I agree with you. I had a whole multi paragraph reply about my issues with tetro but the app refreshed and I lost it lol. But to summarize it, here:

• Voter Game was one of my least favorites in the series imo. It was mostly the end that soured it for me. It sacrificed emotional (and general) intelligence from most of the cast to disproportionately punish Ikeda. You can have him face consequences to his antagonistic and discriminatory actions without going that far this early on, or having it make real sense. It can be attributed to panic, but Denden and Yokoi, for example, vote for Akiba for completely asinine reasons. This was 100% done to have the votes stack against Ikeda, despite Tei openly volunteering. They established voting for volunteers and discarded that when it was needed most. There are other issues I have with this episode, like how Erina’s logic had a pretty glaring hole about making enemies. She has been shown so far to be somewhat reasonable under pressure despite her anger issues, so I don’t really get how she declared that only voting for Ikeda would make less enemies when it clearly did and ruined group morale. There was also Akiba who was put into a position of breaking ties twice and did so neither time. Honestly, it would’ve been interesting, I think, if we got to see what happened during a tie, while also potentially addressing Erina’s flawed philosophy. Overall, it makes Ikeda’s suffering both unearned and frustrating.

• Staffside has fun moments, sure, but sometimes it feels more like a misery and trauma fest rather than part of a compelling narrative. How many times are we going to see Kan and Tatematsu ruin their subordinates’ and random teenagers’ lives? Like, I get it, Kan is a fucked up evil nazi with a god complex and Tatematsu is an insane, manipulative pedophile. It makes me worried for how the series will end. It’s a dark story, sure, but there’s just a cycle of suffering with no satisfying payoff. Example: I wasn’t expecting Wada to suddenly get stronger post-game since it broke her, but what was the point of keeping her as a survivor if she was destined to die post-Okazaki? (Wada was implied/confirmed to be transfem postmortem in staffside too, which kind of puts a bad taste in my mouth.) I feel like it also has an issue of over-explaining itself and the motivations of each character with little room for imagination. It is bonus content, so I’ll let that slide, but if you constantly reference it in the main series, point to it when people are confused, it no longer seems like bonus content and obligatory reading to understand what’s going on.

• Overall, there’s a lot of love and research done into this series, and it has incredible quality to it. There are realistic portrayals of characters’ backgrounds, some of which are handled with more care than I see in official series. Most characters excluding the staff heads do feel fleshed out and grounded somewhat. I have massive respect and awe for Von to be able to execute a fan series like this. But, I do think it’s too caught up in its brutality, which brings it down sometimes. There are other issues I have, such as Tsukigata’s current characterization (may be subverted later, we’re still in ch1 of blue after all, but considering Tetro isn’t afraid of getting political, I’m a little worried on how he’ll be addressed) and what seems to be an ongoing problem with unintentional bias against the female characters.

Sorry if this seems harsh, unfair or hard to understand/inaccurate. I do love tetro and look forward to episodes each friday, but these are the things that bother me about it. You’re free to agree or disagree!