Wait, you're telling me that the hero party with the obviously arrogant asshole hero and his passive harem of willingly stupid bimbos (except for the requisite one girl who seems to recognize something's not right but is too passive to say anything) is actually super weak and was being propped up by the "useless" party member they just kicked out?
WHAT A SHOCKING AND UNEXPECTED TURN OF EVENTS THAT HAS NEVER BEFORE BEEN SEEN IN THE HISTORY OF STORIES!
Next thing you know you're going to be telling me that the hero party starts believing the guy they kicked out cursed them or something because it has to be something else causing them to suck and not that they made a mistake...
"follow the leader" type fads and story ideas aren't bad if everyone puts their own spin on things. But I swear with manga it's like an idea becomes popular and everyone just does exactly the same thing with no real differences. You could swap the faces of these characters with those from any number of nigh identical series and nobody would be able to tell the difference.
I completely agree.
Manga has gotten weird with publishers flooding the market with manga, especially when based on light novels. Too many inexperienced (or just bad) writers and editors, and customer demand is so high they don't really get burned.
There's a lot of one-time artists for the ones based on a novel of some kind.
Also, the new generation of manga customers generally seem to have shockingly lower standards, so there's also that, and that will see us flooded with significantly worse stories in about 10-15 years time.
I don't think the number of good or interesting manga has decreased, just too many garbage ones. And it's a shame because there are some absolutely incredible first-time/one-time artists who were completely wasted on adaptations to bad novels.