[zarathustreal]

To be fair, “anime protagonists” are not the same category as “arbitrary human” so in this context saying “she” actually does come off more like virtue signaling given the statistical prevalence of male anime protagonists

[RoyalHenOil]

Statistical prevalence is irrelevant when talking about a specific person's experiences watching anime. They may predominantly watch shows with female protagonists, or they may have had just a few particular female-protagonist shows in mind when they wrote the comment.

Personally speaking (as someone who watches very little anime and has mostly only seen the famous ones, like Spirited Away and Kiki's Delivery Service), I think only ~10-20% of the animes I have watched have had male protagonists. It is surprising to me to hear that protagonists in that genre are mostly male, given my own overwhelming experience, and I'm not totally sure I believe it.

[zarathustreal]

If you watch very little anime.. why would you presume to weigh in on this topic? Shōnen is the most popular category of manga / anime and it’s targeted at adolescent males with mostly male protagonists.

[RoyalHenOil]

Because we aren't talking about anime in general. We are talking about one specific person's personal experiences with the subset of anime they watch.

If I say "she" when talking about generic protagonists in some Miyazaki films I've seen, are you going to say I'm wrong and should say "he" instead because some genre of anime I've never heard of is popular with some demographic I'm not a part of?

If that's really how you think, then do you also opine that we should say "she" rather than "he" when talking about generic human beings, seeing as women outnumber men? Somehow I suspect not.

[card_zero]

Is there much Shonen that you'd describe as "heartwarming", though? I like stories about personal emotional growth, and magic. Wasn't using "she" for virtue signalling, just as what seemed to me to be a statistical fact. There's one I can think of with a male protagonist, and his great aspiration in life is to be murderer, and he targets his classmate, who is a tall and slightly dim-witted model ... and ends up filled with protective feelings toward her, which begin when he impulsively lends her his intended murder weapon (a boxcutter) to cut some card for a school project ... and by the end of the series they're going round a mall together at Christmas, holding hands. That was a pretty good one. Recommendations for ones with male protags are welcome, if they're not full of tanks and battles and so on.