RE: Kaiba Anime Review
Kaiba wasn't satire. You seem to have been negatively affected by wrong expectations. It wasn't emotional manipulation because there was no manipulation to be had. It presented the full story in each episode, which generally was quite depressing. It would have been emotionally manipulative had the show focused on being sad rather than being honest about what would happen in a broken world where memories are physical.
SAO episode 3 is emotional manipulation because it presents a character, writes in that Kirito cares for her, then kills her off after skipping the process of coming to care for them. Kaiba never does this. I'd assume you find the Chroniko episode the most "emotionally manipulative", but this is very far from what it was. Warp didn't participate much in what was going on. He was apathetic for a lot of the early part, save where it directly involved him. You could say that the aunt feeling regret was emotional manipulation, but this isn't a strong argument because it's logical that an aunt would feel regret and guilt after selling her niece's body.
The amnesia makes sense within the plot but it doesn't help with characterization. I don't know. Warp was too apathetic for me to care about ironically I guess that makes me apathetic. I don't know, is that irony? So many things are called ironic that I don't know what irony is anymore...
I don't know it killed characters too fast. It gave me that same feeling I had when I watched Galaxy Express 999; 'Oh now you feel sorry for fictional people, give us your money, here you go another batch of characters to feel sorry for, now give us your money etc....' Perhaps I am being too cynical and perhaps this shouldn't be called emotional manipulation, after all that's the deal, but then what should it be called? Maybe 'misery porn'? I just find helpless victimized characters rather boring and 'manipulative' in the sense that they are just there to make me drip a tear from my cock.