So I'm an Asian nonbinary lesbian and I generally enjoy a lot of the yuri visual novels on Itch, but yes, I completely agree. There's a lot of fetishizing of specifically Japanese elements, gleaned superficially from anime/manga, and then just slapping them onto a white Western (usually American) context with little thought besides "'Cool, Exotic Aesthetic." And I give even these a lot of slack and grace because sometimes they do come from a genuine admiration of skill and craft behind their favourite anime series and whatnot... But still, it's Anglocentric and it's erasure of the reality of Japanese and other Asian LGBTQ peoples.
And yeah, definitely, the fetishizing of self-suffering by these largely white creators is......... something.
Thanks for making this post. It's something that I've been thinking about too but felt like I would be too "mean" to say it.