[bluesparrow]

Shunpei needs to be around because frankly Haruto needs someone to be around and talk to when he's going around looking for Gates. Otherwise it becomes "creepy quiet guy stalking random people." Rinko wouldn't be bad for this except that she's generally useless and not around all the time because of her job. Shunpei is pretty useless too but he's always around. He also tends to connect better with people than Haruto does.

I'm not saying they did it the best possible way they could have, frankly they made some bad decisions at the start of the show. What I was hoping was going to happen after the pilot was that Haruto would be investigating things with Rinko. That'd make sense, since these attacks on the Gates are all technically crimes and she has a motivation to take them down because of what happened to her partner. It'd be a classic plot engine.

Instead they have a bizarre non-sensical thing where everyone hangs out at an antique shop and accidentally bump into someone they knew previously who was actually secretly a Gate all along. It's stupid but it's become a decent dynamic finally. Or maybe I'm just used to it.