There is one thing I realized recently... 2019 is going to be pretty big year for TV animation in number of shows coming.
But also, female characters are about 80% of the leads. Here is the list of upcoming shows for major cartoon TV channels and Netflix. Only family/kids shows.
Girl is main character:
Loud House spin-off (Nickleodeon)
Rainbow Rangers (Nick Junior)
Amphibia (Disney)
Owl House (Disney)
The Rocketeer (Disney Junior)
Infinity Train (Cartoon Network)
DC Super Hero Girls (Cartoon Network)
Twelve Forever (Netflix)
Carmen Sandiego reboot (Netflix)
Hilda (Netflix)
Boy is main character
Thundercats Roar (Cartoon Network)
Victor and Valentino (Cartoon Network)
Dragon Prince (Netflix)
Tales of Arcadia (Netflix)
If I forget anything, please correct me.
I don't want this list to be seen as "SJWs are controlling animation industry" or "this is end of the world". Just a neutral list. This may be just accidental or one-time thing and 2020 and later years will have more shows with boys as leads. This may be the peak of "female main character" trend.
My point is... 80% of upcoming artoons are about girls and those people still are complaining about lack of difersity and that "they are not heard" or that TV executives are sexist. They based advertising of their show on that fact and think they are special and groundbreaking. Sorry, no. Girl leads are standard thing.
If you see this as a part of "culture war", you already "won".
Shut up about how special you are.
To be fair I don't think the presence of a higher ratio of female characters has much, if anything, to do with SJWs. For certain mediums and genres like animation or hero shooters for games it's just the safer bet: contrary to what Kate Leth's posse will say, men who consume these tend to like a wide variety of women due for the same reasons girls like boy bands while women tend to like have a couple female characters to choose as projections, so introducing a new girl character or having an ensemble of cute girl characters for your comedic, low stakes slice of life show is an easier sell. Some of the most successful shows with evenly unisex fanbases had either a female lead (Kim Possible, Totally Spies, Miraculous Ladybug) a 50/50 gender split (Avatar the Last Airbender) or a near 50/50 gender spilt (Teen Titans) so this isn't completely unfounded.
The only time the female lead becomes an issue with animation is in the cases where the creators are trying to tell a more serious story and therefore the tone demands more from its characters. A lot of the times writers might treat their female characters with the kid gloves and don't like to acknowledge their faults, which often frustrates viewers. For instance no one had a problem with a new female lead when Legend of Korra was first announced, but over time a lot of the audience soured on her the more apparent it became Korra wasn't actually growing as a character.
Also I didn't see anyone post this yet, but I found the creator of HGS's
tumblr.
Looking over the various redesigns, one thing that sticks out to me is that I have no fuckimg clue what I'm supposed to take away from their personalities. Pink-haired girl has all the hallmarks of the blandest "bubbly & well-meaning but ditzy & accident -prone" anime girl protagonist, but then she's given these straight cut bangs that give her permanent half-lidded eyes, darker lines under the eyes and lower lashes, and mannerisms that are all frequently reserved for disinterested teenagers and goths. If it was meant to be an intentional subversion for comedy maybe those choices would make sense, but then everyone else is still generic anime & fantasy cliches, and I still can't figure out where the ugly brown leather armor on top of hot pink is supposed to play into that outside of being distracting.
And for the life of me I still can't figure out how old these characters are supposed to be. The height says "tweens" but then the blonde one has toys while the others don't and some of their outfits read as being more apt for 20-somethings.