we could have gotten mature protagonist depictions like pictured. instead some dumbass at sega thought that people "really liked" whiny "relatable" emilia and lumia and yutz so much they gave us aina manon and dozer. by the time they realized their mistake and gave us nadereh and kamui that show character development and evolve past angst, it was already too late.

then on the male side you have nothing but gary stu characters that are inflicted with main character syndrome to "resonate" with the audience, like garoa, crawford, the kvaris siblings especially yellow hair guy voiced by kirito, glen, zephetto and a bunch of rusty robots, saddled with plot convenient idiocrasy rather than showing any convincing sympathetic failings or weakness.

you know the whole reason they gave us dark falz hosts in the original was to give some level of emotion conferment, like a true villain, and they made the big villain zephetto be a floating skullhead that can't convey anything to the viewer. are they stupid? like even mido from code vein had 100x the charisma zephetto had.

theres just one question: who the heck even approved all of this from the top down and why aren't they fired yet?