I finished the first season of K-ON!. Why do so many people like Mio...? They stuck her with a horrible personality in the anime.
My guesses:
a) We get 90% of our information from vision, all the other senses contribute the rest of the 10%. So what a character looks like is a bigger impression than the voice actor, the personality, etc.
b) Mio has several design attributes which have seemed to make characters popular in the recent past. They include:
- "Fox eyes" The upper, outer areas of her eyes come to acute corners or 'tips.'
- Long, straight, black hair.
- Taller than most other characters.
c) Other attributes that might add
gravitas:
- The 'traditional Japanese' character: serious student, the stable foil for the more spastic characters. Also, she uses more formal grammar at times.
- She plays the bass.
- Her seiyuu has a lower-pitched voice than the other characters, and
- She's less talkative, but when she *does* say something, the other characters shut up for a sec.
Sakaki from Azumanga Dai-Oh fits several of these as well - eye design, long straight hair, low-pitched seiyuu, taller than the gang...
Older anime, but who in
Love Hina was always with the hakama and sword?
What do you think?