The first thing that stops me from being immersed in a work like this is the seemingly unrealistic affection that the girls give MC just because he was nice to them in the past. In fact many of the mangas aimed at men have the girls falling for the guy because of his nice actions and personality. But the matter of fact is that if you were to read webtoons or mangoes aimed towards women, you'd see the guys are all tall, good looking, charismatic, fashionable, etc etc. The personality (or rather how nice the guy is) is secondary to the man's appearance and wealth/power. In fact if the guy is bad (or gave a bad impression) to the girl initially but then suddenly becomes nice or acts tsundere, then the girl falls for him. BTW this is NOT a blackpill rant and i understand attraction is multifaceted and not just based on appearance alone, but my main point is the fact that manga aimed towards men give us a false picture where "if you are nice, then you can get the girl".
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I am not ashamed to say that growing up reading mangas and using it as my source of social interaction led me to believe this very idea. So now that i've grown up more and shown a clearer picture of the real world, i can't help but feel like works like these, while very enjoyable, lead men astray as a side effect. Not only that, i feel like this genre as a whole preys on lonely young men who don't receive much affection from women outside of family. Because if you really look deep enough into it, all the heroines in shounen mangas like the MC unconditionally regardless of his wealth, abilities, or appearance. In fact, all the MCs are made to be slightly above average in terms of personality, wealth, ability, and appearance, just enough to dodge their work from being too unrealistic. I understand that it's part of the genre and self inserts are what allows us to enjoy this piece of fiction but wouldn't consuming such media day in and day out warp our sense of reality even just a little?
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Also, by creating lovable and cute (fun fact, these two words in english are encompassed by just one word in japanese/chinese '可愛い' but i digress) heroines, it allows lonely men like us to pour our love onto the characters and in doing so we feel love. Why do we feel love? because love involves being loved and loving someone, giving and receiving. So by investing in the characters and loving them, we partake in half of love. The other half, however much, is given to us when we self insert into MC.
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Don't you guys find it funny how both women and manga (aimed at men) tells us that personality matters the most when in reality there are some prerequisites in terms of material and physical before personality even comes into the picture? Of course it depends but i guess my main gripe is with the fact that the advertisement tells us in big letters "NICE GUY GOOD PERSONALITY" while in small text the terms and conditions/eligibility says "certain level of wealth, ability, and appearance required. oh and also being nice is boring so..."
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I guess all I'm complaining about is that i would've worked harder on these other aspects if i was told this from the get go and not focused so much on making myself (appear) "nice" and expect the world in return.