Or the people who say that are obsessed with subtlety and want everything to conform to the Western standards for art due to cultural hegemony brainworms? Sometimes I feel very guilty for engaging with this sort of media instead of something more "serious"
Because the feelings of the characters are less subtle (in the general case), “show don’t tell” in general isn’t practiced as much as in western works. This also applies to the themes which sometimes are spelled out instead of being left for the viewer to discover (I consider that a positive because if you have important you want to convey, why not just do it clearly). But many people consider this aspect and the general earnestness of anime childish
even if that was bad, it wouldn't be inherent to anime
nah it's just racism
anime has plenty of incredibly subtly told stories. watch utena, which is a great mix of subtle and blatant with massive amounts of space for interpretation
and being unsubtle isn't bad either, sometimes it's good to watch something that has the character openly discussing the themes, like ghost in the shell or the climax of every gundam
Damn "many people" are right huh, we all know that no western media has ever been unsubtle about themes or character emotions
Anime delenda est, I guess!