Why is it that anime male POV characters look like lightly toasted slices of white bread without butter and lack any semblance of interest while female POV characters in anime look at least cute and someone I want to get to know and be friends with?
Cause the male POVs are suppose to be a blank slate to make it easier for viewers to plaster themselves onto. They litereally have the same function as Bella from Twilight.
Does the “featureless blank slate protagonist” thing even work? Do people really project themselves onto a boring protagonist better than one with an actual personality? Because they don’t seem to apply that to female protagonists (even ones who are meant to be “relatable”).
This is the same for shoujo though. Maybe there’s haven’t enough bad shoujo who have been adapted but if you want to see the worst of the worst, you can always sink in the bad with the three anime, brothers conflict, amnesia, and the must of the worst, diabolik lovers.
They all have at least cute charadesign but no personality traits exist in them beside being “kind” which you find into the male protag too just so their love interest have an excuse to get close to them.
And I dunno it seem like it work. It’s just that those who love it usually don’t care or even hate the hero, but will stay for their waifu and husbando, and just imagine themselves with them instead of the hero.
That’s how it work so far… And that’s pretty much fuck over how a protagonist is important in a third view point of view story. I always said I wouldn’t care if it stayed in video games and we didn’t have to watch it.
The stock shoujo heroine was an archetype that existed until very recently. She was always clumsy, bad in studies, couldn’t get a man, childish even for her age, no talents. She was written this way in order to make her “totally relatable” and “just like you!” But in reality this made more girls see them as complete idiots.
I imagine this new wave of “isekai light novel harem protags” is being received by men in the same way.
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