Ancient Magus Bride is in fact one of the best romance anime out there. Despite Elias's age and immense power, he and Chise are in very similar life stages, developmentally, which is one of the story's primary plot points. He's not an old man trying to prey on a young girl; they're both essentially teenagers trying to learn how to handle complex emotions together. It's quite sweet to see them grow together. (Though the fantasy horror is fun too.)

I mean, the article is titled "new gen anime" so I imagine they were focusing mostly on things that came out in the past few years, and also probably series where the focus is the romance. (It's important in Cardcaptors, for example, but technically the series is still about collecting the cards.)

"Straw Hat crew's most popular ship" lol the author doesn't spend much time on the internet, huh? Because I'm pretty sure Zoro x Sanji has been the most popular One Piece ship for the past 20 years, both in Japan and internationally.

As for being the most popular Luffy ship? Still debatable.

Perhaps I am the odd one out (as are the other commenters) because I have half of these books on my shelf! I'm reading Grendel for the first time right now, and I've read Howl’s Moving Castle so many times it's falling apart. I really couldn't possibly say that it's not a popular book, even in the context of the movie.

I'll look out for the others though. =]