Yall gotta stop with AC shadows, personally it is boring, but statistically it is dying and it is taking Ubisoft with it. Did you see the quaterly report?

Avowed hasn't done all that well either, there are a lot of flaws with it. It is a worse version of Skyrim with slightly better combat. But if feels like lazy programming and fairly lazy script writing wrapped in a pretty package.

Monster Hunter should be higher on this list.

Clair Obscure, marvelous and honestly came out of nowhere.

Overall this year has kinda of shown that AAA studios, for the most part, don't know what they are doing anymore. These massive dev teams with a budget the size of a small country can't seem to produce quality.

Studios need to higher more basement dwelling DnD Dungeon Masters, people who read Tolkein or Frank Herbert Novels, masters in their craft. This way they could see what it is like to be transported to another world, with out the need for overdone graphics. It used to be that video games were the greatest medium of story telling, you not only got the story but could interact with it as well, it would become your unique story. I don't feel like that is the case now and it is depressing.

Now a days, it is the indie market I put my trust in. That is where the creative minds who have left these massive studios have gone and are exercising their creativity and freedom to produce, smaller and less graphically appealing, but often more technical and story rich games without the need to bow down to corporate.

They are called power fantasy. The tension is more or less from the powers of all the others around him becoming more and more inadequate to handle the gates and invasions that are happening and that will happen. Sung Il-Hwan, Sung Jinwoo's father, brought this up during his interrogation.

The whole plot is based around the build up of Jinwoo so he can defeat the threats that are coming and that have already conquered the world multiple times before.

It is actually a pretty good read, no animation needed. ;)

Absolutely we are going to see a shift from Isekai. That is the way anime has always moved. 80's was the battle / sports, 90's was tech, 2000's was dominated mostly by the big 3, with other stories here and there.

Post big 3, there was a bit of a crisis where there was a lack of grounded identity till isekai came and stole the market.

Solo Leveling popularized the "Hunter / System" genre in manhwa. With the animation of a manhwa series being so popular the next things we will see are the Hunter / Reincarnation series taking over.

Different from isekai reincarnation, this is more so going forward or backwards in the same world, to fix mistakes and save the MC and/or his family, or to fast forward and find a the world has regressed somehow.

Fun titles to check out:

Regressing as the Reincarnated Bastard of the Sword Clan

Sword Masters Youngest Son

Absolute Regression

Solo Max Level Newbie

Omnipotent Readers Viewpoint

The Extra's Academy Survival Guide

Insanely Talented Player

Martial God Regressed to Level 2

Solo Leveling: Ragnarok

The Hero Returns

These are just a few, in no specific order.

7 Deadly Sins doesn't need to be on this list. That is a series, animation wise, A-1 probably wants people to forget about. Season 1 marvelous

Season 2... they forgot how to animate.

Season 3... didn't finish Season 2 because the animation was so bad.

The story has little to do with A-1, great manga.

He isn't hidden... he is literally unable to come to Earth till there is more mana. The collection and use of mana stones from monsters is a ploy by the Monarchs to flood the world with mana. The excess mana allows for more powerful gates to form, part of why so many higher ranked and red gates are showing up.

Due to Antares being the most powerful Monarch, he is stuck behind on his own world, waiting with his army. He uses the other Monarchs as scouts and assassins in the meantime.

Also, the 27 years was against all the Monarchs, who like Sung, ed everything before the rewind. It wasn't just his battle with Antares, in fact his battle with Anatares was made to seem quite simple in the manhwa.

Idk, this article feels like you are trying to write something about nothing. Antares is made too seem powerful in the story because he is, he doesn't really need some half-baked intro like this.