Sad about the cancellation, it really started to pick up and the characters were mostly as good as ever. Still, I'm wondering why, why, why, why oh why, the author decided to make his first big arc about something as vague as a "like-battle", and having the antagonist for said arc be an uncharismatic tired guy with a hoodie whose main motivation was pettiness. In a shounen manga about making manga, with an author otherwise excelling at good character design, that's just suicidal. Undoubtedly he wanted to make a point about integrity and failure, but doing that early doors instead of staying on the topic of drawing manga is bound to make people lose interest.
Hope Masuda bounces back with something new soon, he's always a fun read.