I feel you’re in the right area with what to expect from Frieren, but it should still be different enough it gets you in the feels when it needs to.

Spy x Family is a ton of fun and is pretty well paced and has a good balance of serious and humor and emotion. All the MCs get pretty even focus as well, no one character dominates the series. You get some B plot stuff with the secondary characters also, so lots of POV. None of the arcs have lasted too long either. Anya is the star though, as far as I’m concerned as she just has so many great comedy moments and is so loveable in a dorky way and is drawn with the greatest expressions.

For me the cute girls doing cute things are sweet peaceful stories I can relax to, watch them do hobbies (bonus points if they actually teach me stuff about those hobbies), and give me some insight into female situations and how they (may) act when men aren’t around. Asobi Asobase is supposed to be about a games club, but they rarely do any actual games and just chill or harass each other with lots of funny gags thrown in. Days at the Breakwater is about a fishing club. Do It Yourself! was fun, as that was a crafting club, but it started with the MC having her best friend not wanting to be her friend anymore, and we learn through the series about their relationship and what the problem was and how it resolves with some fun crafty stuff (and a very cute woodpecker!) along the way. I can get why there are people that watch them for ulterior resaons, but it seems kinda pointless as there are plenty of shows that provide that much more readily. I was so disappointed Farming Life in Another World went that way! The world was so beautiful, and the variety of female characters were so loveable and interesting (and the giant killer spider that only ate potatoes was so sweet!), but it turned into more about breeding with the natives like OG Captain Kirk than a show about farming that I was really hoping for. All the characters kicked so much ass, but were reduced to implied breeding material.

I don’t think I’ve heard of the Bechdel Test before, and it’s sad that has to be a thing! I’m male, but was primarily raised by both my grandmothers, so I appreciate stronger, more independent and assertive female characters. It’s one thing that I’ve really loved about One Piece. I had expected it to be more shonen-tropey, but there are so many kick ass characters of all kinds. Being female, small, old, or fat don’t have any bearing on how the characters are written. The author has talked about why should any of that influence how cool of a character they can be? It’s nice as a now older and rounder person that is still an anime/manga fan to see people still not being reduced to gag characters. Some of the smartest and strongest characters have been women and old people. It is a shame noticing when they female characters are written as things just to move story lines along or for fanservice alone. I’m not against fanservice at all, but I don’t want things that are just strictly that. I checked out Nagatoro after hearing how bad it was in that regard, but I honestly enjoy it and see it as an innocent coming of age story. They’re being more shy and awkward than they are being sexy. I only watched the first season, and while the POV is from the male MC, much of the focus seems to be the personalities of the female characters, obviously mainly Nagatoro, but from the beginning we see that she mainly just enjoys making the MC feel uncomfortable, and whenever she takes something a bit too far or things get too real, she gets embarrassed and we get a glimpse at the real Nagatoro who seems to be a very polite and caring person. It’d be easy to watch it as a pervy show if that was one’s desire, but I feel they’d be missing on on some great narrative elements by doing so. But I enjoy getting all the characters personalities flesh out in stories. The world just feel so one dimensional if you aren’t fairly exploring all the characters evenly.

Doing the reading yesterday about otome games, it did seem like many people play through to get all the endings. I guess that makes sense, as if you only had one or 2 characters you really liked, it would be too straightforward to play through. The more characters you get invested in, the more compelling it would be. It probably doesn’t help that the male version of dating sims gets catagorized as something for creepy guys to play, or that’s how it seems to me at least. It’s never the character the viewer would want to be in a show for example that is the one playing them. Hearing it described more as a graphic novel makes things make a bit more sense though. It sounds like a choose your adventure book, with the same replay value, and likely higher quality storytelling. From watching My Next Life as a Villainess, I did enjoy the characters’ personalities overall, and I liked their art style. It does feel a bit unusual to me to basically see a reverse harem though, where the male and female characters all had love interest in the female MC. Being unfamiliar with a bunch of the love/romance genres gets me a bit confused as to what is meant to be for a more general audience and what is for more…uhh…specific tastes shall we say.

For a game more revolving around relationships with some consequences, have you played Life is Strange? I only played the first one, but you can definitely be the friendly peacemaker or be rude and blow people off, leading to different consequences. There are only 2 actual endings, but the journey can be pretty different depending on how you play it, especially if you notice finer details in the backgrounds and conversations. It usually goes on sale pretty cheap. Largely female characters too.

I think a Mean Girls type game could be fun. It’s like GTA type games don’t make you a hardcore criminal, I think a bad girl game could be a healthy way to work through some of those pent up feelings people get and the desire to get back at people that where bad to you. Paths to either making eventual peace or viciously dominating the social circles could be in the same game for people that eant either type of resolution. It probably just gets lost in the “girls dont play games” stereotype, which is unfortunate.