Surprisingly, I enjoyed Witchblade Takeru. Maybe it's because the half naked girl in the cover set my expectations right there and then. Or maybe its because, although highly unlikely, that I have bad taste in manga. The titular Takeru is a girl raised in a Buddhist temple with her Grandma and fellow Buddhist sister Seishu. Her life gets turned upside down, inside & out after demons invade her home and injure her family. She needs to fight back so she grabs the Witchblade, fuses with it, and proceeds to instantly get at least 50 years worth of Kendo. If you've seen the original Witchblade counterpart, thenthere are not too many things this manga does differently. Different setting and characters, but everything else (witchblade, insanity, monsters, organizations) is pretty much the same.

Kou is introduced Takeru's childhood friend. He's not entirely useless as he has some skill with a powerful sword but his main role is serving as Takeru's inhibitor. The psychological and emotional comfort he brings her is enough for her to hold her own to remain sane despite fusing with a demonic arm.

The main reason why I liked this so much was because I was hoping for a budding relationship between Takeru and Kou. I always trip and fall for the childhood romance trope, which got me excited about the future relationship between the two.

The art is pretty awesome too. The fight scenes are detailed, the art style is nice, and the gore is not too over the top. I especially like how the artist drew Takeru and Fuura. Eye candy throughout the entire manga. There is also coloring for every page, so the blandness the comes with the black and white is not there.

I'd say this was worth it. A solid 7 in my book, and the coloring in the manga for all pages was a pretty big surprise. I'd say give it a shot.