>>28129>soap operaI see. I suppose that would explain how banal it was. Kind of like how the Ranma½ had a shoujou premise but ultimately was written as a shonen – except inverted; e.g. shonen premise with shoujo tropes. I suppose that didn't deter the male audience, whom it was ultimately marketed towards.
It's hard to even remember a time when people were either into shonen bullshit like Dragon Ball super into "moé archetypes" and slice of life stuff. Just the whole concept of moé archetypes in general and the fact that it captured the interest of so many men is interesting, because it's kind of insipid by today's standards. All these tiny, superfluous subversions of the feminine archetype. It makes sense that the gain in popularity of traps marked the end of the moé era: after all, what is the ultimate subversion of womanhood? Being male.