 8/10
For a manga that old the drawings are really good. It remainds me of Mars, especially Soko's hair. Surprisingly, it was pretty easy to read. I just couldn't stand her closed eyes sometimes.
Protagonists 4/10
The biggest problem I have with this manga is Soko.
At the beginning I was surprised - female protagonist with such a strong will not to obey man and don't really dwell about eating humans in manga from the 90s? I was impressed. And then everything changed and I really started to hate her. Come on, she was going back and forth from Akira to Takao, doing exactly the things she said she won't do. An frankly, Akira at the end was as duplicitous as his uncle. If he acted like this at the beginning, he would've just killed Soko in 2 or 3 chapter and that's it. I know the things that happened had to change him but the fact that mangaka shows Soko going over the same thing "I want to be human, I want to be with Akira" and "I can't kill ...." but not giving a single thought about the fact that her lovely Akira, who didn't want to kill anyone while obtaining the scroll, started to cut of heads like crazy and suffocates her whenever she didn't agree with him pissed me of as hell. In the end, it was all about two guys fighting and a girl being shushed, because none of them wants to fight her. And when at the end she finally stopped whining, Hiko saved the day anyway.
Akira as a main male character was ok, especially on the begining.
I wish the author had more thought about his challenges with killing and using people, at the end, he seemes cold and heartless. His love to Soko was more of an obsession, I don't believe she was happy with him after all of this ended. All in all, he was drenching her whatever she spoke her mind against him.
Takao is my favourite character. I won't write about who he turned out to be, but it was a HUGE surprise. His character was written the best. I felt very sorry for him.
Hiko, Kai were ok. Akira's sister was blank to me. It seemed as their characters would be shown good but it turned out Mayumi was very shallow. Sometimes if felt as if they had forgotten that she exist, just to bring her up in the least wanted form.
Generally I think this manga has problems with female characters. They are very shallow and one-dimensional. Looks like an addition to males, which i weird taking into the writer is female.
In the end, I would want to add that I really wish she has shown more of Rago. I would want to see what she thought about all of this.
They made it seem as if it would be Soko or Rago in one body, while Hiko was very oni from the beginning. I thought it's a struggle and in the end Soko will understand why Rago wants Kimon back.But nothing like this happend. Soko never got to know what Rago was like, what she thought about Takao and oni I wish the author would make this manga more meaningful, not only abusive love story with light gore. I feel like no one there understood anything, they were just running around like headless chickens, pretending they're doing something good.
