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Is every man in Mid-Childa a draft dodger? (Well, except the redhead) series that don't deal with high school have a problem. How to stuff the series full of pretty, young girls and maybe one or two guys when you're set in, say, the military? Improbable Age only goes so far; Pink Bishoujo Ghetto takes it a step further.
All the series' Magical Girls, Humongous Mecha pilots or what have you are cute, young and female, each fitting a certain Moe mold. In contrast, Mission Control is probably all male; if the series has an Unlucky Everydude, he's there, but otherwise, they're too old to pose a threat of competition. The One Guy on the team, on the other hand, is already committed. If there are any other women in the corps, they're the Bridge Bunnies and/or Wrench Wench, and have little role to play in the actual story.
This ultimately can be received better than it sounds, as removal of male characters (such as from a Dating Sim adaptation) often reduces romantic entanglement baggage. Romantic elements are sometimes still present though to give more meaning to the relationships between the girls, although it's also often used for fanservice.
There is also a specific but somewhat unrelated Pink Bishoujo Ghetto effect in shows actually *for* girls. Young heroines tend to identify more with their peers (i.e. other girls) and actual romance with boys is an acknowledged, interesting, but still largely cryptic situation. This means prominent male characters actually tend to have only highly specific roles in the story, explaining their low representation and, occasionally, depth. However, as the demographic gets older and girls begin to gravitate to boys, this tends to even itself out... or, ironically, go in the opposite direction.
For another way that writers of bishoujo series get around needing all these female characters, see Otaku Surrogate. If there are a bunch of boys around, and it's due to moe appeal rather than because the target audience might ignore girls, it may be a Blue Bishonen Ghetto series.
Examples:
Anime and Manga
- Aside from the Twin Stars and a middle-aged commander, Galaxy Angel is noticeably devoid of men. This role is usually performed by Forte whenever a gag requires a "male" equivalent, something she eventually starts complaining about.
- Soukou No Strain did have male pilots, didn't they? There was Colin and Cedi, who were dead in the first episode. Carris? Dead. Dickon? Incapacitated for the Grand Finale, with very little of a role otherwise. Ralph? Big Bad, Ax Crazy. Meanwhile the girls, other than Mary and Isabella, did mostly fine.
- Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha's male population hasn't fared well after three seasons. Chrono got shipped off with (new character) Griffith to Mission Control, which, oddly enough, doesn't seem to affect their female co-worker Hayate's screen time in the least. There's a whole meme about Yuuno slowly losing his screentime once he stopped being a cute talking ferret, and new character Erio being prominently featured has a lot to do with being a non-threatening little kid that fan-favorite Fate likes to dote on. Zafira suffered an even worse fate, since he has apparently been trapped permanently, and inexplicably, in his animal form since the beginning of the third season. Even when severely injured and bedridden in the infirmary, he's still in wolf form.
- Even the villains follow this trope. The Mad Scientist Scaglietti is male, but for some reason, except for Zest, all of his combat cyborgs and artificial mages are females. He does give a reason, albeit one with disturbing implications: he's impregnated all of them with clones of himself.
- The whole origin of Project F, traces itself down to the logical end result of a Pink Bishoujo Ghetto: underpopulation. Artificial Mages, and later Combat Cyborgs, were seen as a way to boost the military's vastly inferior population. Because General Geis thought this was a good idea, he was in cahoots with Scaglietti the whole time. Scaglietti was only replicating cloning techniques perfected by Precia Testerossa for creating Fate, suggesting that this was a known issue with Mid-Childan society long before the series began.
- Tokyo Mew Mew isn't a bishoujo series, but Earth's chosen Magical Girls are all, well, girls, reporting to bishounen. And with the amount of doujinshi put out on the subject, catgirl Ichigo, ojou Minto, meganekko Retasu, loli Bu-ling and Tall Dark And Bishoujo Zakuro are certainly seen as moe characters, although that wasn't the series' intention.
- While Keroro Gunsou isn't a bishoujo series, its creator is fond of the genre. To get around this, nearly all the male characters are funny aliens, while female characters are often prominently humanoid.
- Lucky Star has a grand total of three recurring male roles (five, if you count Anizawa and his assistant.) The girls eventually lampshade this by commenting on the lack of romance in their lives.
- Parallel Trouble Adventure Dual enagaged in a bit of Lampshade Hanging with this trope, by claiming that only females were capable of piloting the series' Humongous Mecha. The lone male exception was a special case.
- Perhaps justified in that said special case was that the Mech in question is the alternate universe version of the pilot.
- Mai-Otome. It's justified by the fact that the Applied Phlebotinum runs on Virgin Power.
- Simoun. Another Justified Trope, due to the world they inhabit.
- The iDOLM@STER Xenoglossia
- Somewhat justified. The reason they use innocent girls as pilots is to avoid the appearance of the robots being weapons, since they're only used for asteroid defence.
- Vandread. The bulk of the cast are Space Pirates from an all-female planet. The few males are refugees/prisoners from the all-male planet.
- In Yami To Boushi To Hon No Tabibito, originally a bishoujo game, the role of the player is replaced by the side character Hazuki (a girl) who, in keeping with the theme, is the one with the crush on Hatsumi.
- For some reason there are absolutely no male gondoliers in ARIA, even though steering a gondola can be hard work requiring quite a bit of muscle power. The girls don't look especially strong, though.
- Mai-Hime. I think there was a line explaining the reason, but it's an obvious excuse.
