I think the special place in my heart I have for badass, anti-heroes have appeared when I started reading this manga and I met with Heine Rammsteiner. He is just such a great character, with horrible past, pretending to be unstopable, yet protecting those he cares about and being a normal person around them (Nill especially). Other characters are good too, my second favorite is Badou for sure. I don't really like that ninja-kind of girl, he seems so pretencious to me. I can appreciate she fights for what she believes, but she lacks something that would make me like her more. The story- I like it. Surely interesting to me. It's really a must-read before reading the original series, even if it doesn't add THAT much to the main story in my opinion.