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Well, first of all, I'm going to point out some that I literally found quite interesting and some not so interesting and some very strange. First, I've always considered myself a big fan of stories, manga and anime about ninjas, samurai and Feudal Japan, since I was a kid I've always been fascinated by them and to this day they still fascinate me. I have seen many, from Ninja Gaiden to Naruto. However, I don't consider myself a fan of Matsuri Hino's stories and manga, I have never read Vampire Knight although at one point it caught my attention when I heard about it, but ... the reason I haven't read it was because I knew it didn't have a very concrete ending, and to be frank I have never been able to stand stories, both manga, and anime that don't have a good established ending. Back on topic, I read this manga just this week and finished it last night. Now I'm going to be honest and a bit harsh, and honestly, I'll dare to give the author a few tips for dealing with this kind of subject matter. From the very beginning, the story doesn't take long to hook you. More so when it deals with the wonderful and dark world of ninjas. It shows you the dilemma and the hard way of life that a young girl, from a very young age, was subjected and trained to become a real killing machine. The only thing that keeps her established is her presumed father figure, and out of an act of kindness, nobility and the apparent need for a daughter to compensate for the loss of his wife and real daughter, he decides to adopt her. The next morning, due to an alleged assassination attempt, he dies and the girl ends up alone and travels to Japan to fulfill the last wish her “master” asked of her. She meets a young man, who is the son of a powerful and influential family of ninjas in present-day Japan and they become “apparently” friends. When she enters the institute, she defends a boy with her skills, who ends up falling in love with her. Each page of the first volume, manifests a series of events and alleged attacks that has much to do with an element that was the main reason for the “death” of Mikage's tutor: mysterious seeds that contain certain elements to do either good or evil. We are shown a presumed antagonist, Mahito's younger sister: Mako. A girl with an enigmatic attitude who, according to the plot, has control of the family and intends to assassinate her brother in order to take over the entire Wakashimazu family legacy. All these elements are worthy for a ninja story. However, from the last pages of the first volume, after revealing an alleged conspirator, Mikage's evolution becomes clearer and from this point the author wants to show us that her tutor's efforts were not in vain. However, everything goes downhill from volume 2 onwards and this is when the real mistakes begin. The first of them is when Mikage takes control of this new life. In the beginning we are shown very interesting aspects; like the adaptation in the institute and how he is gaining the acceptance of many girls of his age in the school. But, no matter what she does, rather than an evolution she seems to be falling into a kind of dead-end quagmire; she tries to reject herself as a ninja, no matter how hard she tries or resists she avoids it at all costs, instead of finding some kind of balance between the two worlds. Among other words, even if she forgoes quests and assassinations, she avoids anything that has any sort of connection to her past life, and instead of there being someone to guide her in trying to find that balance, no character is two-dimensional enough to help her. A better choice for that might have been that guy she helped when bullies tried to take her book. That book, could have had a very strong secret to the plot. We are shown many moments where Mikage helped him and this at every moment his feelings become stronger towards her. The boy could have helped Mikage know what the depth and complexity of this new life was like; what an ordinary teenager in Japan must face, the challenges he must face, the complexities and conflicts they entail. Instead, they put him as a simple, run-of-the-mill supporting character who contributes almost nothing to the story other than being the typical love interest of the protagonist. Another negative aspect here was, I don't know what the author was thinking of when she wrote the plot of this manga, or if she just draws and got carried away, plus those who approved of this, but it seems like she needed to inform herself more about what is the grim complexity of the ninja world. There is a saying that goes, “Eyes we don't see, hearts we don't know.” And here, there was something that could have been profitably brought out, and would have enriched the story as a whole, is the fact that Mahito's character, was revealing very intriguing and suspicious signs. When Mikage asks him about the seeds of which were the cause of his mentor's presumed death, he pats him on the head and walks away, there he would have been taken advantage of to reveal to them that he also had something to do with her death, more when Mako gives her some sort of hint about him, since in volume 1 she tells him that Mahito, her brother, tried to kill her, and suddenly the plot diverts to the direction in his bodyguard, who is later revealed to be a double agent. Suddenly, he tells her that Mikage's guardian is alive and although she doesn't want to believe it at first, Mahito is the first to react quite suspiciously about it. You could say, they were already giving us a clear sign of who was the real culprit in this regard. In the ninja stories, there are not only fights, combats, chases and action, there are also many intrigues, mysteries, false faces, unexplained murders (at least in the first and second act), and secret conspiracies, and the goal of the characters is to take us to the deepest corner of the earth to reveal such enigmas and discover the culprit, either to catch him or kill him. In that journey we get to know interesting places, which enriches the story even more. Here, the author wasted that key moment, because if Mahito knew Mikage's potential, and what she was capable of and what she was not (if she was the main antagonist), that presumed intention to convince her to give up her life as a ninja, could have been used against her. Another detail that could have also been used to add fuel to the plot and make the reader go crazy with excitement was that there was a spy, a TWO-FACE, in Mikage's life and that could have been the high school boy; either by threats or for some other unknown reason, he would become not only Mikage's love interest, but he could also have been a spy working for the enemy side, or the protagonist's side. Case in point, the Daredevil comics. Instead, we are revealed that Mikage's tutor is alive and that he was kidnapped and subdued to deliver the