Sosuke carried the episode for me. He's one of my favorite side characters in the series because he's simply hilarious imo. I see a lot of people confused on his sudden appearance, but manga readers were really anticipating it (he was used a lot in S2 promos) because he was introduced in the manga a lot earlier (Ch. 38) so this episode was a mashup of his introduction and later chapters where he's crucial to (Ch. 88, 87, and the Dating Sim scene was from the Skeleton Island arc where he helped Shion prepare for the mission). The Shion Date segment is my least favorite chapter in the manga and I still had my issues with it, but it was more fun this time around. I think that's because the annoying parts couldn't catch me off guard this time and I was really happy about Sosuke screentime. Shion was also more funny than I remember her being though and ofc the fan service and everything else in this episode was really well drawn and/or animated, so great episode overall.

Also, Sosuke appears in the background multiple times throughout S1, so it might be fun to look out for that on a rewatch. It's cool seeing Kenji too because he was another skipped character that would have been introduced earlier.

Mini Kyoichiro is Ch. 99 in the manga. I appreciated how they chose to adapt these two chapters in episode 1. Both do a good job at reestablishing the warm vibes of the series with good comedy while also reintroducing Taiyo and showing what he's all about. Ai parallels his backstory, and he's able to show such love for his in-law that he butts heads with most often. Kyoichiro also got strong depth here that sets the tone for the amount of focus he'll get this season. Fantastic first episode for sure.

The main reason is I enjoy anime for the characters and in a good battle shonen fights serve their growth. At a certain point JJK feels like its characters serve the fights instead and that's just not something I enjoy. I read the manga all the way through and I was hoping the anime would make things more enjoyable, but in a lot of ways S3 doubled down on what I didn't like. So, I dropped it.

And thank you!! It's Kyoichiro from Mission: Yozakura Family. It'll be a while until that scene is animated, but there's a 27 episode first season out now and S2 starts this April.

Highly disagree with it being a "subpar adaptation", but I think it's funny you dropped it right before the one episode that even other nay-sayers agree was directed very well.

@KiithNabaal
HAIKYU
Interesting that you watched one episode and dropped it with a score of 6... why?

Mission: Yozakura Family is very comedy-based and juvenile, but at least in my opinion, it has all those things you are looking for/will develop characters more in future seasons. S1 is out now, but S2 starts in April. The relationships among the cast are the series' strongest aspects, even through stretches that do have more action.
Yozakurasan Chi no Daisakusen