>>1505119
you seem to have missed the possibility that their marketing research can fail to catch something due to a hole in its methodology, and I can definitely see that happening with more unique characters like Zhao. all I'm trying to explain to you is why they might make a particular decision regarding a character, that they do research and have metrics that don't weight social media engagement very highly, since that tends to be dominated by loud minorities, and because algos are geared towards caging people into a positive feedback loop. because of how social media works, something can be very popular within specific spaces and completely unknown or even despised outside of them. so, in Aria's case, I think that it's very possible that their marketing data shows that human female is more popular than robot among whomever they're targeting, so maybe they decided to emphasize that form (we still don't really know for sure, given the second model and whatnot). If you don't get that logic, idk what else to say. remember, it's what I think is possible, I'm hypothesizing. why it makes you so angry, idk
btw fanart count is typically a lagging indicator, it only starts appearing when the character is publicly revealed, which is typically towards the end of its dev cycle, by which time all of the major decisions regarding the character have been made. idols are somewhat unique in that they were leaked and confirmed very early, but fanart of them was still at a trickle. I don't think it can be a very heavy factor in the decisions they make re: character design
>>1505296
for me it's the energy drain
>wake up
>wagecuck
>have plans to do one thing or another after cucking
>pass out on the fucking couch instead
one day is another day