Nick4x said:So three episodes in and I think I'm with everyone else when I say the pacing is getting out of hand. I've not read the source material, so I can only speak to how it's presented as an anime. I'm fine with the story not being spelled out in the first few episodes because that gives us something to look forward to so that we can get some nice twists later on.
That said, There are plenty of issues I have with this series so far:
1. We need to spend some more time with our characters between fights. They seem to want to cram in a ton of exposition while explaining nothing. Take Dae-wi, for example. He had a fair amount of time devoted to helping someone out with his hospital bills. Family? Lover? Why is he helping him out? Is he a friend? Family? Lover? Is he just that kind-hearted? What's the guy even have, anyway? Cancer? Ultra-mega anime illness? An acute version of whatever is making everyone's noses so red? The jerks in the next scene said he deserves to die because he "always acting like some her of justice". What's that mean? Did that lead to him getting so sick? If so, how? I feel like we spent a lot of time in that scene and learned nothing that wasn't already established in the 10-second flashback we saw in episode 1.
2. So Jin gets some fruit, and, uh... How do I even start this one? I guess my first thoughts were "Don't eat those. They're probably poisoned." It's fine that Jin didn't think that because he's an established 2-dimensional, Goku-like meathead that only loves fighting. That's fine. However, these fruits made him... stronger? I can only guess that's what they did because he took out an opponent that was supposed to be a lot stronger than in a couple of seconds. That WOULD HAVE been really cool, but there's an issue with this. We don't know how strong he was BEFORE he ate the fruit. Sure, we got to see him fight a bit, but we never were able to gauge his strength because he's never been taken to the limit by anyone yet. We've never seen him lose to someone stronger (on screen, at least), so we have no basis for what level of strength he was capable of before eating the fruit. They might as well have said that eating the fruit doubled his bank account. It'd get the same "That's... good?" reaction, since we don't really know what that would mean. Again, this is all assuming the fruit made him stronger. Maybe he was just going to whoop the glasses guy anyway. I can't say since we've never seen him truly pressured.
Fun idea: Actually seeing glasses guy whoop Jin's butt and having Jin pull some cool move out at the last moment to win AND THEN having him eat the fruit would have solved this issue by letting us first gauge his power. It still would have been rushed, though.
3. I'm somewhat annoyed by the way they call fights. I don't mind the whole "nanomachines can instantly cure you" thing, but that would mean the fights should only be called when someone gives up, right? Look at the fight Go had. He got mercilessly pummeled beyond what was necessary because he refused to give up, but we've seen fights called for a lot less. Dae-wi's fight (and Mira's too, but I'd argue to a lesser extent) got called as soon as their opponents fell... even though Mira fell WAY before she put her opponent down. As far as I could tell, they didn't give up, so why was the fight called? Did they pass out? Do the nanomachines not keep that from happening? Seems like this type of thing could be settled with a 10-count after the opponent hits the floor (which would give a lot more drama to the fights). It just never made sense that we had to watch Go fight long after he had clearly lost, but the people in the fights from this episode lost as soon as they hit the mat.
4. Speaking of weird rules, how are all these people in a tournament now? At the beginning of the first episode, they said it was a battle royal (which allowed late entrances for some reason), but a battle royal generally means the last person standing is the winner, so what happened? They just called it after a certain number of people go disqualified? Well, okay, but the last thing we saw was Jin getting his neck broken, so how was he NOT disqualified? He didn't just shrug it off because we saw him with the nurses right after that.
5. So, um... magic is a thing in this? So far, we've seen a guy leave a hand print in an island and use telekinesis to take Jin down. Then, we saw a stand come out of a guy and fight. I don't know what else to call it besides magic, and that seems rather out of place in a martial arts tournament setting, doesn't it? I'm not saying it can't work, but I'm worried. I'm very, very worried.
That's it for my major complaints. I have several smaller ones (like how painful it was to watch the literal tantrum Jin threw when he was told he couldn't fight the blond guy), but I let small issues slide most of the time.
The fight animations have been good so far, but I'd like to see more substance in the way they're presented. I also enjoyed the way the characters interact, the humor, and I'm looking forward to getting to the real story behind who Jin's grandfather is, but it's going to need to be revealed ASAP so that we can start looking more critically at the broader story, as the audience is in desperate need to understand how this anime's universe functions.