I do think that after this and the three next fights, there will be a big twist and the tournament is gonna be cancelled bc this kind of fighting manga just doesn’t work with returning characters. For a good fight with no clear protagonist and antagonist, the loss needs to also be satisfying (musclehead dying to protect the guy, the blind guy going to the afterlife to see his grandson, etc… I forgot everyone’s names) but you can’t have a character have a satisfying win that concludes an arc only to die in their next fight, either Kotaro or musashi losing would suck for exemple. so I think what will happen is that a wrench will be thrown in the whole thing, and the characters will fight under different circumstances outside of the tournament, some even potentially fighting characters that get introduced after the cancelation that haven’t won yet and are clearly antagonistic (bc not doing so would also suck since the new ones would be the only ones able to lose satisfyingly) and also some new matchups within the current roster that would actually work while fights that are doomed from the start to be worse than the first round ones like musashi vs kotaro be prevented and not take place. I’m not sure if this would be the best course of action considering there are still three round 2 characters we don’t know about, but I think I’ll be able to make up my mind after the next fight if the third round 2 matchup can work or not (kotaro vs musashi isn’t really that bad after all, Kotaro not having much in terms of characterization and development even tough I still think it’s not looking good and jagyu vs big guy would actually work)