For what it's worth, I enjoyed this anime. The only things I knew about it before I began to watch it was that a) gayness, and b) manga. Trust me when I say that it delivered strongly on both of those points!
To start off with, the things that worked: (for me)
- I really enjoyed the environment. It reminds me of GSNK, but on a much larger scale, where there's various processes in manga production, and certain people specialise in certain areas. I dunno, I just found it interesting, and that it created some good moments for the characters.
- It's funny. It's light. It's fluffy. PLUS it's BL, and when all of that combines together... well, I'm just absolute trash for anything like that.
- My final point is that I wasn't expecting the cast of characters. I thought this was going to revolve around one couple's story, both their past and their current situation. This wasn't the case, and the fact that you follow multiple romantic story-lines works really well. It kept things interesting, and it was cool to see how everyone and everything linked together.
...and then, what I didn't like, or at least could've been better:
- Some of these characters creep me out. There, I said it. Despite this being BL and everything, I still got the distinct vibe of gender-roles. This led to half of the characters being very masculine and intimidating, and the other half seeming shy and more flamboyant.
Now, that's not what I have a problem with, for the most part. I mean, it's an over-used character trope, but fine. My issue is when some of the more stereotypically-masculine characters force themselves on their respective love interests. They may be protesting against their advancement, trying to push them off, or in one case literally slapping them, yet they still try to force them into a kiss or something, as if they think "I know what's best for this person, despite what they're saying". It made me uncomfortable, and I was not a fan of this.
- Everything is animated and drawn to a decent and consistent standard. However, there was just never that moment where I though "Holy crap, this is stunning". It's just consistently okay, which is fine, but still. It felt kind of lacking, to me.
- Also, the sound and music is just not memorable. It's very generic, and you can kind of predict what the tone of the music's about to be before it actually starts up in certain scenes.
Anyway. Think that's everything I've got to say. Overall, it was a decent watch, but not a memorable one. I'll probably watch S2 at some point, but I'm in no hurry.
