(Manga Ch. 91)
Different from the WN (more on that after the main Manga review). Art is great, story is coherent, plot doesn't suck, and characters are decent.
Foreshadowing is used mostly effectively, and emphasis on the futuristic technology is believable and imaginative.
The gender bend is not used as an excuse to have a GL plot so far, and that's a plus in my book. There's no GL at all so far, and I'm cool if it continues to not have romance. However, the WN seems to be heading that direction from where I'm at while reading it, and I don't think the manga will be so different that it doesn't at least loosely follow suit.
Final Edit: Sigh.
I honestly hope the manga goes a different route from the WN at this point. There's a lot of room for improvement, even without breaking the main story in the WN.
In the WN, while the author originally kept what happened to Kou realistic, they've been getting less and less realistic for the sake of pushing a yuri relationship. This could have been done more realistically, but it wasn't. It's like the author got impatient with the relationship building, and as a result, the writing quality dropped massively.
In chapter 156 the story drops the metaphorical ball entirely and forgets about the existence of the technology half the story runs on in order to create a scene that is both cliche and tries to excuse some extremely out of character rage Kou suddenly has that was never even hinted at... basically for the purpose of showing Kou's feelings towards the person he/she's falling in love with (for the sake of the yuri relationship).
Kou and company need to meet Kou's dad at the cafeteria, but three of them have to go to the washroom. Okay, use the NLD to send a voice message to Kou's dad to let him know they'll be a bit late and—What do you mean they split up because they can't otherwise communicate with Kou's dad, and as a result get approached by the cliche "come with me, I'll show you a good time" gooners who forget police exist and cause Kou to rage so hard she almost reveals her vampire powers to the world?
And it's not just that.
Kou's biggest trauma involves nearly killing Hijiri when his 5 year old vampire instinct brain wanted to feed but his body lacked the fangs necessarily to not leave a giant hole. Kou is now fine with occasionally feeding from Hijiri, because the story wants to increasing their intimacy. But feeding on anyone else causes the story to bring up how it's a huge trauma he hasn't overcome yet and so is either impossible or takes huge amounts of courage in a desperate situation.
Bull****! That's like an author saying, "I want my combat veteran with PTSD to learn to deal with their PTSD by going back into the trenches to fight once more, but hearing fireworks in the streets back home causes them to hide under the bed sheets. I (the author) am doing this because I want them to look cool in the trenches."
Just rehabilitate them in an order that makes sense. Sure, it takes longer, but at least the writing wouldn't suck everytime the war (or the relationship) is brought into focus.
Combine all that with some of the suspicious ways genetics are treated due to it being convenient to the plot, and the WN only feels more shallow the further I read. For example, at the very beginning when we finally get the explanation as to why things happened the way they did to cause the gender bend.
It was an accident. The machine was supposed to either turn Kou more vampire or human depending on what Kou subconsciously chose. It just so happened, despite the fact male vampires are said to exist, it was somehow Kou's Y chromosome that caused him to end up in-between both races in such a way it caused issues when he was young.
The manga definitely handled Kou's choice much better than the WN, and so I have hope the rest of the story also ends up higher quality, which is why I'm not changing my rating and keeping it at an 8.