Maybe it has sometime to do with the way they are drawn? And perhaps also the clothing choice - it's in a style that I hardly see in otoges. There's also their expression too.
Idk, I think it's the general vibe I get looking at these art compare to the ones I usually get from looking at female...
These are really pretty and all but a PC visual novel with these kind of bg art would be even better. IMO the portrait format and the smaller display size of mobile devices take away the open vastness of how landscape are often appreciated.
Why do you think dating sim/eroge character = automatically sexualized design? Where does this prejudice come from? There are plenty of tasteful, "mild" designs out there even when the actual content of the game is extreme. I disagree with generalizing such a big genre like that!
Is it just me or are these designs not very otome game-like? They're not bad designs by any means (I actually like them a lot), but they somewhat resemble characters you would find in a dating sim/eroge. Not sure if I can further elaborate on why but I certainly feel that way.
...Perhaps otoges...
So do we have some good ideas as for why they use the grey, bald mannequin as the MC in otoges? I don't believe this is really all that common for visual novels in general; it's not something you would see in say a galge for example.
I think I read somewhere that the yuri genre was originally aimed at women? I suspect a big reason for yuri vns being so "male-gazey" is because eroges (which the majority of vns technically are) are predominantly written/produced by men.
Essentially if we want more yuri vns with otoge-like...
I'd say in those cases it's often the devs leaning heavily into giving the self-insert role to the MC, since there's generally less things that would trigger self-inserters in a plain-looking outfit. You'll notice in games where the MC is given a lot of attention on making her their own person...
What's wrong with galge characters? Surely you mean "eroge" right? I'd argue a large number of otoge MCs would fit no problem into galges, especially given how pretty some of them are.