Spastic Minnow wrote:
I've always been a little confused at why the MC's of so many harem, reverse harems, and large ensemble shows always fall to like 5th place of so in popularity contests. It's not a Sleep With/Marry/Kill contest.
Occasionally the lead is quite boring and more of a vessel for others to react, but when they actually have a strong story themselves and really are the heart of a show
I actually wanted to talk about this in the context of Tohru, since Rebecca brought up feminism...
I can't speak for Japanese fans (who seem to like or be more okay with passive female MCs than western audiences) or even modern western audiences, but when I was a teen reading Fruits Basket, and other shoujo and/or otome reverse-harems, with my friends, the reason was a lot of internalized misogyny.