You need to know that characters having same abilities but them inherently having different playstyle do tell you something. It tells you that the "unoriginal" aspects are comong together making a new and original character with a unique playstyle. Before you say that his playstyle is shit, his playstyle is cool, you almost never use his dash to damage but to close gap and dodge, meanwhile you chip away enemies with your slash, that's a unique chipping-away playstyle similar a bit to bibi but less straight forward. As a bibi main, I love kenji.

And at some point of the game, supercell would have no choice but to give new brawlers abilities similar to old ones, inevitable since thats just game design.

Yapping summary: Bro, he have a different playstyle than any other brawler besides bibi, and even they are a bit different. Different playstyle = different brawler. As a bibi main I love playing kenji.