The thing that really gets me with how Garou's characterisation went in the manga after he got to the surface is how abrupt and unearned it is.
What I mean is, the webcomic and manga up until the surface fight really set Garou up as this young man with a lot of issues. He's antisocial, angry, coming from a childhood full of physical and emotional abuse from peers, teachers, probably parents. He's set up as someone with clear psychological problems, someone who self-isolates, doesn't have the skills to form healthy relationships, someone who is so negatively affected by his past that he wants to become a literal monster and goes as far as beating the shit out of other people (heroes) where they end up in hospital. The webcomic and manga (up to the surface fight) set this up beautifully.
And then it is suddenly reversed 180 degrees where he is so clearly soft baby good guy. It used to drive me up the wall, now it just puzzles me and not in a good way. Yes, of course Garou's character development was always heading towards him calming down and learning to reintegrate into society.
But the WC did it better not because it's the WC but because it follows logically that for someone with that many mental health/self-image issues reintegration was going to be a difficult and slow process. The key words being difficult and slow.
Instead, the manga went from 0-100 in a few days and completely turned his personality to some sort of cheery 'jock abomination' as one Reddit commenter put it. I'm still scratching my head like wtf man.
As I said many times before, I don't want Garou depressed forever. I just think the manga is very superficial in its treatment of his character development at this point. If they really wanted something heart-warming it would have been so much better to see him face challenges in his reintegration and pursuit of friendships and take it slow and learn and grow from that. We could have seen him slowly opening up to someone, seeing that it's not easy for him but doing it anyway. Instead we now have a Garou who openly jokes and shows affectionate concern for others like it's nothing, like he never had any issues at all, whereas all the years prior to this he kept himself tightly wound and keeping everyone at arms length and snarling at almost everyone who tried to get close.
Don't tell me that years long trauma and deep psychological defenses were overcome in the span of a few days or even a couple of weeks. Come on, man.
Don't set up such a complex deeply troubled character to basically erase it with a click of the fingers. It would have been so satisfying and heart-warming to see him open up and develop relationships in his own awkward, slow way where we could feel like it really takes effort and courage for him to do so. Like that saying, feel the fear and do it anyway.