Cast Full of Pretty Boys

Even the girl[1] gets in on the manpretty.


Marik: There are no women in Yu-Gi-Oh! There are only extremely girly men! And I am the girliest of them all!

Pegasus: Keep telling yourself that.
—Yu-Gi-Oh the Abridged Series

An array of pretty people as eye candy isn't just for the guys. Girls get their Cast Full of Pretty Boys to ogle too in the name of Fan Service. This tends to be less noticeable than its female counterpart because exclusively (or near-exclusively) male casts are already common and expected (thought not always with the intentional appeal to females) and the fanservice tends to be along the lines of "he cooks" or "naked chest" and is never as sexual or objectifying as fanservice in normal male-oriented shows, unless there are Yaoi Guys involved. The writers sometimes leave it to their audience to retrofit the standard group of friends into the Unwanted Harem if they wish.

Some series of this flavor go the reverse harem route and have an ordinary female lead among the Pretty Boys as an audience surrogate, although the girly Keet type can be used this way too.

Sometimes these stories have their own version of Those Two Guys. One will be a 'normal' audience surrogate and thus a young (but non-threatening) girl. Another will be a more 'ideal' woman, often a clever, sexy, and mature lady who barely fits into her dress.

Examples of Cast Full of Pretty Boys include:

Anime and Manga

  • Most of the guys in Durarara!! could qualify. There are exceptions, but most of the male cast is rather pretty.
  • Black Butler takes this to Up to Eleven levels. Nearly every damn single male character is an outright bishounen, with few exceptions. There are a few female characters of course, but most of them are either one arc wonders, dead, or only recurring. Or they're there to fangirl over the hotness of our protagonist, Sebastian.
  • Pick a CLAMP series. Any CLAMP series. Angelic Layer and Cardcaptor Sakura come to mind.
  • Amatsuki: Plenty of good-looking male characters for the fans to enjoy, both human and non-human. The artist lampshaded this by doing a Gender Flip chapter special without changing the guys' faces.
  • Axis Powers Hetalia. Hungary and Liechtenstein (along with possibly Belarus) are the only prominent female characters. The other confirmed girls (Belarus, Belgium, Seychelles, Taiwan, etc.) are either peripheral or have yet to make their comic debut. At least Belarus, Ukraine and Belgium have appeared in the anime, the aforementioned Liechtenstein, Ukraine and Belarus had some strips dedicated to them and Seychelles was the star of Gakuen Hetalia, but still.
    • Some people may argue against this, saying "China's a main character, and she's a girl." Hehehe...WRONG.
    • On the other hand, this makes the female characters stand out all the more.
    • Seychelles (finally) debuts in the anime in Episode 48 of World Series.
  • Beyblade and its Spin-Off Metal Fight Beyblade has a rather disproportionate amount of pretty underage boys for a show about spinning tops, most likely to attract girls who otherwise wouldn't have given the show's premise a second thought.
  • Black Blood Brothers proves that being hot and being a vampire are not exclusive.
    • When the werewolf big guy is a Bishonen, you are definitely here.
  • Although Chrono Crusade has quite a bit of fanservice based around its mostly female True Companions, it's not hard to notice that every single important male character is very good looking, and these characters probably have as many Shirtless Scenes as the girls have Clothing Damage scenes, if not more. Obviously, the manga-ka knew how to widen his demographic.
  • Fruits Basket, while having several plot-worthy female characters other than the lead in the manga, spends a disproportionate amount of its time on Yuki and Kyo. Of course, the rest of the cast is also heavily bishonen. Also see Harem Genre.
  • Fushigi Yuugi has them littered everywhere. Miaka, the main character, has a personal harem of them. Yui gets Nakago, and Nakago gets... pretty much everybody else, at some point or another in the story.
  • Also in the "shounen manga for girls" category, GetBackers dishes up plenty of Fan Service in the form of scantily clad women with impossibly huge boobs, the series still appeals to some girls who are attracted by the predominantly bishounen cast.
  • Gravitation, Gakuen Heaven, and just about any other Boys Love series.
    • Taken to a ridiculous extreme in Sukisho. There are no female characters in the entire show, and all characters are either bishonen, handsome men in their 30s, or young boys, and one crossdresser housewife. There is one single woman in the background who is visible for about half a second, and one character mentions his mother in one scene.
    • Similarly occurs in the Saint Beast prequel series. There are no women in heaven apparently—those pretty youths with female names? Male. Rei too.
    • Togainu no Chi: All Igura participants are male; all of them. In fact, the city of Toshima seems to have no female inhabitants.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam Wing is considered a Cast Full of Pretty Boys among its female audience, despite the fact that it is not only a shounen series, but has a deliberate 1:1 ratio of male to female main characters and more or less assigns one female to each male.
