Major female character who feels invisible
 

Something I just suddenly wanted to see, are there any good series with a major female character who feels invisible, insignificant or otherwise unnoticeable? Not a story about a girl who's trying to become famous and struggling to achieve it (like an idol or something), but one where a girl is struggling with the feelings and the matter of finding her worth. Best two examples I can think of both come from KamiNomi: Chihiro and Kanon. Kanon demonstrates pretty well the separation from the search for fame: she's super-famous, one of the biggest idols out there, and she still often feels like no one can even see her. She's absolutely desperate to stand out and be noticed and nothing she does helps her feel the least bit special or noticed. Chihiro on the other hand just feels dull and average. Her friends seem to simply sparkle, with some manner of greatness in them in terms of grades, personality, big dreams or great success, while not only does she not have anything great about her she's not even insignificant enough to make anything big of that. She responds by trying to fall in love with a guy who's really awesome and really "shines" in hopes that being his girlfriend will give her a certain brilliance as well. And it takes some work for her to realize how shallow and empty feelings are when they're based on something as weak as a desire to be cool by association.

Kana-chan in Chihayafuru maybe?

Tsukimi in Kuragehime

First example I can think of is Madoka from Madoka Magica.

I guess Usagi from Sailor Moon fits as well - at least for the first season.

Ghost Hunt - I would say there are two arcs where two different female characters go out o their way to be noticed and not be an empty space. One of them makes appearance in 1st arc.

Hansaku Iroha I think. Nako is very quiet and shy and believes to be completely useless in comparison to others. Eventually she starts to become a pretty prominent character in the series.

I think Iori from Kokoro Connect might work. Her whole arc is mostly explored in 4 OVAs but the idea is that Iori had a harsh, complicated family thing and in order to please people, adapted several different personas. As a result she struggles to understand which of this personalities is really her and if Iori even exists as a separate being. Personally my fave arc of the series.

Rin from Love Live! School Idol Project. Yes, it's an idol show but one of the girls', Rin, believes that she is extremely plain and unattractive in comparison to her fellow idols and has dilemma about it in season 2.

What about a guy? Cause Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo is all about an average guy who shares a dorm with extremely talented people and spends whole series trying to be more than no one in comparison to them. To achieve something and have a purpose.

Nana: The main character feels like a nobody because all her new city friends are rock stars and she's just a ordinary girl. A desire to be part of their world is part of what motivates her to hook up with jerk rocker Takumi. She gets her wish, but she also gets more than she bargained for...

Warning: the author dropped the series due to ill-health. We may never know what happened to either Nana in the end.

I'd prefer characters who are more permanent and major; not necessarily primary heroines but not single-arc subjects like the ones I remember in that series.

I'll have to watch that again. I don't recall her really having concern over her personal image of mediocrity, at least nothing particularly big like Chihiro's constant search for a way to "shine". That said, she does seem somewhat fair in her longing for excitement (again if I remember the story correctly).

I love Iori, but I'm not entirely sure she fits. She's desperate to be able to find and know herself, not to get people to notice her. Or more specifically, she seems mainly desperate for people to notice her because she's found herself unable to see her own face clearly. And later once repeated trauma stripped her bare mentally and she has to face dark parts of her being, she becomes desperate for people to accept her; in fact, she's kind of an inversion because instead of wanting to shine and be popular and all that jazz, she wants those she cares about to stop expecting more light than she really has inside of her, to get them to stop expecting a shining sun when she's really just a pretty moon.

Don't think I've watched season 2. I'll have to give it a shot.

I'll take a look. Never really got far in that series.