Love at first sight. This entire review is essentially a long love letter to Burning Effect's art and how its used to empower every aspect of its story.
What an incredible artstyle, it is so unique, so eyecatching, so alive, I just can't ignore it. The only way to truely describe it would be "Elastic Madworld", everything feels so fluid and clear, the use of color to emphasise certain elements or give certain scenes more punch feels so perfect, the alternating use of pure black and whites with perfect lines, smooth lines, straight and broken lines, pencil-like rough drawings, highlighter-like colors that spill out of their designated elements, pure color fillings, colored gradiants, every pannel truely feels carefully crafted to convey a certain action, a certain feel, a certain athmosphere, everything just feels like it locks into the art perfectly. The only moment I was disapointed at the art was when, at some point, the artist starts to use less and less color for a while, but thinking back on it, again, it was intentionally done to strenghten the feel conveyed by the affected chapters. If I had to rate the art itself, it would be a perfect 10/10, there is truely nothing that compares to it.

Every design here is just top tier, every new character feels distinct from the last in its personality and its visuals, they are all super interesting in their own ways, even the charactesr that I though I didn't care about like fake Y or Master ended up growing on me to a point where I find them more memorable than some characters that I liked from the begining in other mangas like Black Clover or the Crow's Prince. I always imagine characters with voices when I read, and I don't think I have ever read something where I could so clearly imagine every single character's voice in a way that perfectly fit their personality from the moment I saw them (only exeption being Roy), from just a single glance, you can tell so much about every character, who they were and what they believe in, there is nothing that can compare to it.
But when I said every design was amazing, I didn't just mean the character designs, but also the world design. It is such a unique world that I just want more of for its history, of the people living inside of it, of its system, it is just that interesting. The way this world is presented as a desolate place works in perfect tandum with the art to truely make us feel how people in that world perceive Graymark and it's influencial figures, we can see the fear and anger coming from Great's red, the despair from the population in all its gray glory, the despair of the pitch black allyways, the warmth emanating from Joy's father's bread as it lightens up the world wherever it's found, the shining hope that is the paladin and the golden king. Without ever spending any considerable amount of time explanation the general population's living conditions and beliefs, we are able to understand how they see the world perfectly, just by seing the world.

The fight scenes are just incomparable to anything else I've seen, the art comes in again for the carry, truely making these scenes stand in their own league, these scenes are not only visually clear and interesting, they tell us more about every character and their state of mind by it's use of different styles and colors, fights here are more than just a way to handle matters, they are a silent conversation between the readers and the characters that go beyond just what the characters are saying. They are also probably the most fluid fight scenes I have ever seen in any non-animated story, every pannel in the early fight scenes just flow so fluidly from one to the other that it feels more animated than most animations do, in just a few pannels, the author is able to present the readers with the information needed to truely feel pressure from every windup, the strength behind every attack and the precision behind every move. This is only examplified by the later parts of the manga, when the characters get stronger and faster and we start to lose this clarity and fluidity. Instead of seing someone bring their first back, push against the ground, start to move at high speeds and finally hit their opponent, we just see someone take a stance and fly trough the air like a missile with nothing but debris and a wounded foe in their wake, but even with all this loss of information, every fight remains perfectly clear, while nothing is left to the imagination and the feeling of power found from every attack only gets stronger as attacks become clearly more and more powerful and destructive while also never going overboard by making these increase in strenght feel undeserved or illogical (like we often see with miraculous power spikes in other stories). Though I have to say, I do miss the lethal move warnings which slowly become rarer and rarer until their last appearance in chapter 80.

The story is probably this piece's weakest aspect, however, this doesn't mean it's bad in the slightest. For the first 100 chapters, the story is really just a context which was stappled on top of Graymark's world, its characters, and their interactions, which means that it can't be much worst than those aspects, which is to say, it's simply good. This story isn't like Firepunch's, it isn't carried by memorable twists and powerful climaxes, it is a slow burn, when you first meet Pound and Berry you won't care much about what happens to them and they'll mostly be there to give purpose to other characters and to build the world further, but that why this story is so strong, it lives and dies on its characters which are all amazing. The world allows you to understand and care for the characters, while the characters allow you to understand and care for the world, the story is the accumulation of these building blocks into something greater, it grows on you and makes you to care about it until it purposefully breaks one of those blocks to create change and keep you hooked, you always have an idea of where the story is going, but you never know how it's going to get there. It's by doing this that Burner Effect is able to convey strong emotions, it gives you something, then takes it away without a second though, adding tension to every part of the story.
But that isn't to say that the story is only good, as it eventually is done telling us about the characters that we know, but rather than to make them develop or bring in new ones, starting from about chapter 80, it simply starts to slow down. This becomes especially obvious during chapters 115 to 120, which are the complete opposite of the first few chapters, they come out of nowhere and rather than build on top of everything else, they build their own seperate story which makes it feel pointless. This eventually gets fixed, as the slower parts which seem to introduce random characters in an un-natural feeling way really just serve as a sort of setup for further character development later on, but that doesn't mean that these chapters deserve praise, in a vaccum, the story do become weaker for about 40 (80-120) chapters (though even at it's worst, the story is at least worthy of a high 6 or low 7 (exept for chapters 115 to 120)) and it does affect the overall quality of the story. Luckily, the story gets back on it's feet right in the middle of chapter 120 and goes back to focusing on its characters quickly, we stop focusing on the three characters that were introduced in the speedbump that I have issues with (Sword, Fake Y and Real Y) as they becoming stepping stones for other characters to bounce from, and the ending is also very good (but very predictable, it was hinted at way too much) to make up for it.

I want to give this a mid 9, but I can't because of the speedbump it has in its middle, so I'm giving it a low 9, it's still amazing and definitely worth reading.