  • Hana Kimi is about a girl disguising herself as a man so she can get into an all-boys school. Obviously, most of the cast are Bishounen.
  • Hunter X Hunter. There's so few women per story arc that you can count them on one hand.
  • Except for a few deliberately ugly characters, every part of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure after midway through part 4 is full of very feminine male characters. Well except Part 6, which takes place in a women's prison.
  • Karneval: Most of the male cast could qualify.
  • Shonen Jump title Katekyo Hitman Reborn has Tsuna and his guardians. Plus the side characters. Plus 99% of the villains. In fact, the number of times there is fanservice for guys can be counted on one hand.
  • Kyo Kara Maoh, complete with Those Two Girls: the flirty curvy ex-Maou Cheri and the younger inventor Anasina, sometimes joined by a trio of servants who are essentially fangirls themselves. (They write yaoi fanfic about their employers!)
    • Yuuri even has an Unwanted Harem, and he's actually engaged to one of them! He pretty steadfastly ignores it, though he also gets visible man-crushes on at least one, possibly two pretty guys.
  • 95% of La Corda d'Oro's main characters are male and pretty.
  • Love Mode: Nothing but good-looking guys.
  • Junjou Romantica. Understandable, since it's a BL series.
  • Nabari no Ou: Every major and minor male character under 30 is Bishonen. No exceptions.
  • Ouran High School Host Club plays with this, along with Haruhi's crossdressing letting girls gush over her too.
  • Pandora Hearts is a textbook example of this.
  • Peacemaker Kurogane: Most of the cast is male and Bishonen and Ho Yay is rampant. The only identifiable females are Saya and Susumu's sister.
  • Prétear, created entirely on the premise of coming up with a Magical Girl anime with a cast of pretty boys to fill up an Unwanted Harem. Even if a few of them are far too young to be bishonen yet, they are clearly meant to be bishonen in training and before the series started, they * were* bishonen until they were killed by the villain.
  • It's very easy to confuse The Prince of Tennis for a Boys Love series due to its largely male cast and mostly Yaoi Fangirl following. Actually it's a Shonen manga and anime, however, it's a very fine example of the increasingly prevalent Bishonen Jump Syndrome (and what a surprise, Prince of Tennis happens to be serialized in Shounen Jump).
  • Ronin Warriors, wherein maybe two of the main characters are women, and basically every male is prettier than you or your girlfriend.
  • Arguably, Masami Kurumada as the author of Saint Seiya popularized this. After all, who else would have the guts to name a man Aphrodite?
    • His next big work, Bt X is even more into this trope. Because as vaguely homoerotic as it was when Shun revived Hyoga by cuddling up to him, nothing surpasses the bishieness of Demon Knight Sapphire. Because really, he himself says he's really into "what's hot and what's not" and goes so far as to kiss Teppei.
    • Fou and Quattro—born in Sodom, died in Sodom!
    • CLAMP started off drawing Saint Seiya doujinshi (there's still some of it online, I think) and the Saint Seiya fandom actually consolidated the use of the word 'yaoi' in the 80s. It also has only one instance of female fanservice in the entire thing (although this is not so in Next Dimension)-compared to the amount of times we see Shiryu shirtless and Saga naked...it's certainly one of the best examples of this trope.
  • Saiyuki: The basic series premise is not 'A loose retelling of Journey to the West.' It's 'Throw three hot guys and their cute surrogate little brother in a small jeep and watch the fireworks.' The only significant female characters are Lirin and Yaone. Yaone was added in to increase the number of girls and in one volume a note from Minekura at the end states: "There are no women in this volume, I looked back and found a couple of pages with Kannon." As for Kanzeon? Close but no cigar.
  • Saiunkoku Monogatari has the heroine making friends with dozens of gorgeous Long Haired Pretty Boys. If there's one thing to be said about the series, it's that it's very, very pretty.
  • Since it's by the woman who practically invented Yaoi, Toward the Terra already had a fair share of pretty boys in manga form. Then someone decided to adapt it into an anime and put Nobuteru Yūki (aka, the man responsible for the bishonen overload in Vision of Escaflowne) in charge of the character designs. The end result is that there are simply no ugly men in this series. At all.
  • It is worth mentioning that every speaking male in Tokyo Mew Mew is on basically eye candy. Take your arguably Stripperiffic Teen Genius, your amazing dessert chef with the red sports car, your murderous alien, or your Mr. Perfect Boyfriend. Were we supposed to be watching the show for strong female characters or environmentalism? Hmm...
  • Trigun borders on this, as almost all of the major male characters are attractive bishonen, including Vash, Knives, Wolfwood, Legato, etc.
