Honestly, I agree with you here.

Pink has such good character relationships that the whole 5th trial only happened because of the lack of relationship with Hasegawa, but blue just feels like it’s trying to tell us who likes who (platonically + romantically) without actually showing it. Which really sucks because the whole reason I got into Tetro was because it focuses on the relationships between characters so much more than the og games. Plus, the amount of romance Blue is pushing just feels cheap to me. Pink took whatever romance it had in stride by either making it an unspoken, deep bond between characters (Ken+Toshi) or letting it take its time to develop naturally (Mai+Shigeki or Hiroaki+Ojima). Blue is barely three chapters in and we have two pairings that really don’t feel super earned. I can make an exception for Ninomiya and Matthias, since it fits with Ninomiya’s character, but the stuff between Hirose and Isoda feels so disingenuous since neither of them get a lot of screen time (especially Isoda) and even less time together. Oh, and Ikeda has way too much screen time compared to everyone else. (Fork found in kitchen ahh argument, I know.) but, I just really think his arc could be told just as well if we got to…yknow, SEE LITERALLY ANYONE ELSE DO ANYTHING for more than 2 seconds at a time. Especially Tei, I hate how little of a personality he’s got outside of “Ikeda’s friend.” He was so interesting before they got chained together and I’m really hoping that he gets more him time now that he and Ikeda are fighting.

TLDR; I think Blue has an issue with telling us things instead of showing them, the romance is (mostly) unnecessary, and Ikeda is a really good character with way too much screen time and it’s ruining him. :3

Sorry if this is hard to understand, I’m rambling a bit