#moé

(also it was Too Fucking Weird for many of them but that's not the point of this post)

The absence of male characters in so many contemporary anime, from K-On to Revue Starlight (arguably Madoka also fits that definition because who even is Kyousuke?), really is a double-edged sword.

On the one hand, not having hetero romance thrown at you can be refreshing, and it may allow for some truly good character writing for these girls, sometimes (not always) it allows for Gender Stuff to happen and that's all well and good.

On the other hand, that absence of male characters allows (predominantly heterosexual) male viewers (and otakus in particular) to be much more possessive of these shows’ characters.

Since there’s no male character standing in the way between them and the characters, that possessiveness is much easier. Of course you also find that in Idol culture and Love Live! and all of these other shows come to mind.

If you ever look for doujins for any of these shows on a site other than Dynasty Reader (and I don’t understand why you’d ever want to do that), the quantity of faceless reader-insert male characters (which makes projecting oneself supposedly easier, I guess) truly is astounding. This is what so many of these fans want.

The people producing these shows, these franchises, are all plenty aware of that absence of male characters and what it implies for its audience. It’s not just a creative decision, it’s a business practice. It makes selling your product to adolescents and adults with disposable income that much easier.

Utena has boys and men. It tells an uneasy and oft uncomfortable story. You, as an audience member, are not really invited to possess these characters, the show has one or two things to say about possessiveness, too. I'm guessing that acted as some sort of repellent for a certain crowd. I am glad that it did.

It's been fascinating, watching people like Naoko Yamada and Tomohiro Furukawa walk that tightrope between selling a product and actually telling an uncompromised story about girls (and the tensions in Furukawa's work are much more salient in that regard).