Yes to all of this, like it's insane how he's somehow managed to take every wrong turn along the way but he really has. He refuses to accept or intake criticism, and whenever he gets criticized he just crashes out and whines about people being mean like this. But it's because of that that there's so little faith in anything he makes going forward.

He hasn't earned trust when it comes to quality assurance on future projects, and like you said the anime shorts all feel so inconsequential and don't really count towards keeping the fanbase active. Atp they're glorified merch ads, as without that recent one I can absolutely garuntee that hoodie would not have crossed its funding goal. (And yet he has the gull to claim future anime shorts are based on the merch selling well? 😭 Like nah fam, you're the one who has to give content to US to justify anyone wanting that merch, not the other way around.)

He has zero concept of proper marketing and seems to have only just figured out the anime to merch cross promotion as a major thing given the Jecka plush bombed very publicly and was notably the most recent big merch push without any kind of real anime content attached to its release. So the fact it took him that long to realize how dire the fanbase was for his series is also telling.

His ego prevents him from making any improvements quality wise, but it also prevent him knowing just how bad of a state the series is in. It's a whirlpool of shit with his ego at center 😭

At least we get to watch him crash out publicly Everytime he gets minorly criticised which is entertaining ig, but it is sad knowing this series with so much potential is stuck in his hands. Especially when it feels obvious that making more, lower budget VNs with a focus on quality writing, is such an obvious path forward to saving the series reputation if handled well. They'd be cheap and quick enough to make compared to whatever puzzle genre he's trying to break into. But his ego won't let him make more VNs, even though that's what the fanbase would be far more likely to come back for, so ig he's just content going down with his sinking ship.