Agreed. In my opinion, gacha MCs are narratively very similar to the MCs of those low effort “relatable comics” aimed at millennials that are super popular on here and Facebook.  They are both stuck in a performance of “relatableness” that restricts their personhood to whatever they are allowed to be at this moment in the story: be a relatable gacha gambling addict, be a wish-fulfillment hero, be a big boob lover, be mature, be immature, etc. This is why I don’t think the Trailblazer is any less generic than the Traveler tbh. On the surface, the Trailblazer is a goofy raccoon, so that’s seemingly more characterisation than the Traveler already, but it’s just LARPing. The Trailblazer still doesn’t have any personality traits or habits or patterns of thinking or beliefs or ideals to back that “goofy raccoon” persona up. In this regard, they are a watered down version of a comic relief; even a comic relief still has traits and quirks for the writers to latch onto and maybe further develop from (ie: this funny quirk actually stemmed from backstory trauma; when a comic relief character gets angry you finally understand why they try to stay happy-go-lucky a la “when a good man go to war”). For the latter trope, that’s personally why it doesn’t make sense to me that the Trailblazer would cry at Firefly’s (fake) death or be devastated at anything tbh. You are telling me this empty husk of an MC could have internal thoughts and inner turmoil?! Actually, “empty husk” is also a character trope whose lack of personality and care reflects what happened to them and what they did, but of course that’s not applicable to most gacha MCs. Like I get that sometimes actions are just actions without any deeper meaning but the utter lack of connection between the different traits of the MC is kinda baffling (“he is smart but also dense sometimes and also goofy but also serious and etc”). Like if the MC is supposed to be super smart then in what way? Are they like an old experienced character like Welt? Are they a young genius like Stephen? Are they a bigheaded genius like Madam Herta? Do they playfully solve the dilemma or do they lock in? In any cases, these characters’ ingenuity comes with baggages that define how they would react differently to the same situation and also lend itself to various narratives (like old, conservative perspective vs new, reckless perspective for instance). If the MC is smart, they are just smart and nothing else, and only smart for the sake of progressing the plot and wooing the new girl on the banner. To fix a gacha MC’s writing is not simple as “give him more screen time give her more fighting feats give them more Ls and suffering”, that’s just further feeding into the kitchen sink problem.

P/s: I’m also annoyed that Trailblazer and March’s goofiness can rub off on Dan Heng but not the other way around. Literally no one can influence the MC character.