There’s something about a lot of anime and manga that I think lends them much of the praise and criticism they receive from people, fans or otherwise. I wouldn’t call it a unique or exclusive property of anime, but it’s something that I believe recurs more often when compared to other mediums. What I am talking about is the ability for a character to both be sexualized and objectified by its audience while still being able to move the audience with a well-developed personality.
Sheryl Nome. Arika Yumemiya. Kawashima Ami. Practically the entire female cast of Gundam 00. Every girl in Godannar. All these and more are designed on some level to explicitly titillate, but I would not call any of their characters excessively shallow or designed purely with fanservice in mind. Nor would I say that pure fanservice characters do not exist at all, but I feel like more often than not in anime and manga, blatant, in-your-face sexual attractiveness does not come at the expense of strong characterization or at the very least attempts at strong characterization. Much of the eroge and visual novel industry is built on this premise.
I do not see this happening as often in other mediums. Of course sex appeal still exists in them, but very rarely do they try to turn both dials up to max, rarely do they say, “Hey we want to basically tell the audience outright to fantasize indecently about this character while still showing the strength of their personality.” Hayden Panettiere (Claire Bennet) on Heroes is clearly meant to invoke a reaction from male viewers with her attractiveness, official assignment as “cheerleader,” her clothes, and pretty much everything about her, but there’s some attempt at keeping the character Claire’s “fanservice” somewhat implicit. The DC Comics character Power Girl, known for her super strength and her enormous chest, seems to go through constant subtle shifts in characterization as writers and artists seem unsure how to balance the development of her character with a design clearly meant to get guys’ mojos going. Fans of DC Comics run into a similar problem. In other cases, a character who is obviously sexually attractive while possessing good characterization will have their sexuality incorporated into their personality and character.
Meanwhile, many anime fans embrace this double threat. Others do not of course, and I think this causes some of the conflict as to whether or not a character is “good” or not. Does being explicitly sexual in design and presentation work with characterization, or against it? Or do they perhaps run parallel to each other? Wherever you fall, if you meet someone who thinks otherwise, there’s a chance that, because your approach to characters is so different, arguments will arise. This is probably where arguments about moe find most of their ammo, no matter which side fans are on.
As a final note, keep in mind I used female examples because that’s what gets me. Feel free to replace all examples with male equivalents if that’s your thing.
OGIUE MANIAX 
As you said, Sheryl Nome isn’t an ‘undeveloped’ character despite her ‘developed’ hopes and dreams.
Here’s something I find interesting:
I caught myself praising the character design of Lin Minmei because she’s a female lead without a huge rack, etc.
I realize however, that I am giving undue credit – because her character design is specifically designed to titillate anyway. I realize that in 1983, the ‘pure’ idol craze is just beginning – where the females look innocent bordering on yamato nadeshiko demureness. Minmei’s desing fit that look at least, and this would make her not much different as how Ranka and Sheryl are designed (appealing to lolicon and more mainstream sexual appetites).
While these may not be the best-written characters, they are more than pure fanservice characters. Klan Klan may be another interesting case.
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I think anime fans are probably the ones who most want their girls to be developed in both ways. We love a good story, but we also love something attractive, and we like nothing more than getting both at once. I’d go so far as to say that anime fans aren’t so shallow as to want pure fanservice and aren’t so pretentious as to want none. Shows that are mostly fanservice are usually aimed at a 10-12 audience and totally service-less shows are aimed at pretentious viewers, but look at the shows that are aimed at Otaku – the ones you named exactly. Otaku want to read a good story and they also want to fap to it. That’s why we write doujins instead of just drawing girls naked – the personality and complexity of character is just as important as their actual body. We want the full looks-and-personality package.
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“Does being explicitly sexual in design and presentation work with characterization, or against it? Or do they perhaps run parallel to each other?”
Well it all depends on the ‘lens’ we view things with, and which aspect we decide to Zoom In on, but I personally don’t think they should get in the way of each other, despite the creator’s ‘ulterior intent’ in making them “developed” in *that* aspect. It’s easy to dismiss a character just because of his/her “Made For Pandering” aspect, but it’s always good to see people who are able to look past that aspect and see how well developed they truly are.
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You forgot Sora Wo Kakeru Shoujo in your list of examples there. :)
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As I read the post and the above comments, one main thought emerges and that is there are two ways to look at this.
The first way to look at it is to see “development” and “visuals” in separation. Characters ultimately are still creations by some writers and in anime they tend to have a visual and scripted duality. The “character development” thing most people refer to describes the role of a character in the narrative, and it’s not often that we see this development reflected through character designs beyond a simple nod to character design archetypes (twin-tail tsundere, meganekko, lolibrat, etc).
On the other hand stuff like visual fanservice (eg. T&A, upskirt, w/e) invariably needs to work with the character design in order to do it right. The objectification as you call it happens mostly in this realm, and it’s detached from the narrative.
The second way to look at it is that most anime characters are objects, from start to finish. They all are just pawns in a story, and increasingly so many characters are just strung together from random tricks out of the same bag of cliches and archetypes. This tend not to be the case in mainstream anime so much but it is still perpetrated there to a degree.
In this second way, what we perceive as character exposition and development is merely a function of the script which may still, ultimately have these characters play very cliche and type-casted roles in their stories. Goddannar is a good example of this. The wife is still the wife, for example ;) In these cases it’s arugable if any of the characters have developed beyond just a superficial concept. I mean it could be a very well fleshed out concept [/zing], but it doesn’t necessarily mean that makes the character well-rounded [/zing2].
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I will first bring up an old debate I have been thinking about. Is love the opposite of hate? The answer is no. They are just sometimes related but not necessarily related. Is love always tied to hate. No but they often facilitate the other one.
Same thing with alluring character designs and strong developed characters. They are sometimes intrinsically linked, sometimes they build on each other, and sometimes they are light years apart. I think it mostly has to do with the people who make the characters more than any inherent quality that links the two pieces of a character together.
If you design and write for the character IMHO there is more of a chance of a character’s design effecting their personality. If your write for a character you did not design there is a good chance their design will influence how you write the character but it is usually less than if you created the character on your own.
Also all the pretty character design or all the ugly character design in the world can’t stop a well made character from shining nor can it develop a poorly written character.
Plus all and all most people are shallow. We like pretty things. We like things that appeal to our sexual fetishes. We will go where we find the things that stimulate those parts of the brain. And shows realize this and usually throw us a bone. So in the best case scenario we get both. A beautiful character that appeals to us aesthetically and engages our brain. They don’t have to be mutually exclusive.
I think it says much more about the person writing the character if they cannot find a way to make a character sexually attractive while still making them an interesting character that we can enjoy.
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I don’t think what you’re noticing is specific to anime — I think it’s specific to serial entertainment after it realized it can have character arcs. American comics do the same thing: every character is drawn to be very sexually appealing, but (now) they also develop their personalities, goals, et cetera. I think it’s probably important that anime is mostly based out of manga; most comics of any nationality draw their characters according to one of the standards of beauty, so much so that characters who don’t adhere are odd in some way, and often fetishized on their own (like the cook from Negima and Wolverine from X-Men).
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Kannagi, true tears, fooly cooly, C.C. from CG, Kino no tabi – the protagonist is a girl:O
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kokonoe rin. hazuki. rebecca miyamoto. the entire cast of strike witches.
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