Not much difference though I do note 2 things … first
This is a deprecated repository and also likely means there are an unknown number of untended pacnews on the system.
With the inclusion of To remove we do have confirmation of the previously existing sdl2 … which may still be the reason for pamac thinking it needs those packages - to build sdl2(AUR) even though it is going to be removed.
Its not great and/or doesnt make a whole lot of sense but it seems like the most likely reason at the moment.
Actually … yeah … it says so right in the output - the first thing it does after refreshing is check sdl2 dependencies for some reason …
This is exactly the kind of ‘cant distinguish or properly prioritize between the repositories and the AUR and fumbles transactions’ that people would talk about.
And in this case its a far reaching impact - untold numbers of users have their input methods broken by an unnecessary addition of fcitx5 (and other packages) because pamac was confused.