Kagami no Kojou is great. A movie from 2022. (Is it “less-known” or “hidden”? AniDB has only 95 votes, so I thought it would be. But MAL has 6k.)

Now and Then, Here and There is great. A series from 1999. Outside of the dated 480p visuals it’s exceptional. It has great depth. my short review and a clip

Yeah, Now and Then, Here and There is definitely heavy in parts of the series.

Those sound interesting, thank you for the recommendation. I’ll definitely take a look. I’m intrigued about how blindness is represented and integrated.

I’ve thought about the clear inner voice during watching too. I found it acceptable, not that detrimental. Something different could have had more impact, but I didn’t find it that bad.

It’s certainly the easier way in terms of directing.

I don’t think it’s about “everyone”. It’s about production companies picking what’s popular, the currently popular theme, and produces shovelware standard-productions in a narrow, uninspired target-audience checkboxing way. They contract producers and creatives, but restrict them and likely invest so little that it ends up with what it is. The industry as a whole, many titles, end up as forgettable, mediocre, similar shovelware.

Much like Hollywood produced an abundance of hero movies until everyone was sick of it. Or how EA produced the same sports game each year. Or Call of Duty. Or Battlefield.

I agree with there being a lot of sub-par and mediocre productions, and the overpowered, harem, and video game elements are big offenders and indicators of what most of the time end up as bad products.

I enjoyed Reincarnated as a vending machine. Simple formula, very forced, but hilariously absurd.

Most overpowered protagonist anime end up between bad and awful. But The Eminence in Shadow makes use of it as poignant satire. And I remember seeing another series where they made it work through enemy hybris, and the punishment/revelation was satisfying enough that it worked, in large part through direction and production quality.

The most “wtf” regarding isekai I recently saw was when the entire series was not about being an isekai, but - not at the begining nor end - they put a random scene in where the protagonist had a vision from modern Japan city and was like “what is this about?” and that was it. Maybe they included it just so it can have the isekai product tag? I have no idea.

Coming back to the original theme and hypothosis, the differentiation of and popularity of fantasy vs isekai escapism is interesting.

Ghost in the Shell is certainly fantastical. Enjoying or viewing or getting invested in fantastical stories is inherently partly escapism too. Isekai specifically puts a - most of the time - normal modern human into a fantastical setting though, materializing escapism as a fact on the protagonist.

I’m not sure there’s such a hard line to draw though.

What do you mean by traditional material?

I can see your argumentation being followed by misguided production management, but I doubt it’s necessary or can positively influence world-building.

All kinds of mechanisms and progression can be presented naturally, intuitively, and embedded within the world. I doubt a noticeable number of people are so far gone they can only understand the world through the interface of video game interfaces.

I loved Vision of Escaflowne back in the day. (In 2006 I rated it 9/10 apparently.)

I wonder how it would hold up if I were to watch it today.

Stitched tongue?

alleged that 90% of animators quit their jobs in three years

Insane number. But not implausible to me. Bad working environments with impossible schedules do that.

I wish they would improve working conditions. As an industry, or through regulation because evidently, the industry doesn’t.

To finance it - I wish they would make anime more easily accessible and buyable.

Less oppressive checkboxed mass/standard productions would surely improve what we see as products too.

I recently watched Back Street Girls: Gokudols, which has a very low frame and animation count. It still worked well as a comedy. It was enough.

Not that I want anime to be that way, but it can work for some.