I had so much expectation for this story, but alas... First chapters are very intriguing: interesting worl, many unknown things, nice character design, a lot of different characters, cute art style. BUT story is very shallow, things are happening but I didn't understand why, what are people motivations, relationship were not explored, and in the end I was just glad that it finished... Sad

Imae and Ryujin earn their HEA ten times over, but man this one is full of heartbreak on all sides. Felt like the ending was a bit rushed but very emotional and generally satisfying on the whole.

So this isn't the authors BEST work.
The art is nice as always, but I've really enjoyed a lot of their other plots more. This one seemed weirdly rushed.
It's long, sure. But there was a lot of backstory and history that needed to be told in order for the whole story to flesh out.
Instead it seemed like most of the history was ignored and only brought up at the last possible minute each time. Because of that, it was always rushed through and made the plot a bit confusing.
Additionally, though ryujin and imae's pasts were supposed to be rather tragic, not much time was spent explaining them or going into it too deeply so it felt rather shallow and unimportant.

Finally, the deaths. I don't consider saying that characters die is a spoiler since this is about demons and war. Characters die. Unfortunately, they don't die for a purpose.
They aren't given much screen time beforehand so you don't become very attached to them (several of them that were deemed "important" you don't even know or remember their names or what they did before dying). And then their deaths aren't shown, just the bodies afterwards. And it ends up with a feeling of "oh... They died... Kay" and nothing more. The only ones you WOULD feel for if you had seen them die, it doesn't give you the satisfaction. Just shows them kinda dead on the ground and then they're never even really brought up again. So even though they're the mains of the sidestory at the end, which makes their deaths even more tragic, you still don't end up feeling much about it. The series never gives you time to acknowledge or process their deaths and therefore you end up not caring.

Overall, if I were to guess I'd say this was an early work of this author, despite that not being true. The plot doesn't progress as nicely as some of their other series. So while it's ok, it's not great.