I'm not going to lie, I have set my expectations a lot lower than most fans since it was originally announced. I'm not trying to be a mood killer or anything, but there are just some things I can't ignore.
I have mentioned a few times since it was announced that only being 13 episodes long is my biggest concern with the anime. I have read the replies saying that the story of Shenmue 1 and 2 can be told in that time, but I am not convinced that it can be told in a satisfying way. What made the games so special to me was the interactions with the world and it's characters. With the time you spend interacting with the world, the more you care about it all. This is incredibly hard to get across on the screen, which is why so many fail and it's incredibly rare to find any good ones.
For me, the greatest anime adaptation of a video game to date is Steins;Gate. The first half of the series was slow paced and they spent the majority of it showing us the world and building up it's characters alongside the story. They could do this because it was a 24 episode series. By doing this, they really made you care for the characters and without it, I don't think the 2nd half of the series would have had anywhere near as much impact as it did. Shenmue won't have that, it's going to be fast paced from start to finish, which is actually completely at odds with what the series is known for. The audience won't get the chance to care for the characters like Nozomi, Fuku-San, Ine-San, Guizhang, Ren, Wong, Joy or Xiuying the same way, simply because they won't have a fraction of the time with them that we got in the games. I have said in the past that one of the best things about Shenmue 2 was the build up to Fangmei's birthday. The interactions with her helped to flesh out not just Fangmei, but Ryo and other characters like Xiuying too. I don't see how they can make this fit in the anime......actually, I am certain that they won't make it fit. This anime will be focused on the main storyline of the Shenmue series and everything else will be pushed to the side, which I think will be a massive disservice to the story as a whole.
Also, this may be seen as a weird complaint when the English dub for the games is often mocked, but I'm not impressed by the English dub in the trailer. Most of the voices do not fit their character and don't sound well acted. The Japanese voice acting absolutely destroys the English voice acting in the trailer, and this is coming from somebody that prefers to watch dubbed anime.