Curate, connect, and discover
I keep seeing this "Bucchigiri has an awful mc" discourse popping up whenever the anime is mentioned, and there's something that bothers about the way a lot of people are framing these discussions. People always point out the fact that Arajin is a dirtbag who ghosts his only friend to simp for a girl who is actively disinterested in him under the pretense that this is behavior the anime expects us to agree with and think is good, and will thus endear him to us as audience, but like... that's obviously not what Bucchigiri is trying to do??
like- this is a show where the protagonists main love interest is a girl that is so revolted by him that she has zero qualms manipulating him into joining an actual gang, a show where the main character almost shits his own pants before every single action scene, and lets not forget, a show where he neglects and mistreats his only friend so badly that said friend loses it and systematically beats the piss out of every other character on the show to work out his frustrations.
Does that sound like a show that "failed at making a likable protagonist", or does that sound like a show that is purposefully centered around a selfish and awful character?
One of the shows main narrative hooks is watching this terrible man stumble his way through what is an otherwise fairly serious shounen anime world. I think that's a pretty funny subversion of typical anime tropes, but even if you don't agree, to deny that it's what the show is going for is to just refuse to engage with it on any level, and that's the main issue with this type of critique.
You can dislike the show for not having a likable protagonist, but the show is not trying to have a likable protagonist. At that point you're not hating a show because it executes what it's trying to do poorly, you're hating a show because it's not something it never wanted to be in the first place.