And the problem with this stems from when "anime" is percieved as unilaterally narrowly from either outside OR inside the fandom.
This is where the tropes talk keeps popping up again and again here. No nuance or flavor or distinctions of quality, just slathering it on as Wholly Good or Wholly Bad.
edit: well well well, evidence, it arrives in the nick of time like a good hero should.
What's at issue, for me, is not, in general, tropes themselves but rather the way, in which they are employed. When art/character/world design is crassly done to satisfy tropes, it produces tasteless, empty content. When there are tropes in said design but there is also an independent artistic vision, which is not a crass ploy at pandering to an audience--there is the potential for worthwhile content with tropes.
People use totalizing language, but they have to get this at some level. It is not like the games we all enjoyed in the 90s weren't tropey but that they had tropes does not mean that otaku bait content does not exist.
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Whalehunting demands otaku bait. That small of content drives content produced to be trashy and shallow. So that's what happens on mobile.
The Japanese console audience has shrunk; niche content is a way to ensure revenue. Part general Japanese economic and social trends, part issues in the industry. Moreover, production costs have risen so it's harder to break out of those niche through success in, say, the west, which was never common anyhow.
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Also, this is a trend in content. There are games that are full otaku bait but there are plenty more games that are going that way while still having redeeming qualities.
People don't acknowledge the continuum either because they want to set aside what they like as completely different or stick their head in the sand and deny change over time.
Edit: As people are using anime to denote a certain sort of anime and besmirch it, there are also those using this context confusion to act like the complaint is ridiculous when it really isn't.
