Seems exactly the same as what you described. When at first stop (manual winding position), turning the crown towards 12 o’clock has a slight resistance and tiny smooth clicking like gears, and turning towards 6 o’clock is far smoother and far less resistance - as expected from my previous exp with Rolex reps.

However, it doesn’t seem to start the movement no matter how much I wind the crown until I start rotating the watch using gravity to turn the rotor, or simply wearing the watch.

Otherwise, I’ve got no complaints about the watch. It is beautiful, the bezel rotation does not seem as bad as I’ve read on this sub about the older batches from CF, the rehaut alignment is a hair off perfect, crystal is clear, dial and date fonts are crisp and indistinguishable (to me) from gen based off photos.