I feel like there’s a deep seated feeling of insecurity with Western animators. Whenever they try the magical girl or power rangers influenced shows they can never be genuine. It’s copying someone else’s work and winking at the camera about how this is basically their highschool fanfic. I think it’s a sign of deep insecurity in who they are and what they do. The high percent of trannies heckin validates my feelings on this.
That's an interesting way to put it, actually.
It's like they are deeply embarrassed to admit they still enjoy stuff aimed at kids and pre-teens, or even just things that were products of their time that didn't quite age well, so to speak. Or if they do admit it, they hide it beneath a veneer of "actually it's more complex than it seems." But they know it's not, and when it's their turn to do something inspired by those acts, they have to add something,
anything, to make it stand out and not seem "generic."
That something is either something of graphic nature (gay shit, gore and violence, etc.) or just the kind of in-your-face self-awareness that is becoming itself an overused trope. Not even including "muh diversity" because that is the weakest cop-out ever. We all grew up watching stuff with blacks, latinos, asians and other minorities in it, and none made a fuss about their inclusion, yet every single one of these modern animators think they are treading uncharted waters and making history by adding mystery meat people front and center.
I once commented - maybe in this very thread - that all these chicks that went into animation and grew up watching Sailor Moon learned the wrong lessons from it. That is, they never quite understood why it worked like it did. And now that they have grown up and have the conditions to weave a story of their own, they just say "I liked it but in hindsight, it's not very well-written. I can do better than that kiddy crap."
They desperately want to make something groundbreaking, or at least legitimately memorable. But their idea of originality is just "deconstruction of established tropes/clichés, ennui-infused irony, and a dash of forced inclusivity." It works for a very short while, and then it gets lost in the fray of similar slop. How many people are talking about the She-Ra reboot nowadays? Or about The Owl House? Compare it to people who discuss Avatar and Adventure Time. Hell, even the aforementioned Sailor Moon still has a solid fanbase. These last three have memorable settings, characters and plots. All the first two had going for them were homosexual couplings.
TL;DR - In their attempt to create originality out of supposedly tired concepts, all the current batch of animators are doing is forgettable and standardized rubbish, borne out of an insecure need to show their smarts and their hearts.