It is all about power scaling and “aura” shite or arguing about how characters are goats or washed, like a more annoying version of sports twitter.

You see this disingenuously rephrased as “character development” when what they actually want is for all characters to get more powerful and to become either cooler or more gender-role-inhabiting by the end of the show. The idea that these characters aren’t your friends but pieces in a broader work is totally paved over by their homeostatic need for art that doesn’t challenge them at all and isn’t a message from another person’s experience or ideas of the world.

See the visceral hatred people have for characters in Evangelion, particularly Shinji and Asuka.