Though there was more male dialogue than female on the show, the men were constantly portrayed as stupid, weak, aggressive, drunk, selfish, not responsible...
There are some flattering male characters, too. Smithers is loyal, smart, ultra-competent, and his only real (albeit gigantic) flaw is being utterly blinded by love. Doctor Hibbert finds humor in unfortunate situations and is sometimes a bit of a mercenary, but he's highly competent and generally kind. Apu is a successful and extremely hard-working businessman whose catchphrase involves being polite to his customers, although he also tends to screw them over.
Most of the male (and female) characters are ridiculous, because the show is fundamentally about ridiculous people. But that's not the only kind of character they have.
I don't think that's true. A sycophant is motivated by the desire for advancement, and is typically insincere. Smithers is sincere and motivated by love, which makes him much more interesting.
Apu is a stereotype. Now granted, he's on a show filled with stereotypes, and he's not always portrayed negatively, but he is still a stereotype. (In all honesty, sitcoms are all filled with stereotypes.)
Smithers in the archetypical yes-man.
Dr. Hibbert isn't so much a stereotype as much as a parody of Dr Huxtable.
I guess so? Marge and Lisa both have major ticks/obsessions that kick in, just like the other two.
When the plot is about Home and Bart, the other two play counterpoint. But the opposite is true. Homer just ends up getting the main role so often that we assume that to be the default state of the universe.
Not to mention the voice cast is mostly male, made even more lopsided by the fact that the female voice actresses mostly do only one voice, whereas the male voice actors do TONS.
Which is just how it goes. It's unfortunate but you can't strike a 50/50 balance. Even for side-characters written as female in the script, they're going to become male during production because you don't have female voice actresses who can make a "different" voice; it would just sound like Lisa or Marge. Really only Bart's voice actress can do it (she does Nelson, too, who sounds very different).
curious, is it a biological neccesity that female voice actresses can't do as many voices as a mail voice actress, or is there something else going on?
Interesting. This depends on the expected audience of the anime, and whether most of the characters are young, right? I'm not an anime fan, but the movies I've watched (Ghost in the Shell, Jin-Roh, Mononoke Hime) have very distinct male voices. I've even heard from one reviewer that the Japanese love deep bass male voices in their anime, an observation which is true in my experience. They go as far as using deep male voices for characters who are visually or nominally female, such as the Puppet Master in Ghost in the Shell (pre the awful 2.0 remastered Blu Ray edition) or Moro in Mononoke Hime.
I don't think it's biological. I think maybe the industry was just bigger for males.
Take Tara Strong. Sure, lots of her voices sound a little similar (you might hear Timmy Turner, then hear the girl in Batman, and think "oh yeah, they do sound similar" once you knew they were the same voice). But she can definitely "transform" her voice.
The male voice actors on The Simpsons have incredibly transformative voices, which I think comes from lots of practice in the industry. The first time I saw a chart of all the voices for each character they play, I couldn't believe it. After paying very VERY close attention, I can kind of hear Mr. Burns in Moe, but just barely.
Everyone is flawed on that show, even ol' Painty Can Ned.