Ayame to Amane

So I saw the cover art and was like, 'sure, why not?' because it looked kinda cute. I swear it's like occasionally the gods see me partaking in the GL dumpster fire and decide to personally dump some shit on my head just to spite me. Ayame to Amane was one particularly fragrant nugget. The cover is a goddamn lie. The art is nowhere near that good, not that the art being bad is really that important in the grand scheme of things. The OPM webcomic can attest to that. You can have bad art and still write a good manga, is my point. And itdoes improve noticeably over the 21 chapters I was able to stomach before tapping out. Honestly, at that point, if it wasn't this series, I'd probably be like 'yeah, art was bad but got better, 6/10', but it's not enough to make up for other flaws. I hope the author is at least getting that out of writing this series, because I can't fathom what other value they could be finding in it. No, my main problem with this thing is just how abysmal it manages to be as a gag manga. It's basically a 'haha, gay people grope' manga. That's the joke. OPM arguably had one joke, too, but this is just so... so cringe. Like, maybe I don't get it because I'm LGBT myself, but why is this considered funny? It's not really poking fun at gropers (genuine problem, could be funny in an edgy kinda way), it's not really poking fun at oblivious gay schoolgirls (a staple of GL), it's just kinda 'gay people funny'. I have to wonder if Japanese people find this kinda stuff funny, or if they react to this in the same way we react to those old newspaper comics our parents might skim over on a Monday morning. You know that vague smile of 'hmm, I can see a joke was attempted here somewhere'? As such, there's really nothing to say about the characters. The whole thing is one long 'joke' of Kamijou being thirsty for her friend Chiho, who doesn't feel that way about her, but for some reason tolerates her gropey, creepy bullshit. It's not really even creepy in the same way that stuff would be in bad romantic works, where I might react with genuine anger, because that's just normalizing toxic relationships. This is just stonefaced 'that's creepy', without the accompanying rage at the mangaka. I don't really feel anything for Ayame to Amane but vague disgust, as it's not really trying to be anything but a vaguely offensive stereotype. Honestly, if you think gay people are intrinsically funny, and people reacting to gropey physical comedy is right up your alley, hey, whatever, I don't judge. You might get some enjoyment out of this manga. As it was, I wanted to get to current chapter, just so I felt I could review it fairly, but 21 chapters was enough to make me tap out in sheer boredom. I don't usually rate things this low unless I genuinely hate everything about them, but there's almost nothing for me to like here. There's no fluff, no angst, no funny jokes, no good art, no genuine feeling behind any of it that I can discern, and it's amazing/baffling to me that the author has managed to keep this level of 'quality' going for over thirty chapters. If you like this, I'm not trying to judge, let's just say this one wasn't for me.