All the drawings of Aiko are pretty amazing. Mao looks good, too, but the range of expression for her is so limited by comparison. Still, the art in general for the series, I really love. The page layout is delightful. The jokes land exceptionally well for me––I thought Aiko exclaiming that Tokyo natives sure have discriminating palettes was startlingly funny, and the handling of that whole panel was pretty exquisite––Aiko's sidelong look was just the right balance of earnest and over-the-top. In fact, the whole series so far is just the right balance of earnest intensity and over-the-top, winking irony. The characters have such emotional faces, as well. The weird, end-of-the-world background action is funny and intriguing. I think I'm going to really like this series. If anything, it looks like it might give me faith that a hopeless manga fan and an overwhelmed professional mangaka can each find love.
As for the stalker worship of the mangaka, the "pilgrimage" is part of the title. I just assumed something like that was coming. I don't think it's terrible if Aiko ends up hopelessly devoted to Mao––honestly, Mao seems like she really needs it. Hopefully we get more of Aiko's and Mao's backstories as this progresses––it sounds like both of them have had a rough time of it.
We don't get much of the manga series; I'm wondering what it's like. Hints in the chapters made the premise sound a little like Drifting Classroom at some point? But the art we see looks more like Genesis of Aquarion to me. Hopefully this gets sketched out a bit in the future.