It did those things, there's just too much dialogue. The arts really good, if the author focused on that standing out using his art I think it would've been more successful. Who nows, with the first arc coming up maybe it'll have decent reception and climb up the ToC
The dialogue argument is really valid, most thoughts presented, mainly in the first chapters could have been done with simple 3 to 4 words sentences, it detailed every feeling the characters had when it could just combine the art with those simple sentences.
Thing is, it did all that in ch 1 (aside from having 3 characters introduced rather than 4). Then it spend most of the rest of vol 1 on an extra story that just repeated what we already learned and saw in ch 1 but worse. And then it spent another half a volume introducing characters that seemed like they'd be interest but it just resulted in even more sitting in a room infodumping stuff of we already know.
Yeah, with that I would disagree, in chapter 1 we only saw a Nyoibo, but had 0 idea of what the hell was that thing, no mentioning of the Followers of Caos, only a simple glimpse at the possible future monster apocalypse, the only idea of confront that could be made given by chapter 1 was fighting nameless, created by fear, random monsters that would only exist if some accident occured with Koharu, by the way, we also had NO mentioning about mou, up until chapter 3 is the only part of the story where that old argument of "having no idea where the story is leading" is valid, you could argue with that, but I don't see it going much further than chapter 5, wich is still on the first volume, it's not extra story, it's important new elements to it, I think you only considered it "repetitiveness" and "worst" because of your personal disinterest, wich is fine, but not actually an argument, although being a infodump is, I can see why some would think it's just too much information, especially with expositive dialogue and the characters just sitting and talking.
About that...
-"Getting through the boring introduction stuff" is kinda codeword for getting into the interesting plot developments. And it's kinda hard to see the series having done that when, by the end of Chapter 7, it still had yet to leave Ryunosuke's house.
-This is true, so I'll give a pass on that.
-One little problem there, Gohaku isn't named until Chapter 11 through throwaway dialogue. If the character lacks as much as a name, he's not firmly established.
-Again, the manga does not leave Ryunosuke's house at all in Volume 1. How can the manga have "drive" when it hasn't expanded the location whatsoever?
- I can see that as valid until Sai came in, fighting him is already a great development and use of all the talking in previous chapters, a true genuine fight, wich is what battle mangas are trying to achieve, so although it is part of the introduction, i can't see it as a "boring start" at least not like the rest of the chapters (except 1, can't see any of that in it as well), you could argue it is just on the end of the volume, but it's still part of it, and whoever buys it will read it entirely, so I don't see a problem.
- It's hard for him to be named when he only interacts with:
•His son (would only call him "dad").
•A girl that silences herself because talking is dangerous.
•A guy who doesn't know his name (Sai only knew Ryuunosuke's name because of his psychic connection with Koharu).
•His son's friend (also has no idea what his name is).
- That is true, the manga only shows the route it wants to follow, but never actually gets fully on it, it keeps it as only a "possibility", so yeah, Vol.1 doesn't fill that correctly.
