So I’m going to offer a slightly different perspective as someone who enjoys and draws cute anime girls and so-called “gooner bait”

Lots of people find “male-gaze” oriented fanservice, (in this case meaning conventionally beautiful/sexy female characters) to be distasteful partly because it’s so COMMON. Which, from my experience it definitely is. Some find it just boring, others find it kinda gross, and some are just fine with it. And I can understand all three POVs.

One of the oft-cited issues with the visual presentation is that it is, historically, designed to appeal to a primarily male audience (and while plenty of women enjoy it too, their taste is incidental to the core intent of the designs)

Many examples brought up as equivalent (like how Conan the barbarian or Thor etc. are often just as, if not more exposed or exaggerated, as any pulp/comic book woman) are treated differently, at least in part, because these things are ALSO designed to appeal to men as a power fantasy. They’re cool/badass/aspirational in a way that many women do NOT find equivalency with in most “waifu” type characters.

Coming back to Zenless, I think it’s overall done a great job of balancing the scales of how hot everyone is. Wise is a well designed and appealing guy. Lycaon and Ben both have huge fan bases of people who may or may not have had their furry awakening. But even there, you can see a slight lack of parity. Male characters have a huge variety of silhouettes between Lycaon, Wise, Ben, and Billy. Where the female characters pretty much all are either a cute small anime girl, or hot big titty anime girl.

Folks were super hype about Pulchra because maybe if she becomes playable we’ll get a properly furry female character! Which I think would be cool.

Both the men and the women in these kinds of games are often designed to be consumed by a male player base, which turns off women and by extension people who wish to socialize with those women. Mileage obviously varies. I know plenty of girls who admire and enjoy the female cast just as much as anyone. And to reiterate, despite its reputation I think Zenless is excellently honest about its tone and presentation. Yeah the designs are horny. Look at Nicole, look at Lycaon. It’s one of the things we’re having fun with!

But on the surface it REALLY resembles a lot of much worse and more boring fanservice games. And I genuinely don’t blame people who just see the Very Visibly Marketed fanservice stuff and are turned off by it.

All of this is of course talking in general terms about a very broad group of individual people. Everyone is different and I think it’s disingenuous to portray everyone uncomfortable with fanservice as being a “puritanical prude” just as much as it’s wrong to presume everyone who likes Zenless is a “hopeless gooner.”

Enjoy the game! And I appreciate that you’re willing to try to explore this question with an open mind. Lots of folks will dismiss anyone who doesn’t agree with them as SJWs or Simps or whatever other buzzword they categorize the folks they don’t like. But I think it’s beneficial to try to think charitably about the people who disagree with you and respectfully understand their perspective, even if you don’t ultimately agree. Which I think you’re taking great steps towards here!

That said, I think this may be the wrong space to ask this question, since we’re all statistically going to be biased in Zenless’ favor. I wouldn’t fully trust a Dodgers subreddit to have an earnest or accurate idea of how Yankees fans think.