    • It also has Those Two Girls, in the form of Meryl and Millie, though neither of them does the curvaceous thing. One-shot characters handle that. Like the Stripperific engineer, Miss Elizabeth, and the undercover sheriff, Miss Aurelie.
  • Vampire Doll All of the men are gorgeous flamboyant eyecandy who lay on heavy fanservice. What few girls in the series are adorable too.
  • Vampire Knight. While it has its female characters, the cast is predominantly made up of very pretty boys. Even the headmaster could be considered bishonen.
  • Not even Vision of Escaflowne escapes this treatment. Though Van isn't super girly, Allen, on the other hand....
  • The Wallflower: Each member of the unwanted harem is a liberal user of Bishie Sparkle.
  • Arguably the biggest draw for Weiss Kreuz: despite its poor animation quality and plot holes large enough to drive a tank through, its four angsty, sexually ambiguous bishonen have garnered a wide fandom.
  • Marvel Comics has made several attempts to court Manga readers, both Japanese and Western. Their latest attempt is OEL Manga X-Men Shojo manga entitled X-Men: Misfits. In this manga, Kitty Pryde, the Audience Surrogate character, is the first female to enroll at Xavier's for a very long time and thus surrounded by an Unwanted Harem composed entirely of bishonen. Poor Kitty. Submitted for your horror and/or Squee; the Hellfire Club. Other exhibits include Bishie Iceman, Bishie Nightcrawler and Not-So-Bishie Bishie Wolverine (who looks like Bill Kaulitz!). Also included is Bishie Gambit (at least somewhat Justified given Gambit has always been fangirl bait), who apparently is the resident Goth/Industrial fan. Kurt is unusually human-looking in this title.
  • Yami no Matsuei: And how. The average female character has the life expectancy of a particularly stupid gnat or falls off the face of the earth after one or two appearances, and only one major character is not bishonen. And we should be glad: apparently Ukyou (Muraki's consensual Love Interest) actually appears in a short the author did at the publisher's request, and turned out to be a mystic trouble magnet with so much trauma she's afraid of all men and some kind of growth deficiency so she looks like a little girl. Not what the references to her led us to expect.
  • As the page quote states, almost all the characters on Yu-Gi-Oh! are men, and most are either feminine or American, sometimes both. The best evidence of this is the Marik's Evil Council videos, where all the villains appear in succession, and aside from Zorc and possibly Akun (or Bob), ALL of them are incredibly bishonen. It's even more obvious in the other two. Latter has emphasis on the Ghetto.
  • Yu Yu Hakusho might be the best here: while the central True Companions gender ratio is almost 50/50, the focus is overwhelmingly on guys, many of whom are quite Bishounen. The big exception is Kuwabara, but damn if he doesn't make up for that with his great physique! This was not at all the case back when the premise was 'dead delinquent having heart-warming yet hilarious ghostly adventures', when the main characters were Yusuke and Botan, with Keiko and then Kuwabara becoming increasingly important, and also Shota who appeared twice and Sayaka the ghost girl who joined up for a while.
  • 07-Ghost main cast has only males, with only a few women on the side. Not only that, but every male character who isn't a geezer is *fabulous* , and good looks are apparently required to be a bishop. Then there's all the rampant Ho Yay...
  • The only female characters in any given episode of Miracle Train are Akari and the Passenger of The Week.
    • Almost the same applies to Marginal Prince (where the character design comes from the same person as the series above): the only reoccuring female characters are relatives of the main characters (sisters or mothers) and all of them are faceless.
  • Corsair's cast, with the exception of Barbossa is very much this, plus Aura and Katarina to fill the beautiful women quota. Seen here. There's a reason for this.
  • Uragiri wa Boku no Namae wo Shitteiru: Every character is a bishonen.
  • Inuyasha has this in spades.[2] If the character is central to the plot and male, he will be Bishonen.
  • Kiniro no Corda is a good example as well.
  • Boys Love Ai no Kusabi due to there being very few women on the planet it takes place and much of the population being the product of Lego Genetics.
  • Number: It's easier to list the female characters: two look like four-year-olds and one of them is the enemy leader; one's a Ninja Maid Cold Sniper who might be an artificial human (she's certainly treated like one); one's a really well-endowed hermaphrodite and killed herself trying to take down an enemy, and her little gal-pal is actually a boy. There's also the main character's dead mom and sister.
    • The only male characters who aren't bishounen are the Number assassins' corrupt targets (we only see two of them before the plot kicks in) and the ninja-maid's master, who's a Frank Booth-level sadist (minus the drugs (probably)). The rest of the handsome/pretty cast love to torment the handsome/pretty teenage main protagonist.