- The anime (which came first) is better about this, though the fact that the magical girls are, well, girls, and the fact that there are 12 /13, counting fake-HiME Alyssa of them doesn't particularly help.
- It finally makes sense at the very end: it is revealed that the winning Hi ME has the choise of either facing off against the Obsidian Prince or becoming his wife and helping him reshape the world. The Obsidian Prince might have only come up with this for this particular Hi ME Carnival, though.
- For some reason all the mecha pilots in Sky Girls are cute young girls. There's a reason males of the right age aren't around, but you'd think they'd be able to find people out of their teens.
- Battle Athletes Daiundokai is focused on a prestigious, interplanetary sport event which is for girls only. Male characters are rare, mostly passive and usually much older.
- In Silent Moebius, the special agents battling the monsters/demons from another dimension are all women. At one point, their leader offers some sort of philosophical justification about women being able to bear children and thus being the key to the future. It doesn't really hold water, especially since one of the agent is a cyborg and most certainly unable to become pregnant.
- Strawberry Panic, Marimite and other anime with Schoolgirl Lesbians usually have few males or dispend with them completely, as not to interrupt the dynamics between the female characters.
- Yes, yes, Strawberry Panic is set at an all-girl school... but it goes beyond that. Not one male character is ever shown. The only man who even comes up is Rokujou's arranged fiance, and all we see is his silhouette. Straight girls (if there are any) will have to settle for Amane.
- The eponymous warriors from Claymore are all female. There's a plot reason why, and it ain't pretty (trust us).
- In Strike Witches, which very much follows the mold of Sky Girls, only young, female mages can pilot the units that enable them to fly.
- Played completely straight by Mahou Sensei Negima. The vast majority of the characters are female, but its a Shonen series (at least after the first few volumes. The enormous number of girls seems to be more for Fan Service purposes than anything else.
- Even after you chop away comedy/useless characters like Ayaka or the twins and even somewhat important characters like Sayo you still have one little kid, Asuna, Konoka, Setsuna, Kaede, Mana, Evangeline, Chachamaru etc. before you get to someone like Fate (who has his own fangirls) and Rakan.
- Don't forget Chamo. Although, he's an ermine, so he might not count. Kotaro got introduced fairly early, too, although he started as a bad guy.
- As time goes by the gender balance of new characters is much more even. Eishun, Fate, Jack Rakan, Godel, Tosaka, Zect, Kage... whatever his name was. True, some of their screen time isn't very impressive apart from flashbacks (Zect) or mention (Eishun) the spotlight on the girls also shifts quite a bit. And more of the girls are losing their place as well. Anyone seen Mana lately?
- Koihime Musou uses Gender Flipped versions of the cast of Romance Of The Three Kingdoms essentially making all the important characters female.
- Pani Poni Dash.
- In Shikabane Hime, only girls of a certain age who die in specific circumstances can become Shikabane Hime. It is later justified, when it turns out the ritual to create them was originally developed by the founder of the Kougon Sect to resurrect his dead daughter.
- Kurogane Pukapuka Tai manages to have only one recurring male character, the old, Zen Master-like Captain of the Unebi, who is monk-like in his asceticism and thus off limits for any erotic speculation. No explanation has been given except that the cruiser's intended crew were all taken ill with typhoid and a substitute crew had to be found; why these would be all women has not even had a Hand Waving justification, although a shortage of military-age men in 1943 might be one that comes up.
- The only boy's, aside from the adults which rarely appear, in the Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni franchise are Keiichi and Satoshi.
Comic Books
- Small Favors only shows young attractive females even during the crowd scenes of a supposedly normal city. No males are even mentioned in these comics.
Films
- Women make up an overwhelming number of the major characters in the Spanish film All About My Mother, although most of them are older than usual for the trope (and not all of them were born female.) Even the protagonist's son's biological father turns out to be a Cross Dresser named Lola.
- Volver doesn't take it as far as the above film, but it does have a large female majority in the cast.
Toys
- The various Pinky:st figurines. Ever since 2003, every last released figure has been female (with the exception of the Akito/Agito Wanijima figure in early 2006.)
Video Games
- Arcana Heart is an all-girl fighting game.
- The Touhou series of shooting games, out of a cast of over a hundred characters, has only a handful of named males — the only ones who have actually appeared in the games are a turtle and a cloud. The reason for this may be particularly simple, though: the series creator, ZUN, isn't a great artist, and it's entirely possible that he just can't draw dudes.
- Rumble Roses.
- Your party in the story mode of the flash Turn Based Strategy game Zening
 will most of the time have more women than men. At one point, a player will have six women and one man in the party. There are also times where the party is composed entirely of women.
Web Comics
- In the first chapter of Alpha Shade, set in a war, nearly all the important soldiers on both sides were attractive women, although crowd photos appeared to be mostly male.
- Earthsong has 8 of the 9 protagonists as being female.
Literature
- In Terry Pratchett's Monstrous Regiment, it's implied that a good majority of the Borogravian military consists of cross-dressing females who have fooled almost everyone, including each other. In fact, only two soldiers are confirmed male: Paul, Polly's older brother, and the man who supposedly got Shufti pregnant (though she rejected him). Everyone (except the effeminate Blouse) in the eponymous regiment is female. Hell, it's revealed at the end of the book that the masculine Jackrum is actually a girl and has been faking for so long that she's more comfortable as a male. S/he even goes to visit his/her son and tell him that s/he is his father. At first, you're led to believe that it's really a Blue Bishonen Ghetto, but nope.
Western Animation
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