I'm
not going to ignore the Pokemon stuff because there's reasons behind all of them.
Lily at least admits that Hau and Hop are, frankly, uninteresting. They become annoying less because of their personalities (they don't really... have any, beyond being perky and optimistic, and I think Hop only distinguishes himself by also having an inferiority complex that barely gets mentioned and goes basically nowhere) but because they're symptomatic of Pokemon's problem with hand-holding the players more and more. They show up constantly to offer you tutorials and then the game wants you to care about them so they get a lot of excess screen time even though they have little to contribute.
This is not the case with Lillie. Lillie isn't a rival-- she's the girl with the actual storyline in the games. She's on the run from her brainwashed and
abusive, controlling mother who, in her state of being controlled by Nihilego, has forced her daughter to wear clothes and style her hair in order to better resemble the parasitic space jellyfish. She spends much of the game trying to use honeyed words to convince Lillie to come back to her loving arms, and when Lillie refuses, she becomes violent. Lillie's whole character arc is coming to terms with disentangling from her mother's (well, Nihilego's, through her mother) toxic influence, claiming her own identify and becoming her own person. You'd think Lily Orchard would be all over a storyline about somebody saying 'Fuck you, Mom!', but then again the evidence of Lillie's abuse, though fairly apparent, is also inferred. Lillie never takes a moment to give a thousand-yard stare to the camera and say "My mother abused me." She never directly says "Fuck you, Mom!" Although I guess the resolution is Lillie forgiving her mother for what she's been through, since she was being mind-raped by an alien monstrosity at the time.
I'm pretty sure people like Marnie because she's got a fun aesthetic and, from what I've seen of Sword and Shield, has kind of a fun gimmick with Team Yell (not that Team Yell is a fun gimmick, I mean the way Marnie seems to kind of roll her eyes at the whole thing-- she overall seems pretty chill). I assume 'the guy the the Hatterene' is Bede? I haven't seen a lot of love for him as a character but, again, from footage I've seen (I have no Switch, therefore no personal experience with Sword and Shield) he has a couple of interesting cutscenes and an actual character arc. I believe Marnie does, too.
Hop and Hau just... kind of don't, which I'm pretty sure is the main problem people wind up having with them. They're both overzealous and super optimistic and nice, which honestly just doesn't make them fun rivals (it was a joy to beat Gary's smug face in specifically
because his face was smug), and they don't have any ameliorating factors like character development to bolster them. Cheren and Bianca from Gen 5, for instance, were much more interesting rivals because they were both going through opposing character arcs, with Cheren having to learn to mellow out and accept that his desire to be the Champion was actually damaging and self-destructive (at least, the way he was pursuing it) and Bianca learning that, while she isn't all that great at battles, she has other skills she can contribute and becoming self-confident enough to find her own path. Both of them show the resolution of their arcs in the sequels, where Cheren has become a Gym Leader and takes it upon himself to teach young trainers in his spare time, and Bianca is a research assistant, eschewing the need to be a battler while embracing her love and understanding of Pokemon.
Compare also to the group of kids from X and Y, who are so generic and friendly I completely forgot they even existed, except for the fact that they drag the entire game to a screeching halt right out the gate to have a big friend pow-wow where everybody gives each other dumb nicknames and then you finally get your starter. Turns out all of those kids are white and
nobody likes them. I also legit
just learned the rival's name in Let's Go!, even though I've watched plenty of footage from that game. Apparently nobody likes Trace. Who is also white.
Also, forgive me if I'm wrong, but doesn't
everybody think Professor Kukui is not only a pretty enjoyable professor, but also
super fucking hot?
It's almost like these character reactions have nothing to do with skin tone and is predominantly about uninteresting character traits and stories. Wow.
On a similar note: Luz.
As a caveat, I haven't watched The Owl House, but by my understanding Luz is basically an isekai protagonist, a regular girl mysteriously thrust into a fantastical situation. She's the audience surrogate character, as well as the main character, and knowing these two factors, here's the thing: generally speaking, the main character in a work with a large supporting cast
is the least interesting character of that cast.
That's because they're the 'baseline' character. They're the character everybody is supposed to like and identify with, so while there are factors that make them interesting they also tend to default to being 'nice people'. They're... you know. Nice. You don't hate 'em, but because they're supposed to appeal to as many viewers as possible, since they're the character you'll be spending the most time with, they have to be smoothed out and approachable (unless one of the main points of the story is about them being an asshole). What this means is that the other characters are the ones who are dominantly allowed to make more mistakes or have more defined quirks and malices. They're allowed to be rougher and more distinct, and that's why people gravitate to them.
It also doesn't help that these characters are used as the grounded ones to which all exposition is given, so no small part of their screentime is also spent receiving worldbuilding knowledge from other characters.
So I'm sure this has
very little to do with Luz's ethnicity and more with her role as the viewpoint character.
But yeah, sure. It's all about racism and these definitely aren't common complaints that crop up in mono-ethnic casts that only get spotlighted because somebody has an axe to grind, a point to make, and a virtue to signal.
HOLD. UP.
"coercing them into sex against their will"
I'm sorry?
Back before the breakup, Lily was
bragging about how much Lizzy wanted her cock.
After the breakup, one of the things Lily mentioned as a red flag about Lizzy was that she
refused to initiate sex. She always left it up to Lily to be the initiator and Lily was pissed that Lizzy wasn't more forward or aggressive about it. I also recall that Lizzy wasn't wanting sex as often and Lily was getting frustrated by being rebuffed. Now suddenly Lizzy was 'coercing' Lily into having sex against her will?