Just look at the recent stuff, which came out like Erased or even Orange. A) It's hard to execute, because you have to establish some arbitrary rules for it and B) it makes for a easy way-out tool. The writer can modify and progress the story even when it makes no sense, which ultimately kills any sense of character depth, as they are just a tool in the great scheme of things. In Steins;Gate it worked (somewhat) because we had inside on how it rules where laid out, but the show had it's own issues due to being adopted from an VN. Now back to Re:Zero. I don't see any critical depth in almost any shows of the last 1 1/2 years or so. I just cannot give something a positive outlook, when in core essence is nothing more than a show for self-fulfillment fantasy.
Nowadays, Animu relies too much on it's Audio-Visual backbone, which consequently makes me feel like an idiot, when trying to turn on my own brain. Mindless fun, with some story/info dumping bits to pace the visual aspects is just not good enough in my book to be a great watch. Re:Zero does excatly that: A random average dude gets into a fantasy land, in which he can respawn infinitely. Finds his waifu, goes have fun. Has a unknown constant looming. Get's killed multiple times (People die when they are killed! ...wait). Screams. Edgey visuals. Repeat.
Different strokes for different folkes, I guess.
