>>83855840That's part of it, having multiple girls creates a huge diversity of female characters if you care about that sort of thing.
I've argued before that harem anime ends up being relatively feminist, despite existing to pander to teenage boys, because by its very nature it focuses on a cast of female characters. This kills the Smurfette principle on the spot; you can't have a "the girl" in a cast of girls, so you have to give them at least a little personality, even if they're archetypes. And if it's a harem series that wants to tell a story instead of being lite porn, you have to give the characters more fleshed-out personalities, motivations, etc.; in short, you have to write
strong female characters.The same principle applies here, without the obvious pitfalls above. You have multiple girls, if you want it to be watchable you have to give them distinct personalities; even if they're stock cartoon types, you still go beyond what usually happens when you have one or two token girls.
