I tend to enjoy heavily historical anime and manga, despite often having no prior knowledge in that area. This manga thrusts one in media res into the conflicts of a period of Chinese War.

The story arches over several different campaigns of war. If you tend to like something like Hikaru no Go or Death Note (at least before it got ridiculous around seven volumes along) wherein strategy is extensively expounded, then you will probably like this because in each of them explanations of strategy reign supreme. At the same time, however, it has quite a bit more action than typical since it is rooted continually in battles.

Although I think it may treat it a little superficially, I like that it continually acknowledges the reality of how pointless and endlessly destructive the jostling for power by all the clans is, although of course it also addresses those who love war and flourish in it and in true destruction.

It does treat many parts of the plot a little too superficially, and this ties in with character development. Most of the characters are unique enough, but parts of their personalities could be fixated upon more or explained much more thoroughly without being cumbersome because this probably skimps too much. I often found myself trying to remember 'who is Zhang Liao?' and had to see him two or three more times before being able to figure out certainly who he was again. It does not help that the names are mixed up, probably because of issues of formality versus informality as well as nicknames. That being said, some characters are just stellar, such as Zhang Fei: "For example, Zhang Fei, traditionally pictured as a bearded chubby man, is displayed in the story as an artist who painted his face in a fashion similar to that of a Chinese opera mask." While excitement does come with parts such as that, they are often just slightly lacking. Maybe I am too used to mangas such as One Piece, and I certainly wish some like One Piece would tone it down sometimes, but this one probably goes to the opposite extreme and takes itself too seriously.

The art in this is not awful and not great. It is not anything nearly so bad as Bleach with its impossible amount of ACTION LINES!!!, for example, but its lines are drawn too thick and bold often, which is probably the biggest hindrance to my enjoyment of it.

I hope my tone in this was not too negative, but this is in fact a fairly serious manga laden with tons of history and characters who are not the most epic people ever, though they are sometimes striking. Overall it is a great take on a period of Chinese history and the nature of its war, and it has many quite poignant statements related to such, which I will not spoil since it is more fun to come across them (often used as the close of a chapter, for instance, and you get to guess whether the character just left off from is saying it or if it is a general statement!)