I think that while Rumiko Takahashi was maybe a bit better, at least for the time she made most of her stuff, than she might get regarded as from the modern eye, she did at least make her male characters, inasmuch as they were kinda shitty dudes, at least decent enough to be characters and not the sort of bland, tabula rasa sorts that all got inspired by the success of Love Hina. Like, you can definitely tell how Love Hina is trying to imitate something like Urusei Yatsura, but in, like, every respect it is worse.
I don't have a lot of thoughts on this -- Love Hina is something I've never been invested in, though I was arguably its target demographic at the time -- but I do get this because I've seen the sorts of shows that came up after it and they're all like this and they're all pretty bland outside of incidental boob touch kinds of moments.
