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It's a general problem present in Japanese fiction/fantasy materials, as far as I've noticed. Whenever they impose archetypes/trends for the sake of catering/pandering to the people who like them, most if not all characterization goes out the window. It applies as much to harem captures as it does to "tsundere" characters, "imouto" characters, and the like and so on and so forth. Real characterization is rather hard to find nowadays, and by real I mean fluent, consistent, believable character manifestation.
If anyone is close to dying in this series, it would probably be Mana, though her significance is sorely lacking.
As for people wanting unconditionally rooting for harem captures...self-insertion in the shoes of Shidou, perhaps? Favoritism? If I recall there have been several pages in this thread before about people "arguing" (to put it lightly) over their favorite "characters", with the reasons ranging from design fascination to visual aesthetics.
If anything, this series is schizophrenic in its tone and premise. The whole issue of seireis being a threat to the world and all implies a certain degree of gravitas...and then you see that most of the content are love comedies and supposed parodies (played straight) of dating games and such. This is mostly why I take to reading DAL with a huge cargoboat load of salt. It's a fun light read, really, but I would suggest against looking forwards to anything deeper than that.
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