Girl talk much?
Well I'm definitely female and I'm in my 20s, and in reality, I want to be like Sheryl, but....despite all that, my homegirl in this series turned out to be Ranka.
lol Sheryl just started on the wrong side of the hood for me. Just for this show though. There were other shows where my fave always tend to be the tough girls---like Ryoko from Tenchi or TIFA.
I choose female faves in the show based on how the story portrayed them. That's why 90% of the time, my faves are the girls who had strong first impressions on me. ^__^
I've seen older females choose Ranka in forums too, and like Zalem said, I noticed Ranka's fandom has more female in it than males. It might be because females don't get charmed by Sheryl's looks so when the story portrays Ranka as the underdog, a lot of females--especially around her target age--sympathize with her. This is probably just one of those reasons since we all know this isn't true for every female out there. If Macross F were a shoujo and Ranka/Sheryl have male equivalents, of course I'll tend to gravitate to the hotter guy (Sheryl) too. Although looking at the story, I'll still say the less hotter guy (Ranka) will end up with the main lead, and may win my favor near the end with his charms.
There's a lot of factors that contribute as to why fans pick a character, so stereotyping won't really get us anywhere. I roll my eyes at stereotypes.
