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The two girls you see on the front page just into enrolled into an all girls school. It's a soeur yuri school (think Maria-sama ga mitteiru).

Watanabe, the yuri-otaku, wants to observe the yuri happening around her. While Yoshioka, the gyaru, is completely oblivious to the very concept of yuri. She is just being loud and social as a typical animanga gyaru. The two end up interacting a lot as Watanabe tries to prevent Yoshioka from destroying the yuri setting.

At the start of the manga there is a lot of focus on Watanabe observing the yuri tropes and some interplay between gyaru tropes and yuri tropes. ... As such its prime appeal is that of meta comedy.

But as the series continues, it becomes more of a standard yuri story. That is it becomes more about the yuri between our main characters and various yuri couples in the school.

This is where the series lost me, as I really don't like Watanabe. She is a one dimensional yuri-otaku: everything she does and is shown to us about her thought process is about yuri. This is not a problem while the story is mostly comedy. But it does hamper her own romance and her interactions with other yuri couples, as we see no real communication taking place.

She also adheres to the title of the manga. Meaning she thinks that as a yuri-otaku, she should not engage in a yuri relatoinship herself. This is given no justification within the series. Some hesitation to engage in yuri yourself is not unnatural, but this dogmatic resistance is just stupid. (Note that this is not her being conflicted about her sexual identity.)

As for her counterpart Yoshioka, the gyaru... she is great. Her thoughtless friendly straighforwardness reminded me of Miyako from hidasketch at times. At other times she is very considerate of Watanabe and tries to understand her. This is often leads to funny misunderstandings as she has no way to expect the extend of the yuri-madness inside Watanabe's mind. Together with her stereoptical gyaru antics she is by far the main source of comedy in the series. That doesn't stop her from also being the best the series has to offer outside of comedy.

It is sad that the rest of the manga is not up to her level.

The novel starts with full blast sexual imouto energy as the main character is woken up and kissed by his naked imouto. Then after he wakes up and washes his face in her bathwater, he grabs her bra and uses it as a towel. The nonchelantness by which this is all described turn it into absurdist comedy. In particular the bra towel is very funny. It keeps getting more absurd and zany to the point where one quickly realizes this is just a story being written by the novelist main character of the story.

And indeed, the next scene shows us Itsuki, the real mc of ... the story, and his editor.
But the presentation of the main story itself feels very uninspired and dull. Unlike the story within the story, which starts out fun and entertaining.

The scene plays sort of plays out like a manzai routine, with the editor is doing tsukkomi (straight man) against the boke (fool) that is Itsuki's script we just read. Itsuki protests against this in a way that serves to keep the conversation going, but doesn't really have him say anything. It feels like we are basically given the template for how such a scene would typically be displayed, without any creative direction given to it. The next scene which introduces a new character is hardly any better.

Chapter 2 then starts with a couple of lines dry infodump on the furtniture in Itsuki's room. There is an accompanying map of the room as one of the insert pictures in the novel. Which suggests that this is not padding, the writer probably put some thought into the atmosphere that the characters live in. And yes, it can be nice to convey this information to the reader since it can add extra flavor to the story. But it should be done in a way that actually builds atmosphere, and not as a dry listing of items in the room.

It was very upsetting to see the funny start turn into such blandness. That is not to say that the whole story should be like the start. The start is way too zany and over the top for that. But the idea of having fun with the presentation is something that is heavily present at the start but completely missing in the scenes following it.

Gyaru to otaku ha wakariaenai is a cute comedy centered around Hayaotome, a gyaru who is a closet idol otaku, and Otonashi, a gloomy loner who is secretly a cute idol. The story starts with Hayaotome discovering that her oshi Ten is actually Otonashi.

There are also various other characters that are friends, or become friends with our main couple. They're all fun, but Hayaotome stands out as best girl. Her passion for her oshi Ten is quite extreme, which is the cause of much comedy. And her straightforwardness makes her very likeable.

When the characters voice some feelings and opinions about being an idol it comes ... across as coming from a place of genuine feeling.
That is not to say that this manga gives a 'realistic' portrayal of the idol industry and its dark sides. The tone is hopeful and positive, which is suitable since being hopeful and positive is an important part of idol culture itself. There is some light drama, but it is solved in a positive manner without being dragged out.

About halfway through the manga the series diverts a bit from being a character based situational comedy and becomes more of a romcom. While I was shipping the characters from the start, I really could have done without chapters about romcom drama such as being in denial about your feelings. And the ending is pretty open, which means you don't get the feeling of reward that one might expect after sitting through romcom drama (however light).

While the romcom aspects of the series aren't that great, it wasn't dragged out much and the characters are still fun. So the 2nd half of the series was still entertaining. But considering that the first few volumes almost continuously plastered a grin on my face, the 2nd half was disappointing.