Answer explanation: The theme of the puzzle is ANIME40AJapanese cartoon genre[-----] and you had to find anime titles and put them in ABC order (as hinted by 21A21AA common way to sort things is to ___ them in alphabetical order ***[and what you'll need to do to solve the meta]***[---]): "COWBOY47DWhat's the connection between Roy Rogers, Woody from "Toy Story," Buffalo Bill, and Dak Prescott? 🤠🐎[------] BEBOP1AThe style of jazz associated with Dizzy Gillespie and Theloneous Monk 🎶🎷[-----], FULLMETAL17AUS Marine/Vietman War movie "___ ___ Jacket" 🪖🎥[---------] ALCHEMIST63AVersion of medieval pseudoscience hoping to transform lead into gold practitioner ⚗️🧙[---------], MYHERO9D"Of thee I sing your praises! You saved me!" 🦸😍[------] ACADEMIA11DThe scholarly world 🎓🤓[--------], NARUTO44ASeries of spirals with a distinctive pink swirl adorn these fish cakes, a popular ramen topping 🍥🍜[------], NOGAME29ADetective nerds that spend all day solving mysteries have ___ ___ when it comes to scoring with the ladies 🚫🎮[------] NOLIFE49AConan has a podcast called "Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend" and that title sounds as if he has ___ ___ 🚫🌱[------], ONEPIECE39DCalled out for being way too sexy on the beach, my friend Yim traded in her bikini for a modest ___ 👙🩱[--------]"... Reading the first word (not letter as hinted by 38D38DCommon first word ***[instead of first letter (as is common in meta mechanisms)!]***[----]) from these entries gives us "What's the US version of the series Detective Conan called?"... The anime "Detective Conan" is known as "Case Closed" in the US... and so the meta answer is "Case Closed!"
Constructor note: I've been wanting to do an anime puzzle for a while and my initial version of this puzzle did not include emojis... you had to hunt for the anime titles themselves... however, I figured that would be extremely unfair and not fun for anyone not familiar with this subject and I didn't want you to have to google every single entry in the puzzle or scour long lists of anime online... the additional comments on the clues for EUREKA18D"I've got it!" [please note, this is NOT the meta answer, nor is it part of the meta][------] and SIETE68ANumber of deadly sins, in Spanish [tenga en cuenta que este NO es parte de la meta][-----] are due to this earlier version... I did not know about the anime "Eureka Seven" when I initially designed the puzzle, so added the additional notes to safeguard against this...