I'm pretty much a die hard fan of this series, and now that it's done, I'm sad. 
 For the sake of my aching heart, I'm going to reread it again and revel in its moments of light-heartedness, its pain, its desperate hope. 
 Well, there was a bit of pain in the first volume, a lot of light-heartedness, and a taste of the promise to come. The nine-tailed demon fox is still far off on the horizon, but for now, we've got cute character exploration and distant goals. Pretty standard for most manga, really, but it's the heart in the series that keeps me coming back for more. 
 True heart. I always look for that in anything I read, and it doesn't matter one bit where I find it, as long as I find it. 
 The reason I keep coming back for this manga is because it never lost heart, including more and more until it fair burst upon the land. Huge effects and battles, the end of the world, you name it, it's here... but it's the characters that make it really shine. If you like your peeps to level up, then you'll love this series. 
 Volume one is but a tiny, tiny taste of some really great stuff, but it's how the people change and grow that brings me to my inevitable tears.