Fanfics


Films

  • Papuwa has only one human female character, and she's... Let's just say she is six feet tall, over muscled, and has a beard. The rest of the cast are animals and attractive men.
  • The 2009 Star Trek movie has its cast invoking youth and sex appeal more than other Star Treks while keeping the cast mostly male.
  • Most of the men in the movie franchise Twilight would make a woman pant. Regardless of whether or not she even likes the story.
  • Interview with the Vampire had young Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Antonio Banderas and Christian Slater as the main cast. Oh, and Kirsten Dunst.
  • The Lord of the Rings movies have a grand total of three female characters, and all the rest are played by very handsome actors.
    • Considering the books gave the females even less of a role...
  • Gattaca, thanks to, of course, Designer Babies.
  • It doesn't take much to see that pretty much the entire cast of The Avengers is eye candy and there seem to be only two females in the movie that have any part whatsoever. Even the villain is too hot for words.
  • Fight Club seems to do this on purpose. It gives the female audience highly attractive men like Edward Norton, Brad Pitt and Jared Leto in varying states of undress, a ton of Ho Yay... and then has them violently beat the shit out of each other. If you're into that kinda thing you'll be in heaven.


Live-Action TV

  • The perpetually angst-ridden, ridiculously good-looking, fanservicey-as-hell (almost entirely) male cast of Supernatural, especially since the show likes to kill off any supporting female character. Combined with the unavoidable Ho Yay the guys make any fangirl's dream come true.
  • Just about every new Kamen Rider series.
  • At first, in Flashpoint, the only female character on the team was Action Girl Jules. Before Leah joined the team after Lewis Young's death. Even Lampshaded the episode when Leah joined and the woman's locker room's sign was changed from Jules to Women.
  • Heroes has about a dozen main characters, all but two of whom are male. And they're so pretty...
  • In Season 4 of Merlin, Prince Arthur assembles his Knights of the Round Table. Recruitment seems to be based on how very, very pretty they are.
  • The Warblers in Glee are, for the most part, very hot and very good at singing. And it only becomes more so after Kurt transfers to Dalton.
  • Noah's Arc: The only man of even average attractiveness in the main cast might be Alex (even that point is debatable), with all the other guys having absolutely perfect physiques.
  • Teen Wolf.
  • Friday Night Lights.
  • Even the most feminist-leaning seasons of Power Rangers have an almost two-to-one ratio of male to female characters (standard procedure is four male rangers, two female; changes to the formula only lead to fewer females such as the five-to-one Ninja Storm.) This leads to an almost all-male cast of young, good-looking, athletic pretty boys year after year.