seeds to a presumed client, whose main antagonist was working and of whom we never know who he is and what he wanted them for. Almost at the end, we are finally shown the alleged villain. A total waste that doesn't even leave the reader with the slightest reaction of bewilderment, the author tells us that he was another double agent who cheated and thus, for money, wanted the seeds. That has no emotion at all. They could have worked better this point of the main antagonist, instead of that agent they could have put Mikage's guardian, and thus know more about his past. Why did he lose his family? Why did he deceive Mikage in that way? And why did he want to convince her to be his adopted daughter? In that way, Mikage falls emotionally and so everything he once believed collapses. It gives a very justified motive to the story and a reason why he should continue to be a ninja, or quit. In stories about ninjas, secret agents and assassins, fake faces are the main driver of the whole plot. Another negative factor was the seeds, why not better instead use something more ambitious, like drugs, nuclear bombs or something that has the power to change humanity? Another aspect that could also have been stronger was knowing that, if the author had wanted it, was that she should have allowed the death of Mikage's guardian to be real, even if she found out that it was her own father who did it; either out of paternal jealousy, or not to lose a diamond like her own daughter for more ambitious purposes. That would have given the story more power, more motivation and more when revenge is the real goal of it all. I don't know what Matsuri Hino thought of, but with all due respect, she seems to be so obsessed with ships of different ages. The alleged love affair of a teenage girl with an older man, and moreover her own mentor, may have, based on their culture, a tolerable point of view in Japan, but in the West it is called pedophilia and this factor is very expressive in shōjo manga; and readers might see this as weird, and even uncomfortable. There is also a woman who is Mikage's mother, and she doesn't have more than a few seconds of appearance, a character that shouldn't even be there because she doesn't give any support. Now, it also doesn't make sense that, if the protagonist has parents, why is she with a man who wants to adopt her? The girl is not an orphan. In conclusion, Matsuri Hino is very good at telling cute platonic love stories of all kinds, whether they are vampires or teenagers with complexities, where love triangles are formed, and so on. But, I'll tell you the truth, the Shoujo genre and all those factors don't work, at all, in the shadowy world of ninjas. There is a manga, they even adapted it to anime called Nabari no Ō. The story is about a teenage boy named Miharu, he has a normal life until one day ninjas make an attempt on his life and he discovers a hard truth about his past and that he is destined to be a ruler. If given the choice between this story and Miharu's, I'd go with Miharu's story. It handles the ninja theme, appropriately. If Matsuri Hino were to read this review, I would tell her the following: I would have a stronger and more interesting and concrete direction to this story. Besides, two volumes would not have been enough, it would have taken five or even ten to tell a story like this.

First of all, this review will focus on some aspects that could be effective and positive so that, generally, this manga could become genuinely acceptable and on negatives that, sincerely, would be considered (from my point of view) the mistakes that many mangakas make in this kind of stories. First, like many others, I only knew about this manga one day when I explored the "Pinterest" page.And I found some sketches of the author that I usually didn't know at all. Do you want to know how I knew, in the first place, about the existence of this manga? It was because of an ... image that drew my attention to this artistic style. That image was the bathtub scene, found in chapters 26 and 27 of volumes 3 and 4. I will go into this part with some spoilers. When Koharu, perforce, gets into the bathtub with Ryuunosuke and starts playing SEXUAL fondling with her. She tries to resist, but ends up on the verge of her first erection with him. Honestly, that scene was the most redeeming thing about the whole thing. What I really liked about the whole "story". At that point, the author "NON" could have made the most of it. It felt very poetic and really erotic, like in the old movies and novels that deal with sex and eroticism in a heavenly, poetic and loving way. Those from the 70's, when those themes are worked in a more pure and less vulgar way, a worthy example of that was "Emmanuelle". This part could be the precise point for the evolution that the characters need, for the readers to begin to connect with the story and their environment. Here the chemistry between Koharu and Ryuunosuke was masterfully determined. The author could have made the most of this if she had had in her hands a well-established and well-worked context before she started drawing her first volumes.Trying to work with this kind of themes can even become a real headache, because as a mangaka, you have to make a series of complicated and often controversial decisions, knowing who will die, who will live and who will end up together at the end of the story. All of that becomes a real dilemma, and even more so when you start to form a group of fans who start to fall in love with your work and want those who really deserve to be together to end up that way. However, nowadays, it seems that this new generation of mangakas no longer care about telling a story and only focus on exposing references about ideologies, politics, etc. In this case, this manga deviated a lot from telling a good story, and only exposed problems without the intention of solving them. No matter the consistency of the plot. It only focused on showing characters having sex, with the purpose of making readers, both men and women, spend a moment of their lives with hormones hot and sexual desire alive. Another mistake that cost him this, was wanting to show the worst negative factors of human beings such as polygamy, misogyny, family abuse, discrimination and hypocrisy, making us up as positive factors, poetic and necessary to survive in a society that remains balanced on the basis of silence and blindness. Who does not want to see things as they really are, and prefers to remain silent and take the easiest decisions. Implying a rather interesting message: "If you want to be happy, shut your mouth, just listen and don't say anything about it. More if you are a woman, your body is the key to achieve certain happiness."

In conclusion: the art of "NON" is divine. But, it needs more than that to offer readers a manga that is truly worth reading and enjoying from the beginning to the end.