I mean, if you like a popular villagers then it's hardly an unpopular opinion. Would the movement to like "ugly" villagers pique your interest? It's pretty neat seeing people rally in favor of villagers that are normally tossed aside and dismissed and finding their own love for them.
I mean, you could argue that of any furniture pieces within Animal Crossing. But unlike a lot of those, gyroids actually have really interesting cultural ties.
Specifically, they're inspired by Japanese clay figures called
haniwa which were used in rituals for the deceased to be able to help them pass on into the afterlife. This inspiration isn't even subtle; their price offered is 828. 八二八... 八 is
ha-chi, 二 is
ni, and は (
ha), the first hiragana that makes up 八 (はち) can also be pronounced
wa. So... basically, their price is a pun.
In addition to that, they have some weird lore going on with them. There's Lloid, of course, who's a sentient gyroid who can help you build new projects on your island/village. And then there's Dr. Shrunk saying he didn't put the gyroids in Club LOL, and villagers remarking ever so often that gyroids have various personality traits... Almost like they're alive... Spoooooky.
Sometimes you just have things like that. There's no answer to any of it, not really, but it can raise the intrigue, and people have used similar ideas in Dream Towns to create their own stories.
Here's a remade version of a classic one for you to enjoy.
You may be misremembering New Leaf, because Blathers doesn't give trivia about the animals in that game; he just makes generic comments like this:
View attachment 24967
That was actually why people were so sad about the removal of his blathering, because his blathering
is the animal facts. Unless you're referring to the descriptions on the plaques? I suppose it would be nice to have those little descriptions back, but I liked the personal touch that Blathers would add to his comments about the animals/skeletons/etc. when giving the facts to you verbally. In other games outside of New Leaf, this was usually specifically about the thing that you gave to him, in regard both to his feelings about it (especially funny in the case of bugs and fish in particular, since he obviously likes making meals with fish and talks about that extensively, along with his phobia of bugs) as well as a random fact that he knows about them. In New Leaf specifically, it's just a generic comment that has nothing to do with the individual thing you provided him with.
By all means, if you like the expedited process of giving these things to him, you mustn't be alone on that since that's probably why it was like that in New Leaf in the first place. But personally, I like New Horizons' approach of letting his rambling be optional, so you can expedite the process if you would like to but you could also get the commentary that he used to give in earlier games.
Blathers is my absolute favorite NPC, so I always look forward to his little tangents. Even though there's a multi-donation feature, I always donate one at a time just to see what comments he makes on them individually.
I find that they used to have more personality, but someone on the writing team must think that the cranky villagers were too mean, because they have been toned down significantly. (They used to call you some... Rather creative insults. And sometimes they'd get pissed off at you if you talked to them more than five times?) In New Horizons in particular their dialogue leans in a more quirky/silly direction than it used to, where their personalities used to be more obvious. Another thing is that it seems like villagers never talk to each other anymore...? Shame, I liked them gossiping about each other before and sometimes having to intervene in their conversations.
I actually think this opinion isn't all that unpopular, since it's gained a lot of traction in social media, especially lately. Tom Nook defense videos (as well as videos exploring his history with Redd, which are actually very interesting as they delve into Japanese mythology to describe their relationship and the parallels between them) are pretty much everywhere these days.
