I was on the fence about reading this and now that I have, I have some thoughts.
Okay, positive things first. The art, like with any Mamita manga, is really good; I like her style a lot. The smut is hot and doesn’t shy away from fetish. There’s a SUPER cute cat named Mint. The character archetypes and dynamics are fun. The comedic elements landed pretty well with me, too. This was far from the worst manga I’ve ever read.
Nevertheless, as a member of the queer community, there were elements of this story that were pretty upsetting. Backstory that equated gayness and gender-nonconformity to deviant traits acquired through exposure was a major bummer for me.
For instance, Kuro’s backstory is that his attraction to men (which manifests specifically as an attraction to clocky, older, crossdressing men) is a result of meeting older crossdressers that his mother would bring home when he was a child. Manabe/Mashiro not only likes to crossdress, but specifically prefers the clothes of young girls because his older sister dressed him in her clothes when he was a child. While he insists that he is not gay or trans, he refers to his Mashiro persona as the only time he can be himself, and Kuro’s acceptance of this helps him come to terms with his feelings for him. At the end of the day though, their relationship exists almost entirely in what amounts to be a fetish space (or at least that’s how I interpreted it).
I don’t think it’s especially overt or intentionally cruel, but it soured an otherwise enjoyable manga.
That paired with the general icky feel of the blackmail in the beginning and the overall lack of depth in the plot are why I can’t rate it higher than a C or C+. Don’t get me wrong, I knew when I reached for a manga explicitly about crossdressing that it would be dabbling in potential bummer territory. It wasn’t the worst read; I just wanted to share my perspective in case anyone else was on the fence for similar reasons.