>>98115620Put simply, it lost the spirit of the first 4 seasons. All those tranquil scenes? Mostly gone, but when they're there they become nonsensical or worse, for the most part.
There's also a lot of bullshit that's incredibly immature for such a show in general. The dick joke (which they could have rephrased and actually made fit the scene), how Jack acted around Ashi later on, and ESPECIALLY the entire half-episode of Jack getting his sword back. Just about everything in it reads like somebody understood neither the original show, nor the philosophies it was based on, nor good writing in general. It feels like the new season got "Americanized", in the worst way.
Ashi, if anything, helped with this a bit more than she hurt it. The reveal of her heritage in episode 9 was genuinely an excellent twist from a storytelling perspective, because it was something that had been foreshadowed but not nearly enough to actually guess it definitively. But more than that, many of her scenes DID capture that spirit I was talking about, even in basic things like her expressions and emotions toward Jack and his cause.
Although I have to admit: her actual dialogue was incredibly cringey at times, and perhaps they should have picked another VA as well.
(The episode limit is a complete distraction, as it had nothing to do with season 5's problems.)
