This was really good at first. You have the generic shoujo love interest in Hak, but Yona was forced out of her comfy life as a princess and made to wander the country. Picking up archery and swordwork to defend herself only made her better. But what made the story interesting to watch was the antagonist, Soo-Won. The story showed that Yona's father was a bad king. It could've ended there and made Soo-Won bad as well to justify Yona taking him down. Instead, he was shown to be a good king. This was something else that Yona had to struggle with--should she get revenge for her father, the king that made her people suffer, or leave her father's murderer, a good king, to continue to rule and help the people.

So why did I rate this a 5? Because none of these plot points have been followed up on. Everyone Yona faces is an idiot who makes dumb mistakes to make her look good, or they become one of her hanger-ons. I couldn't care less about the romance--Hak is nothing more than a love interest with no goals or ideas outside of Yona worship. The dragons are nothing, really, except for maybe Zeno. There's no interesting struggle, and now it feels like the last few antagonists in Soo-Won and the enemy nation are being torn down to pull Yona up. There's none of that grit and challenge that the early chapters had. These are common problems in battle shonen/shoujo, but I had hope that AnY was better than that. Oh well. I'd rate the story lower if the early arcs weren't so good.