At first, if I was selling someone on Htiogatana, I'd probably be saying something along the lines of, "Well, it doesn't try super hard to be good" or "Oh, it's not as cliche as it seems", which is what the general consensus tends to be. Now that I'm all caught up, I'm here to say that there's NOTHING cliche about breathtakingly illustrated action, nor characters that I did not expect to be so much more heartwarming than I initially thought. It has an autonomous idea of what it is and what is wants to be. All a manga needs to be great is confidence, andin Hitogatana's case, there is so much confidence behind every page, so much style in its character designs, and so much energy in every fight sequence. The story itself is, to be fair, very arc-based and linear, but it's bound to catch you off guard at least once, and it's nothing weighed against a cast of palpable characters and the truly touching moments they can ignite. A lot of manga live and die going to great lengths to be different, but Onigunsou knows how to impress his/her readers without needing to bother. With the explosive popularity of ground-breaking battle shounens like Chainsaw Man and Kaiju 8, it's easy to view Hitogatana as an underachiever and write it off, but if "Bleach with Cyborgs" is simply too cool of a concept for you to pass up, then the path of life has led you to the right place.