They should not be a thing. At least not until there is already consistent active discussion threads happening for a given series. If I want to discuss a new chapter of something, and there isn’t a post already, I will make one.
As it is now, the dozens and dozens of empty discussion posts only drown out the few posts by people who DO have something to say.
They also show up in my subscriptions as a wall of spam, and do the same for “all”. One post is enough to facilitate discovery of the community, a dozen does the opposite.
As a random lemmy/all scroller, while I watch a lot of anime, read light novels, and occasionally manga, I see these posts all the time flooding my feed, and have picked up the habit of just fast scrolling past as ‘spam’ without reading the individual titles. I’ve not added to a blocklist yet for it, but probably will eventually.
This is the opinion of someone who may never stop to discuss, but had enough will to stop in to comment about it causing the pickup of habits that treat it as spam/an annoying internet ad stuck in the middle of my content. I’m more likely to read a title if it isn’t several posts that look the same from the same sub/channel in a row in my feed. Also, any automated looking titles that look like they are from a bot cause the same adverse reactions.
Anyways, goodluck.