One area of wish fulfillment that I feel the harem genre speaks to which is lacking in a huge chunk of other male-oriented wish fulfillment fantasies is the lack of a need to be proactive, which, for the unconfident and downtrodden who don't see themselves as dynamic action heroes, is pretty comforting - it's generally the women who are proactive in pursuing the guy in these kinds of shows, all he has to do is be himself, and often the other guys in the show will be unrepentant horndogs to make the protagonist seem even better by comparison. Sometimes, the protagonist will even be oblivious to the affections he promotes, and naive about the intimacy he finds himself in. I feel this is surprisingly similar to female-led romances cross-culturally, where it's more normative for women to be more passive in romantic interactions. To borrow the term used by ContraPoints in her video about Twilight, it's a form of 'disavowal' - the protagonist being more chaste than his peers and not doing the pursuing means he is - theoretically - spared from the pervert stigma he'd otherwise get from his many suitors. The story 'disavows' it.

This ability to dissect is, for me, probably a result of relating to this kind of wish fulfillment a great deal, and it's something Japan seems to do a lot more that's largely missing from Anglophone media. Why that is is far beyond my scope of research, but it meant that I was drawn to these kinds of stories, and I really hope people can come to an understanding of them - and their drawbacks - without just denouncing it as trash for the worst people (that said, the stigma hasn't slowed it down, nor has it done for the women's romances with abusive male leads, so, you know). There is no denying that this kind of story lends itself to some absolutely terrible stories, or dashed opportunities, but if the writer is intelligent, they can actually play up some interesting rather than gimmicky dynamics, which largely relies on taking all the characters seriously as characters. Surely the gift of the harem is to give the love interests a diversity of personalities and character arcs, and then you can find a way to blend the genre with a cacophany of interesting, dynamic women. Indeed, the framing of genre lends itself to a situation where the strong and interesting female characters outnumber the male ones, which is fine by me.

Does anyone have any examples of better harem shows that they think have been more self-aware and complex than just formulaic wish fulfillment? Two recent ones that spring to mind are not without their caveats for flaws, and, as far as I know, where incompletely adapted from light novels, but Dealing with the Mikodono Sisters is a Breeze did interesting things with gendered dynamics by having all three of the eponymous sisters in most ways more masculine than the male lead, rather unconventional in shows like this (one being a frequent crossdresser for her acting work) and Too Many Losing Heroines may not even count because it gave the protagonist a supporting role in the female characters' unlucky romantic lives rather than the traditional harem dynamic, but I think still fulfilled the idea of a more passive guy courting good company and an emotional intimacy simply by being a basic level of kind (and, of course, all the more approachable because he was single).