Too many posts to reply to, so I won't quote anyone - just feel as if I have. This is about the death of the author.
I agree that it is hard to apply the concept of the death of the author (basically the idea that after a piece of work is done, no longer the say of what it means lies with the author, but rather with the reader - as it assumes that the meaning of a piece of literature is built through the collaboration of both author and reader, and that any author will touch unforeseen themes with their work that are still valid despite their intentions) to an ongoing story.
The second issue is that the death of the author isn't really meant to be used (or rather often used) for objective things within a narrative. Rather, it is used to discuss interpretations of the evidence presented, or of things left unexplained. In LiL's case, we just haven't been presented with the full picture yet. Which, again, is why formal literature guidelines aren't supportive of the publishing (and even less of the reviews) of ongoing works.
What I think we're doing, and similar to the criticism of Rowling's 6th book, is that as LiL continues, we become able to pinpoint, with increasing substance, areas where Selebus fell short (or rather seems to have fallen short). I, myself, have often wondered if by the end of all of this a substantial amount of lore wouldn't be just derivative misdirection made on the fly.
Back to Rowling, I do think she's a wonderful writer, it's just that being a wonderful writer can mean a number of things. She was able to capitalize on so much of actual myths, traditions and essence (and frustration) of the coming of age narrative and turn it into an astounding success. To not call that wonderful writing (at the very least in worldbuilding/and or understanding her target audience) would be unfair.
Both My Hero Academia and Dragonball are part of generational shounen, though dragon ball is two times removed from the current (?) generation (which includes My Hero). I don't know that I'd call anything there genius, but they're the big names within their own genre. I wouldn't go looking for "high" literature in a shonen in the first place, it follows that we would judge the literature within a genre by their own indicators - unless it somehow subverts or escapes it, like, it could be said, of Attack on Titan.
All in all, I think we have to wait for Selebus to release the equivalent of his "6th book", which would likely be the first purity route, to have proper early conclusions. If Himawari's name isn't Ami/Amy it's all obviously a piece of shit and he changed it just to spite me though.
