I have more thoughts on the matter. The status of “tumblr sexyman” is almost never a measure of the quality of the character itself. It’s always been the fandom response. I’m going to compare Senshi to Sans Undertale because unlike all the guys on any tumblr sexyman list, sans isn’t a skinny white guy and thankfully isn’t portrayed as one, shockingly. Someone in the tags mentioned that liking tumblr sexymen has a certain level of theater kid esque indulgence/shame to it. Sans is a cartoon skeleton and every who likes him knows it. I don’t think anybody is doing “hear me outs” on senshi because he’s already hot. You know you’ve hit gold on a tumblr sexyman if the character itself is producing its own fandom largely divorced from the source material. People making extensive AUs where different sans interact with each other, “sans fangirls” being a thing, sans himself being a meme outside of being an undertale fan, making up lore about the skeletons in general and making skeleton ocs…the list goes on. With all due respect I earnestly do not think this is happening with Senshi! And again, none of this has to do with the quality of their characters, they are both excellent characters. I think part of this is due to the fact that Dungeon Meshi already has such an established world that taking a character and running with it would feel out of place. I’ve seen Kabru get more of a tumblr sexyman treatment than Senshi does.
Putting Tenna side by side to sans, and people are doing the exact same thing. “Spamtenna” feels like its own fandom. People are drawing Tenna shipped with himself. People are drawing yuri of him for crying out loud (something to be said about fandom caring more about yuri versions of men over canon female characters but that is a discussion for another time). People like The Character so much they are doing literally anything with him! Even with Tenna thankfully the times are changing, his most popular human interpretations aren’t even white.
Maybe it isn’t fair to allude to Sans when talking about Tenna because they’re both made by the same guy, and similar fandoms are going to have a similar response to these kinds of quirky characters, but I digress. The fact that Tenna fans on twitter are drawing him pathetically begging for him to be voted for, in increasingly skimpy outfits, speaks volumes
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