tl;dr: A manga set during an interesting time period with an interesting plot focused around tactics focused combat, though lacking in terms of character depth. This manga has an interesting premise, in that it's about a skilled teacher that assists his pupils in enacting revenge but doesn't directly interfere, though that line becomes a bit blurry as it goes on. This is a good way to have an overpowered protagonist and use that well when needed, but still have the majority of the plot be more grounded and interesting. Furthermore, the seven Hori women even after being taught are still far weaker than the Seven Spears,so essentially all the conflicts in this manga rely heavily on tricks over combat skill, which is something I'm particularly fond of, and I think they did quite well on in both short-term tactics and long-terms strategy in terms of twists and such. I also think they did a good job in terms of good use of the setting with a good amount of politics being involved and a lot of utilization of time period specific elements. An issue I had though, was that it was pretty weak in terms of characters. There were a few characters that felt like they had some depth to them, such as Jubei, Otone, and Oyura. However, most of them felt quite flat. The heroines especially were holistically pretty cool and likable, but they weren't really unique at all. The same applies to the villains, in that they were mostly easy to hate, but didn't have much depth to them beyond that. Hence, as one would expect there wasn't really much in the way of character or relationship development either. Hence while motivations are very much clear, though pretty simple, the story is entirely plot driven and not at all character driven, though it does a pretty good job at being so. The ending was solid enough along those lines. The art style I also thought was pretty good and there were a lot of good panels.