Yup. There’s a story reason for it. It’s actually part of the charm of the game. But that first bit (which should be an intro cake walk, but isn’t) is a bad design choice IMO.

Unfortunately yes. Perfect dodging the first boss regularly gets you killed. So… Play worse. But I promise it’s the only part of the game like that.

The game doesn’t punish you if you knock the difficulty down to easy for that section to get through it.