male/female identification figures?

Right,

how come that in anime and manga with romantic content, those aimed at guys (see: Moe, or things like Video Girl Ai) always have an indistinct bland-looking main character who is usually a pussy, whom the creators want male fans to identify with? While romantic stories aimed at girls have cute and often lively and headstrong female main characters whom the female fans can idetify with?

Do men have lower self-esteem than women? Or is it only men who watch Moe-Anime?

Discuss!

wikipedia, retard

"Famed Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki, a feminist, is completely opposed to the often submissive qualities that these idols are portrayed with. His idea is to have female protagonists who are cute but who are also portrayed as very strong and resourceful as a response to more traditional gender roles. This view asserts that the otaku tended to assign a more traditional role to women often as a form of wish fulfillment. In response to the otaku fetishization of cute female characters Miyazaki stated:

'It's difficult. They immediately become the subjects of lolicon fetishism. In a sense, if we want to depict someone who is affirmative to us, we have no choice but to make them as lovely as possible. But now, there are too many people who shamelessly depict (such heroines) as if they just want (such girls) as pets, and things are escalating more and more.'

The difference between the otaku view on cute females and Miyazaki's ideal (which was used as a basis for the otaku ideal) has been examined by some superflat artists, such as Cannabis' (aka Tatsuyuki Tanaka) "Linda^3" series in Cannabis Works, or according to some theories much of the imagery deconstructing the moe fetish (with Rei Ayanami being the idol in this work) in Hideaki Anno's Evangelion series.

That kinda misses the point. OP was about the difference between shounen romance heros and shoujo romance heroines. Miyazaki has nothing to do with either.

There is no such thing as shounen romance, romance is gay.

Shounen fanservice, which >>1 was talking about, is the win, however.