Day 18: Supporting Females??

Day 18: Favorite Supporting Female Character- Umm...

I couldn't think of one right off the top of my head which leads me to the conclusion that I don't have a favorite "supporting" female character. Much to my dismay Professor (pictured above) is considered a main and when I thought about it she really is, so there went that idea. So I decided to look into the shows that I have seen and looked for supporting females that I thought were particularly notable to me in some way.

I didn't really find any.

I am not trying to say that there are no good female supporting characters, just that I don't have one that I think sticks out. Most supporting females in anime serve as a rival love interest, overall rival to female main, friend of main (with lots of sub-types of friend character) or sometimes really just as fan-service. Now these are very respectable roles but I noticed a few trends.

Trend #1: If there is a female main character, majority of supporting females are designed to make her look better in some way.  

 Example: Main Female is supposed to look really caring or "righteous" so the supports provide opportunities for MF to show off just how "pure" she is by needing to be saved or being weaker in some way. 

Another example is the "foil character", for those unfamiliar with the term a foil is a character that has contrasting traits to another particularly for the purpose of highlighting the traits of the other character. MF is caring and full of heart so foil character is apathetic. MF is kind and sweet so foil character is rough or "hard" and so on.

Trend #2: If the protagonist is female, often the supporting cast and very often the remaining "main" cast will be primarily male with other females taking a relatively smaller role. 

This is especially common in Shojou anime and even in some cases shounen. (I'm looking at you Soul Eater. Maka is the only female meister of note and Tsubaki gets like one episode focused on her. tsk tsk)

Trend #3: There will be a group of female protagonists but not as many fleshed out "supporting" females

Good examples of this are Nichijou, The iDOLM@STER and Sore ga Seiyuu! They maybe have one or two supporting females that could be considered "rounded" but they are often overshadowed or forgotten because of the group of mains. 

Those were the big three I saw, are there any supporting female trends you have seen?