Honestly, this was one of the biggest fuckups in all of gacha history.

The drama over the female MC was actually the start of the ML movement, where many male players were unsatisfied with big gacha games being mixed toilets, and wanted a company to fully cater to them. All Manjuu had to do is to listen to them and they would instantly already have a big playerbase licking their game. They would have grabbed the right to define what ML is, and while AP was in development could direct the unsatisfied players to Azur Lane, enjoying increased revenue. It would have been a big win to Manjuu.

Instead, they just kept silent for too long and let Snowbreak take over ML. They allowed Bilibili to fuck them over, and made male players their enemies. I don't know why Manjuu never did anything, I suppose like in many companies, Manjuu was already in the process of being conquered by feminist women which paralyzed them, and probably were threatened by Bilibili to boot.

Now, most of their potential audience is gone and the game's reputation is ruined. Even if Manjuu were to make the game ML now, they would still have many difficulties ahead of them, they'd have to be very bold and have very a lot of marketing to make people care about their game again. To think that the AP thread here once got to 3000 posts, but now can barely manage a couple posts a day...