YMMV / Robot × Laserbeam

• Audience-Alienating Premise: Perhaps the biggest thing which held the series back, namely that it attempts to apply the high-stakes and emotion-driven narrative endemic to sports manga...to golf, which is famously one of the slowest paced and least confrontational sports there are. Likewise, the attempt to include special moves in the vein of the creator's previous work came off as harder to stomach due to the change and format, not helped by the use of such elements rapidly becoming Discredited Tropes in the 2010's. The manga was unable to gather much of a following outside of those who were already fans of Fujimaki's work, and falling sales and popularity rankings led to it being eventually cancelled.
• Critical Dissonance: When the manga began, it was a commercial hit for Weekly Shonen Jump (in fact, it sold the most in print for Shonen Jump series that was serialized in its year) thanks to the author's popularity, despite readers finding it weaker compared to his previous hit. However, as the manga went on it was frequently near the bottom of the TOC rankings, and falling volume sales ultimately led to it being cancelled a little over a year after it started serialization.
• Ho Yay:
  • In chapter 29, Robo is shaking and his heart hasn't stopped pounding against his chest since Youzan won at a professional game. It doesn't help that "Youzan's shot landed right in Robo's heart." It makes it seem as if Robo fell for Youzan hard at that moment.
  • On the same page, Suzaku looks very ecstatic and orgasmic at Youzan's victory.
• Seasonal Rot: The sudden Time Skip to Robot's professional career is viewed as this due to suddenly ditching the majority of the cast the manga had built up and lacking tension due to none of the new rivals having much in the way of characterization. Reception consequently plummeted, with it being widely agreed it's what ultimately sealed the manga's fate of being Cut Short.
• Tough Act to Follow: One of the more infamous examples in Shonen Jump's history. Despite Kuroko's Basketball being one of the biggest titles in the magazine for the first half of the decade, and the series opening to very strong sales, it quickly stagnated due to an inability to garner a fanbase outside of Tadatoshi Fujimaki's already established following, with this only exasperated after an abrupt and unpopular Time Skip. The series was ultimately subjected to an untimely cancellation in mid-2018, a little over a year after it started, and has since gone down as a modern shorthand for how series from famous/veteran authors in Jump can fail just as easily as rookies.

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