#so what if they all are otome games chara they're bangers and fun and op next question

[icharchivist]

Also I feel like the Dragon Knights are all made to appeal to certain demographics. Lancelot is the twink of the group, Percival is basically a male tsundere, Vane is the beefy dude and Sieg is definitely for the DILF hunters. I've seen people say that they're basically the love interests in an otome game and it's almost sad that I can't even deny it.

omg yeah

like i do think originally it was a bit accidental? But the first event attracted a huge female fanbase and it only got worse when they added Percival (who was the character who was picked the most by suptix for a long, long time, and had a major female following sef shipping with him. Which is why there's a lot of romantic coding in his holidays lines the further down the year you go - they saw who was paying for him and they went "okay we can cater to that")

It still cracks me up because in the first event you can feel that they're a bit trying their more traditional formula back then - Lancelot doesn't look too far off from characters like Albert, Siegfried's original design could be associated to chara like Seruel (i mean all in the old timey characters), and tbh i do feel like Vane is more of the exception (we've had a lot of beefy with draph men but beefy humans are rarer to come by). And they had them alongside Sophia the sweet healer girl with her ass out and Isabella the dark sorceress for people who are into that. The very first event feels like it was evening it out and not too unlike event like the Irestill saga.

But the fact not only it attracted generally a really huge female fanbase (which is what Lunalu was a response to - and that's why one of Lunalu's first content was her crossfate with Siegfried where he praised her for her passion and encouraged her for it), but they turned out to be big whales. And well. A good gacha knows to take good care of their whales.

So then they just had to polish the characters even more in that vibe as it went on, all of them fitting even more of this archetype, and tadaa. And tbh this is also why there's barely been any female characters in the kishi saga ever since the second event (not really counting the Wales’s mom), aside from the one in Siegfried's event which was mostly here for the tragic backstory anyway, and Florence which is only because she was introduced before the saga really took off actually, via Gawain's wind FE. Like clear "listen we know you're here for the pretty boys, here they are. Sorry people-who-likes-women-only this is not for you"

and they are indeed called often "coming out of an otome game" (Percival's 5th year bday line is downright into that territory that bastard), they're also often called the boysband, or the fanservice squad, all that jazz. This is also why the dudebros's types of guy who want everything to cater to them hate them so much and would be vocal against them anytime they get some content (because they're just "women bait with their silly romantic interest toward them", which i don't want to hear from a man who's likes on twitter is full of porn from the ladies of granblue and yet i see ways too much.)

But yeah, I do think honestly it's a thing we *could* extend to many of the male characters of the saga but it just so happens that since they are the most popular/have an event every year for 8 years now without counting their appearance in others media, and the fact their fanbase brings a LOT of money to cygames, they will get used for pandering. Percival being the worst of them in term of how far they're willing to go with the romantic subtext (no this is not me being biased there's a chart out there i can't find again where people have sorted the guys in how they show their feelings for White days on a "romantic" scale and Percival and Eustace were breaking the charts).

so i don't know how much the original three were /made/ for it or expecting it to blow up this way but they sure as well completely embraced it and rolled with it and decided to feed us with it.

and I for one completely embrace that. It's nice when fanservice is actually serviceable and since it comes with really amazing stories anyway, this is all cool.