A common thread in my reviews is that I'm not really sure what score to give. I think that's because writing reviews on Anilist is a lot of work, and it's especially hard to find 400 words of "this is great" or "this is abysmal." So I usually write reviews when I am in some way conflicted about a manga—most often when I feel let down by one, unfortunately.

Let me tell you why I feel conflicted about Love of Kill. I wanted to say something like "it's a good manga that tells a good story," but that's not quite right. Love of Kill is two good mangas that tell two good stories. There's a dark rom-com about two assassins, which is how the manga starts off, and there's a moody mystery thriller with—maybe—a romance subplot, which is where it is now.

It feels a bit unfair to complain about this. The mystery-thriller volumes have been good. They're well plotted, tense, etc. etc.—everything I would want from a moody mystery thriller. The thing is, moody mystery thrillers are not in short supply. I wanted a dark rom-com about assassins, dammit. And that dark rom-com had the potential to be not just good but brilliant.

At this point, the thrust of my review should be pretty clear: Love of Kill is a good manga, but if you came here based on the blurb or on comparisons to Spy x Family, it probably is not what you're looking for. So you can stop reading now if you like. What I propose to do with my remaining hundred words or so is to vent a bit—to explain why I think Love of Kill could have been really special and what I think we're collectively missing out on because it took a more serious route.

I sometimes think of the first two volumes of Love of Kill as alternate-universe Mustang/Hawkeye FMA fanfic. Ersatz Roy Mustang is an assassin. On a job he meets, fights, and disarms Ersatz Riza Hawkeye, a rival assassin. He is immediately smitten, so he asks her out. She is decidedly not smitten, and so begins about 2.5 volumes of mostly lighthearted banter, flirting, and gunplay starring our heroes.

At least for me, this is pretty much perfect. I like rom-coms, I like manga assassins, and I love Roy Mustang and Riza Hawkeye. And in those first few volumes, the author absolutely nails the tone, the art, the dialogue, everything. If we'd just gotten more of the same, I would be a very happy reviewer.

The trouble is that to pursue the more serious plot the creator apparently had in mind from the start, the series had to abandon everything I liked about it. Gone are the flirting, the assassinations, the humor, the idea that the heroine is capable of accomplishing anything on her own. In their place we have a gloomy, romanceless mystery that centers on a mysterious connection between the male and female leads from the distant and tragic past. This is, as I said, not a bad story: Even on its own terms, it's not as good as the rom-com, but it's not bad. But it's very different from the story I signed up for.

Edit:
One other point that I originally did not plan on mentioning. The heroine's name is Chateau Dankworth. I find it impossible to take that name seriously, but I didn't plan on mentioning it because it felt like such a minor point. But on reflection, I think it illustrates the internal confusion that bothers me so much about Love of Kill. "Chateau Dankworth" is an awful name for a character in something serious and gritty—in other words, for a character in the series that Love of Kill has become. But it is a phenomenal name for the female lead of a rom-com about assassins. That illustrates my larger point: As a rom-com about assassins, Love of Kill was brilliant. As a serious thriller, it's merely good.

Update

Some more volumes have come out, and I've revisited the series. (I'm through volume 9 at this point.) Maybe because I did so without the first couple of volumes fresh in my mind, or maybe because the story is picking up steam (I think it's a bit of both), I'm enjoying it a lot more now. They even changed Chateau's surname. I'm revising the score upwards to 85.