Funny thing is that the trope of samurai as deadly combatants close up is historically inaccurate since samurai were first and foremost archers on horseback (heavily influenced by the Chinese military doctrine of that time) and their weapons of choose were bow and arrow and only second katana, naginata and Co.. So the depiction of JSAs samurai is very anime and not so much inspired by history. Otherwise we would have a lot of samurai on bikes with deadly ranged weaponry which would be cool as hell but not fit the picture of samurai we have in the western hemisphere. I don't think we shod try to make the tanko in something they clearly weren't meant to be as they are really good as they are. A dedicated archer samurai would be cool, but isn't strictly needed since JSA has it's own unique, working playstyle. We don't have the fancy toys of steel phalanx or an overabundance of NBW (which is it's own problem and in my opinion became too common recently. Come on mushashi should be the God of meelee and kill almost everything he touches immediately). The most important thing to remember is: meelee isn't the optimal solution in most of the cases even if it can be a tool for JSA as they are as a whole (neglecting ashigaru) pretty stellar at it.
Pretty sure Tanko fill an Ashigaru role right down to the hats. Maybe it would be better if they had 1 more set of disposable ranged weapons to keep up the ranged threat.
