What a great series for the first 40 chapters. It began with dragon fish and a steampunk skyworld but gradually transformed into mecha. The arcs were well done, with Gram being the only problem. Since he stopped showing up past chapter 20 the manga got better still, peaking at the fight scene with the Captain. Damn when he was rammed by the ship I cheered out loud, what a satisfying scene that was.
Sadly the story lost itself past chapter 45 and Licorice betraying her crew. To be honest her motivations are not evil, shes really just wants to see her family again, fine enough to be used as a plot device. Despite that hopes of seeing ruins of Waldecian civilization were lost and the story became one last fight scene. While its nice Gram and the Captain died, both being assholes that deserved their fates, far too many revelations were dumped within 10 chapters. When I saw romance develop around chapter 40 I had high hopes this would develop further, but instead Asebi lost the screen time that made the series such a treat in the first place. Worse still the ending, one 38 page chapter to both show the last fight scene and a time skip, which earlier in the manga would have taken 4 or 5 chapters. Even so, the ending is still ok, if rushed.
Even with the ending I still enjoyed the earlier elements of romance, steampunk and adventure. Even if these elements were lost later on, the final arc was still workable and only disappointed because the rest of series was just that good.
7/10.