Have been meaning to watch Frieren after I saw a comment on a Dungeons and Dragons subreddit awhile back. The conversation was about the fantasy trope of elves being isolationist and sticking to their own. Someone gave a nicely-written explanation of how you could run that in your game as being because everyone else lives shorter lives than them, that it's a phase in most elves' lives where they say they'll never be like their elder elves and they go adventuring, and then their friends die before them and they are heartbroken, and they go back to their walled elven communities because "what elf could bear that loss ten times over?" or some other closing line that hit the spot. The reply said Frieren was basically about that. Also have been meaning to watch Spy x Family!
About cute girls doing cute things: slice of life and themes of friendship are gender neutral. Men might fantasize about being with them: no significant male characters to threaten the fantasy, not even a "self-insert" MC who might not actually be relatable to the particular man. But what I think less people realize is that for women, it's a female-dominated show, and there are no important men, so naturally the girls talk to each other about doing things unrelated to men. In other words, shows in that genre are nigh-on guaranteed to pass the Bechdel test. I'm a woman who watches cute girls doing cute things. I don't spend much time thinking about the Bechdel test when consuming media, but I know other women do and I figure it's a cool insight.
Honestly, I tell myself I play otome for the men, but really I get sucked in by the interesting premise or the main character's personality or the main character being relatable to me somehow. From what I know of Variable Barricade, absolutely none of the guys appeal to me, but I want to play it anyways because of the tsundere MC and it being a dramedy. Playing My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom -Pirates of the Disturbance- and I'm only interested in 4 of the men, but because I'm enjoying the story/characters I'm going to play all 6 routes. If I get sucked in by a love interest it's usually because I heard something about the way his route progresses, or he hits a particular character trope that I want to see in a love interest character that I rarely get to see in them. Although I do think part of the appeal for me is still romance—I consumed quite a lot of shipping fanfic up until a few years ago. For what it is worth I am attracted to men.
I really enjoy social interaction and relationship building mechanics in video games, and would love to see more games entirely focused around them, though with more mechanics than you see in visual novels. I also personally want to make a game some day about messing with them like a villain in a soap opera or teen drama, but I do not know if I'd actually commit to it, and I am definitely not looking forward to "so was she a bully in high school, or is she a bully victim looking to take the role of the oppressor?" questions asked in a similar vein to "so how many people have you killed?" questions for people who work on violent video games.
I also am enjoying this conversation! It feels like something that would not really be done on Reddit, but that is okay here. Or at least culture is not established enough here for anyone to tell us to stop and go away :P On Reddit I would have tried to take it to DMs and here, given issues with federation, theoretically I should be able to DM you from Mbin and you should be able to get it on Lemmy, but it might not work in practice.