>>41928819I think so.
Gen 1's female gym leaders and Elite 4 (bar Agatha) were definitely made to be appealing to boys, and in general I feel like this is the trend with female characters in pokémon, period (again with grandmas being the sole exception).
GameFreak being composed of mostly otakus is definitely a sign that points to this... remember that fat guy in gen 1 and 2 at the GameFreak building who said he wrote the story? He kept talking of how cute and attractive the female characters were, and in gen 2 he even mentions how he loves the little girl twins NPCs. Sugimori also far prefers drawing cute girls of age 13~20 than literally any other character.
(I'd argue since gen 4 and ESPECIALLY 5 they also started making male characters for the female demographic, but since the topic at hand is female characters I'll leave it at that).
I imagine the female protagonists also get designed with the male demographic in mind (like any magical girl show made after Minky Momo), just look at how all of them bar Kris got expensive, detailed figures... on the other hand, there are much less figures of the male protags. Honestly it wouldn't surprise me if the option to choose your gender was mostly there because male teens and male adults needed it.
Simply put, cute and sexy female characters are efficient marketing. They make boys attached to them and grow them into eventual customers of figures and other spicier content, and they make men actually throw 60$ at a game because of "I had to buy it for her...!".
Also, if I may add, a simple Google search shows the clear demographic and demand for Pokémon's female characters. Pixiv shows it even harder: just a few days ago I was looking for Colress porn, and got barely anything. While looking for Cynthia, the results were mostly porn.
