Well this episode didn't feature Dou Niu appearing out of nowhere and Ryo making short work of him, so it's immediately better than the opening episode of Shenmue 1's adaptation.
Speaking as one of the fellows who liked the first 5 episodes, but was also openly critical of them, I'm joining the camp of those who feel this was the strongest episode. Mostly because despite the cut corners, it actually felt like it was able to breathe for a moment or two. The pacing actually felt pretty acceptable throughout and the character moments generally sold themselves. The Shenmue 1 section wishes it could have a segment as steadily paced as the iron palm arc. It wasn't perfect though. For example....
- 10 minutes into this episode, I was thinking, "Man, Wong's lookin hella insufferable, isn't he?" I'm glad they didn't cut out him returning Ryo's bad as I feared they would, but between his anger in his scene with Joy and the fact that the episode's means of garnering our sympathy was exposition, his character's likability felt semi-compromised.
- A few here have complained that Ryo comes across as a bit too overpowered in this anime and the amount of leaves he releases from the tree with that final punch is evidence of that. In the game, he got better, but nowhere near Jianmin's level. Here, the arc ends with an implication that he's as good as Jianmin now, at least in this front.
- While I can understand why some people found the end credits sequence clunky, my constant thought was if they can give extra time to the anime via the credits as well, WHY THE HELL DIDN'T THEY DO THAT SOONER!? That's a solid 10 minutes more of time that you could have given to develop Chai's intimidation, add a farewell to Tom, have Ryo interact with bloody Santa Claus, absolutely anything. Why wait until now? There's jarring and then there's absurdity. I really can't wrap my head around that one.
- Even though I'm all aboard the end credits having a scene or two, showing Ren this early was too much. Episode 2 or even 3, sure, 1, nooooo. We have enough characters to bond with as is at this stage.