... yeah. And worse, they don't even seem to be able to deep-mine existing IP, or consume and regurgitate, in any sense except of mine tailings or vomit.
As a metaphor, I'm a real big fan of FLCL. Yes, it's very central example of anime that's filled with awkward surface-level visuals and the 'deeper' meanings are still not exactly high literature, and it's even self-referential about talking about anime that's got deeper meanings that aren't that deep and awkward surface-level visuals. There's a very uncomfortable 'how much of this coming of age story relies on everyone being a pervert' section.
It's short, it's to the point, extremely well-animated, has a great message executed very well, manages to fit into the right space of weird without being incomprehensible, and for a decade and a half, it was done. If you were a really big nerd you could read the manga, but it's a completely different story, something parallel and maybe interesting but about as related as two different Gundam universes. People often point to the paucity of Avatar in fandom spaces as evidence of how shallowly people engage with it, and that's not wrong, but FLCL shows the other way that can happen. It's got a mere double-digits coverage on AO3, and even on FFN it's tiny (at <600 fics, it's worse off than Redwall). Where Avatar loses out in fandom spaces because it's so vapid that anyone trying to use the setting can just serial-numbers-file-off into original fic and be the better for it, FLCL is hard to do anything but a visual reference, because going any further risks the original taking over. It has a universe with potential, but any addition is a subtraction.
And, in 2018, Toonami threw out another two seasons. FLCL Progressive and Alternative received... mixed receptions. You could get five different opinions on them from four different fans. Both suffered, badly, from some lackluster animation in signature scenes, Progressive leaned really hard into satiating the fans, and Alternative twisted hard away from the wacky hijinks into a more measured and slower-paced story. From a culture war perspective, Progressive's intentionally dialed up the squick factor (there's several overtly sexualized guro and vore scenes, the only upskirt is from a chubby guy who's a bit of a dork) to hit people who misunderstood or 'misunderstood' the interpersonal relationships in FLCL proper, and Alternative's flirting with girlboss syndrome despite having a main character who's recognized in-setting as a real bitch.
But they were stories. Even where Progressive was accused of repeating too much from FLCL, it had drastically different themes and story notes that could tell you how it was going to go, and what the differences would be (cw: spoiler for eight-year-old anime). Where Alternative doesn't quite make sense in the series timeline (supposedly originally intended as a prequel, which gets really pessimistic, there's evidence for prequel, sequel, or even AU); it doesn't just flip everything that happens in the original and Alternative the bird.
It can be done! It just... doesn't.
It's doubly frustrating because there's so many better concepts and ideas already written in so many of these universes, and the showrunners can't do it, or notice that they aren't able to do it. Fucking Truce at Bakura would have made more sense than the actual sequel movies.
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It's... a little more morbid than that.
And separately:
There's a variety of failures, here, and it's very much a 'porque no los dos' situation. But the other side's more overt:
Ah, but those were just the untrained, and as laudable as their bravery or desperation might have been, they could have been killed or caused further harm. Surely the officers in command didn't stop other poli--
The flip side to heroic responsibility is that once you start prevent other people from being heroes, you've picked up a lot of responsibility.
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