Anime

Wait what the hell is wrong with Gold Ship's design? She's got a bust? I mean is the mere existence of boobs gooner?

This is such bad faith. Do you really believe that encapsulates the relevant part of her design? Her costume is clearly designed to accentuate the large breasts in a way that would be deeply uncomfortable for doing track (and I think a little uncomfortable in general, because it's basically putting a wedge of fabric and a tight strap under the breasts that rides into the ribs, which seems like it'd get sweaty or worse). Like, this isn't some catastrophe of design, there's a reason I didn't put a huge amount of emphasis on it, but it's the clear direction of the costume design to have sex appeal, it is detail being added for only that purpose, and when you can point to many such choices across many costumes in this game about grinding or paying money to get pet girls and costumes for them, that tells you about the sort of game that it is.

Like, I know there are games out there that have character designs that literally come from hentai artists and look it, but for someone who accuses me of having a warped perspective, twice accusing me of "projecting" (one of the more revolting arguments that you can make in this context, given the coding of some of the characters), I really need to question your ability to evaluate it if you're holding up Dwarf as a high example of being a gooner character design. No, not because he's a guy. I'm completely confident there are some people who are really into him and that probably informed your selection, but the design itself from the handful of images that you presented reads much more as a male power fantasy than an androphilic (straight woman/gay man/etc.) fantasy, as often happens with male characters who look bulky to the point of deformity. It's like calling the Hulk sexualized. There are occasional depictions that actually are (e.g. leaning into his dick also growing commensurately with the rest of him), but principally the appeal is meant to be toward (presumed het) men fantasizing about being strong. If you wanted a male character who was still a muscular power fantasy but had more unambiguously sexual elements, an easy (though not extreme) example is Zwei from Soul Calibur V as he appears in his portrait. Classic elements include the framing of the abdomen and unbuttoned pants. Sort of conspicuously missing is an emphasis on the Adonis belt, which you'd sort of expect given the other elements if they were committing to the bit, but SC is a very male gaze series for the most part, so even the more sexualized men are still pretty mild. You get a handful of examples of characters in Granblue who you're probably familiar with who are a slightly more exaggerated version of things like this, like Belial.

I do agree with you that many other games are more gooner, like Granblue in its various forms, I just pointed to the cast being all female for the horse game because it makes it a little more obvious what they are going for.

There was someone here the other day making the "projecting" argument to defend Dandadan and this site at least used to have someone who said the same thing about Goblin Slayer, though at least the latter knew it was cope, I think.

I think it's actually quite easy to distinguish between a gacha game where you collect women and girls, some in obviously sexualized costumes, as pets and private assets, from "everything"