amen.
If it were re-done to flesh out more characters and relationships it woulda been even better. The story had a lot of potential it didn't explore and too graphic detailing of child sexual abuse.
Your review is spot on.
I do agree that this manga could have used more chapters. Personally I think that around 10 or 12 would make sense considering how they could develop the characters more in that time, close all the loose ends etc. Yet the story its self is good overall. Perhaps the author couldn't make the story longer or just decided to keep it long since this type of a story could easily be turned into a long ongoing series if the author wasn't very precise with how they dealt with the situation and maybe they weren't interested in that.
However, I do have to disagree with what you said about this being an ok first manga. For a first yaoi manga it's very good and shows that the author developed the characters well and gave them all interesting back stories. The art is extremely good and the author clearly has a lot of skills.
I do like how casual their love was but that's my thing and I understand that others such as yourself might want something deeper.
After finishing this, I feel that I need to voice a few things. First before everyone starts slapping the dislikes, I want to say that I have mixed feelings about this manga. I like it...I do, but I feel like I would like it less if it were from someone that was a professional mangaka. It's good, but it left me feeling underwhelmed? Like there was so much to unpack with this and such little time to do it, so the latter half seemed extremely rushed and did not leave an impact as it would have, say if it was paced a little better. It felt like a hunred things were being thrown in to make it a longer story. The romance is alright, but it is not the best. I think what the problem is with this is that there is so much going on and not enough space to fit it all. I still have questions and I just wished this could have had maybe two or three extra chapters to really solidify everything. There were characters that i would have liked to know more about, including our main lead, but I'll get to that in a moment. It is clear that this is a first work manga, so I do forgive it and I feel with more time, this mangaka could be great. If we have more time to learn about the characters and slow it down more, this would have been great. Actually, Sakura's back story kind of reminded me of Miki's from Dog Style (which is a fabulous manga btw check it out if you haven't). The only problem is with Dog Style, there was more time to pace it out. We got to know him as a character before the past was delved into, thus we feel for him more. With this, I felt like we didn't get to know Sakura that much and then we're hit with this back story. Although, I actually did relate to the seme a lot. So, that was a plus. I just feel this needed more chapters to expand and it would have been great. Still, for a first work, it is great quality. Alright, come at me now