On latest update I notice that Plasma KDE is included (not noticed this before but not significant). I use XFCE and always have on Manjaro. Is there a reason why Plasma is included in my system? Can I remove it?
Presumably you have a package that requires it:
pactree -r plasma-desktop
Thanks. Tried that and got only plasma-desktop returned. So I assume it’s not used and can be removed.
It seems so. Do pay attention to the list of packages pacman says it will remove to ensure it is indeed alone.
The desktop - yes, ok. Thee are several secondayr plasma things installed as well. I’m going through them slowly to make sure they are not useful. I do use Kate, which is kde, but not, as far as I know, plasma.
Some are dependencies of kde-cli-tools; I’m looking into this now. That in turn is dependent on xdg-open, which seems to be yet another desktop environment… This looks like another superfluous DE?
At some point I will give up. 
Working through the plasma and KDE list, I find kcmshell5 a frequent dependant. Although Terminal gives Help for kcmshell5 (so it must be installed), pactree claims it cannot be found, nor can I find it in pamac (not the only thing pactree cannot find).
I can’t recall it being used in the past. Is this another thing I can delete or does it have a purpose in non-KDE context?