YMMV / GARO: The One Who Inherits Steel

• Narm: Igusu's death in #7 is a Heroic Sacrifice wherein he charges the others with continuing Godou's legacy before dying at the hands of the Power Parasite Monster of the Week. The gravitas of such an event is entirely undercut by everyone standing around with their mouths agape and weapons drawn while their friend is clearly struggling despite outnumbering the enemy six-to-one.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: The show's emphasis on Souma's angst (and the multi-part episode pacing) ends up overshadowing a lot of the character-dynamics the show establishes at the start.
  • The Three Knights of Agora are framed as though they'll be integral to Ryuga's attempts to connect to Souma, only for Ryuga to simply approach the boy himself after talking with Mutsugi. The trio participate in quite a few battle sequences, but get minimal characterization and are eventually shaved from the plot entirely; Igusu dying while Obi and Ron bench-warm during the final battles.
  • The Seducer is behind the latest phenomenon, which is acknowledged In-Universe as defying one of the GARO franchise's iron-clad rules about Demonic Possession^note Namely that only people in an especially desperate state or extremely affected by outside forces are Horror-candidates; her ability to hypnotize bypassing the victim's morality to reduce them to a monster. She only has a few sparse appearances until the last episodes of the show and isn't given any character until then - ultimately being a Generic Doomsday Villain whose only motive was the opening of the Gate Of Destruction; existing solely to be an obligatory Final Boss for its own sake.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Despite the advertised focus on the franchise's overlooked Hagane Knight caste, Souma Shirahane is the only Hagane that gets any focus. Nothing about the caste (or even the Three Knights of Agora) is really explored beyond pointing out that they exist and that they know Souma. After a few skirmishes, the other Haganes are shunted Out of Focus in favor of the same internal politicking of previous seasons.
  • Mutsugi is the primary villain of the season, yet no attempt is made to foreshadow that whatsoever; her sudden betrayal so abrupt that it requires an entire Flashback Episode to justify.