u/ARSINATOR

This was probably the most hyped arc ever for me and everyone else, the only likeable character here is Elite and jinyoung. Gapryong Kim just seems like a surface level character like gold d roger or Luffy, they are trying to force the hero trope way too much onto him talmbout some corny shit like "save the world" with zero explanation as to why he is strong and why his friends follow him. I mean the only thing special about him is his strength and even conviction punch itself doesn't scream conviction to me, it just seems like an ability that he use any time. Vasco showed more conviction than whatever this gap vs Tom lee / elite had. The friendship is forced, and the overall writing has gotten bland. Yamazakis don't seem threatening anymore and Gap didn't have a reason to actually rebel against the yamazakis until jinyoung confronted him. The only likable moment of Gapryong was when he beat elite in a battle of wits by claiming to be Elite's underling and pinning all the blame of breaking the statue onto elite.

The fact that James was casually calling Kitae Kim his dog and stating that he would hold him "accountable" for his "mistakes" is something that kitae doesn't let slide. The fact that jinyoung is openly talking about James using kitae as the king of the underworld shows that James calls the shots and Kitae is below James in heirarchy. It's extremely uncharacteristic for Kitae to consider anyone as his equal as ptj has shown time and time again that Kitae loves to make everyone submit under him, and that includes Goo Kim as well as he casually disrespects him even while calling him a partner. This whole fight showed how composed James lee was against a "top tier" while kitae was easily getting worked up and calling him the "polar opposite" even James doesn't even consider him that. Sure they might have paths that cancel each other, but one is definitely a much better fighter and we could clearly see the subtle (but still significant) difference in gap (ryong) between them (funny little pun there).

Now despite what I said this might come across as vibescaling or statement scaling but y'all are just gonna ignore the obvious narrative setup of how James is clearly above Gitae.

All said and done, I am not a James lee fan. This is just an observation. I believe Gunnism rules and baby gun could unironically solo the verse (including pre gen)