[Sumeragi]

I'll just stick to the OP for this discussion:

- plain, not ugly, just plain looking

If the main character was fabulous, you'll most likely have girls falling all over him (assuming he is not a jerk). This can easily lead to too many contenders with the MC having to pick and choose before things are reduced to a manageable level.

- "slice of life" type guy. Leads a normal, boring life with no interesting activities

Most settings are in middle school or high school. You're not really going to have some interesting activities in terms of fiction unless the MC is some special talented person who goes on adventures, known in a speciality, or is generally wacky enough for people to notice. This can lead to either the problem of being too popular or being too great for most people to approach.

- non-action guy, he won't put a fight unless it's the very last episode and he's also mediocre at best

Okay, given that this is a normal MC, how do you expect him to have fighting abilities, short of having learned some kind of martial arts or street fights all the time?

- stupid, not the smart type, must rely on his partner or best friend

This is so so. Is relying on someone to get better grades that big an issue?

- unpopular with normal girls, but popular with cutest girls, even though he barely does anything worthy towards them.

"Does anything worthy" is a bit subjective, so skipping that. However, think about this: Would you rather have an interest in an average normal person or someone with good characteristics? When you consider this, there is no big flaw to the MC being unpopular with normal girls. Now, why he might be popular with the cutest girls..... Well, most likely he did SOMETHING that attracted the attention of those cutest girls. Those may seem insignificant to the viewers, but might be important to the characters themselves.

- inhumanly dense, even though girls around him clearly show affections toward him.

Device used to prolong the situations.

- getting abused by the tsundere girls all the time while he can't do anything about it.

This is actually somewhat of a cultural thing. A "true" boy is not supposed to hit back when hit by a girl because most likely he had done something already wrong to be hit. Now, this idea might be a bit alien (particularly given our somewhat omniscient knowledge), but once one gets the idea that you're only supposed to be hit if you've done something wrong or the other side is a bully, then you might get the sense of why this is tolerated.

- boring, dull personality, with no outstanding qualities aside of being a nice guy.

Isn't this a bit redundant? When you go through all the points before, how are you supposed to have someone with "outstanding" qualities?



Personally, I think Amagami answers most of the issues brought up. It has the typical harem MC, but shows how he gets close to the girls.