I will refrain from making more comments about the series until a few weeks have passed cause I suck at doing spoiler tags so all I will say is as a teacher the methods of miyagi that Daniel learned are the good parts of karate so to speak where the Cobra Kai methods is considered the darker side of karate (although Daniel is not innocent the way he treats Johnny during the series.
Agreed though that was also what I meant by my problem with the series
[spoiler]At the final episodes you've watched Daniel continue to be a complete asshole the whole series and they do a good job of highlighting that he was really always like this even as a kid. Yet by the end due to the way they portray what's going on with Miguel, Sam, and Robbie they make Daniel start seeming like the reasonable one.
Frankly through this whole series I viewed Daniel as the antagonist. Pretty much everything that goes wrong stems from something he does. Not to say Johnny is a good guy. He's definitely damaged and they do a great job of highlighting that as well but give a lot of good reason for him to be like this from how things went down in his youth.
Through this though Johnny is the one who's actually helping the kids. He is instilling confidence in them and teaching them to protect themselves. Is the Cobra Kai way good? Not exactly. Is it evil? Again not exactly. It's just as it's first tenet says, Strike First. To me, and it seems to be how his students interpreted it as well that means don't wait to be walked all over. Take charge of the situation before it takes charge of you. Miguel when he finally takes charge kicks the shit out of the school bullies but that's it. He never continues to antagonize them and just goes back to his life once they're knocked down off their pegs. Do some of the students go off the deep end with these teachings? Hell yea but you can't control that. Lip/Hawk clearly interprets it all to be a complete "badass" bully by the end but then you gotta look at how this was a complete 180 in his personality. Frankly that seemed natural that would happen that way.
You also got to look at something Danny says to Robbie at the end that Miyagi had taught him. There are no bad students, only bad teachers. He knows Johnny had a bad teacher. He also knows that Johnny turned from his teacher after their fight. So why the continued antagonizing and never giving him a chance?
Maybe because just as Barney Stinson said in a brilliant Season 8 episode Danny Larusso was really the villain to begin with. The creators of this clearly got the inspiration for this show from that as they do a whole narrative montage mimicing the explanation and frankly I buy into it. Again, Johnny is the one thorugh this series helping the kids. He even tells Miguel to fight and win honorably at the end which Miguel ignores and he calls the little shit out on it.
TL;DR Danny is truly the villain of The Karate Kid and Cobra Kai and Johnny is just a guy trying to get by in life who keeps getting shit on.[/spoiler]
Incoherent rant over
