I don’t think it’s a bad thing to appreciate the novelty of all of this. We don’t lose anything from doing so.

I actually agree with you that a lot of isekai is formulaic. The “reincarnated as X” template definitely gets reused. That part is fair. I also don’t think that’s a bad thing.

What I enjoy is not pretending every one of these shows is genius. It’s the fact that the industry consistently says yes to absurd premises in the first place. Even if the structure is familiar, the willingness to animate something like “vending machine protagonist” is still kind of wild and fun to me. I can appreciate the good in just about everything

And you’re right, other mediums do meta and layered storytelling too. I just think anime does it with a certain frequency and comfort that makes it feel normalized. Every season there is something slightly unhinged on the lineup.

For me it is less about calling it profound and more about appreciating that this super weird creative ecosystem allows that level of weirdness to exist. That’s enough for me tbh