The anime is Genshiken (2004), I picked it up on a whim. It’s alright so far. Very “by weebs, for weebs”. The manga is from 2002.
The 80s and 90s being a pass of the baton from veterans of the early days to more modern staff, which already grew up with anime, and the success of Evangelion and merchandising had some awful long-term consequences even if it was probably unavoidable under capitalism.
100%. Arrested development describes it perfectly.
I can’t handle another pathetic male looser coomer teen MC. 99% of all MCs fit these trope now. That or the pathetic male looser coomer teen power fantasy trope. Shows used to have such a broad interesting cast of characters, even bad shows.
Pretty much the entire industry is creatively bankrupt at this point.
I barely have any shows to look forward to these last few seasons.
Animation quality has improved significantly, but by almost every other metric shows are worse now.
There’s usually a few good mid to high budget shows each year, everything else is mostly slop.
The pandering is so staggeringly direct now: “mediocre creepy otaku is now the epic video game boy that uses video game cheats/metagaming to build limitless power and have limitless sex.”