Someone found a way to add a power up system to a manga about drawing manga. I half wish the story wasn't as dramatic and was just a few chapters of that system being exploited. Anyhow, on to serious stuff:
Ignoring who the author is, I'd have to say I like this manga. The art is gorgeous, and sometimes little details pop out that I would never have expected to be there and just are. The panel layout is amazing, and during one scene, I even got shivers.
The male lead has a bunch of beautiful females surrounding him, but only one woman who is obviously interested in more (but it's downplayed so it's in the background of the story, not the focus...it feels natural), and has a pretty weak personality. Sometimes he has moments of awesome, but it's usually just before a moment shame or shortly after so he's pretty pathetic overall. Still, he has a dream, a dream of making manga.
If you think too hard about the story, you'll realize that none of the background stuff that's going on to support it could ever happen in reality. You could say it makes the story pretty weak, but that's only if the story wasn't so character driven. Basically, the stage has been set and it's a bunch of people add libbing .What's on stage with them can only help to support with driving the story forward, the characters themselves are the ones telling it. This is my favorite form of story telling.
Going to who the author is, I can say I wish he'd change the formula on his male characters a bit. But if I stop and think about it, the reason why I'm so irritated with them is because I can sometimes picture myself responding that way or remembering a time where I have. I haven't been in the same situations, but some of the words his male characters tend to use I have also used. Seeing my weakness inside of a character in a story is a bit unsettling.