Music

  • This trope defines the Japanese talent agency Johnny's and Associates.


Video Games

  • The entire Angelique series. Ditto La Corda D Oro and Harukanaru Toki no Naka de. This is the point of the NeoRomance series.
  • Nearly every male character in Dynasty Warriors is, if not a downright Bishonen, rather good-looking, although all of the bishonen are from one of the Three Kingdoms (when they're not moonlighting due to game circumstances). Before DW7, Wu had the highest concentration of bishonen; now, Jin takes the crown, seemingly designed to be a Ghetto. Since Samurai Warriors is derived from Dynasty Warriors, it's only natural that the trope applies there as well.
  • Sengoku Basara, the Capcom rival to Koei's Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors, is loaded with lots of male characters, who are basically things for female players to ogle at. Most of its characters satisfy some kind of fetish, but it's usually arguable that guys like Date Masamune, Sanada Yukimura, Mouri Motonari and Chousokabe Motochika come out on top of the popularity list.
  • The Final Fantasy franchise have always catered to this trope on some level, though only by including one or two "token" bishonen rather than a whole harem. However, Kingdom Hearts relishes coming up with more and more bishonen to throw into the fray, the biggest example being Kingdom Hearts II, in which the villains are a sprawling organization of super-bishonen with one token female on the team. Marluxia was originally planned as female (which explains the pink hair and flower theme) but was changed to male due to the Unfortunate Implications that would have came from the only two females in the group attempting a coup on an otherwise all male group.
    • The all-star fighting game Dissidia Final Fantasy includes the main hero and villain out of the first ten games in the franchise. This leads to 21 out of 24 male leads. The heroes only have one girl on their side (leaving out Shanttoto, who's a bonus character). By default, the game qualifies for this trope just for including Cecil and Kuja in the same cast. The female headcount goes down by one when you realize that Cloud of Darkness is actually genderless and only takes the form of a beautiful woman.
  • While few Harvest Moon games have the option of playing a female and thus providing a list of eligible bachelors, some of the more recent ones have started slipping in greater amounts of this into the bachelor selection. Tree of Tranquility even includes a guy so feminine you can woo him with flowers. Not surprising, as one of the chief complaints of female players was that the roster of wives were significantly better looking and interesting than the grooms. The spinoff Rune Factory and its sequels amps this up: even the main character, who is male, can be considered cuter than one or two of the bachelorettes.
    • Rune Factory tends more toward the opposite end of the spectrum, though; more often than not, almost every job in town is done by a cute, single girl (and/or her sadly unmarriable mother). Particularly glaring in Rune Factory Oceans, the first game to feature a female player option at all; Sonia gets four choices for marriage (including Aden), while Aden gets ten. Rune Factory 4, which will be the first to feature a female option from the beginning, looks as though it will end up with a more even pretty boy/pretty girl ratio.
  • Meine Liebe follows this trope with unabashed faithfulness, adding plenty of Ho Yay thrown in for good measure.
    • The anime was worse, reducing the female character in the games to token appearances.
  • Yo-Jin-Bo, being a Romance Game, is all about the bishounen. The only girl who appears onscreen besides yourself is Hatsuhime (who kinda is still you, in a way). A couple of maids may speak during the endings, but they never get to be in the picture.
  • Pick an otome game. Any otome game. This trope is pretty much the entire point.


Webcomics


Western Animation

  • Possibly unintentional on the part of its creators, Metalocalypse fits this trope. Dethklok and their manager are all attractive (even Murderface has his offbeat charm) males, the only female characters are extras or, in one case, a recurring villain, and the show is liberally peppered with Ho Yay.
  1. ↑ the one in the chair
  2. ↑ If you've been reading TV Tropes The Drinking Game, take a swig.
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