Okay so as a follow up to my first response, I have a list of my faves!
First I'm gonna start with the entire cast of Strike Witches. Yes, that anime about little girls fighting aliens in their panties. It's badass, emotional, and manages to capture the spirit of Military Sci-fi (of Science Fantasy in this case) in essence. Which is to say: camaraderie. It's a war story and even with all the fanservice and comedic moments, it has a lot of heart, developed characters, and moments that make me wanna cry.
There's too many moments for me to list that are genuinely badass and amazing but highlights include: Yoshika, the main character, didn't want to fight in the war in the beginning. But after seeing the horrors of war up close, and being unable to help any other way, she joins the Strike Witches.
Lynette, a fellow newbie like Yoshika, struggles in battle but is excellent during training. During most of the series she hangs in the background of fights, effectively acting as more of a sniper. However, Yoshika's influence on her finally shows up when Yoshika becomes unable to fly when the enemy shows up. She voluntarily takes off on her own, with the subtle implication being she knows it's unlikely she'll come back. But she wants to defend the ship and the people on board, so she fights the enemy herself, acting as a decoy for their escape. As soon as the ship is far enough away, her magic starts giving out and she plummets to the ocean. Then Yoshika shows up, having taken a prototype unit because as it turns out her magic was too powerful for her old unit.
And she's pissed because her best friend got hurt. She basically plows through the enemy using her new speed.
There are too many instances of the girls being badass and amazing. ANother highlight is in the movie, Yoshika has no power left anymore. Yet when shit hits the fan, she grabs a gun without any magic strength and fights the enemy on her own, on foot, powerless. Her desire to protect others outstanding.
And to top it all off, all the girls get badass moments and all the girls have their own reasons for fighting.
Next I'm gonna go with characters from Bojack Horseman: Diane and Princess Carolyn. There are others who I could talk about but these are the two main women in Bojack's life and as such they have the most development. Plus they contrast each other nicely.
Diane.
Diane is an interesting character because she's basically a deconstruction of herself. She's been described as "Asian Daria", which is accurate. During most of the series she was the voice of reason, the common sense, whose feminist ideology was shown to always be right. Because of the way she was presented early on, her being the moral one of the group was nothing new. She was the level headed woman surrounded by dumb men.
Turns out there's a lot more going on here. Diane is never satisfied. She's a hypocrite. She works on a show that caters to the male gaze, attempting to make the main character more 3-dimensional. She makes it less sexist in the end, improving the show greatly, only to suddenly reject it when it ends up being a hit. Because she show she worked on is representative of the cartoon series itself. Bojack mentions his character being relatable and making him feel okay about himself, which Diane freaks out about. This is how some people related to Bojack in earlier seasons of the show. At first it plays like she's supposed to be correct, esp. what with Bojack's drug induced breakdown.
But Diane has never been a moral paragon. Immediately after chewing out Bojack, she sleeps with her ex-husband, who is dating someone else. And does this twice. She's wrong about a lot and acts like she's smarter and more moral than others. But she doesn't do it in a blatantly obvious way.
Under normal circumstance I'd hate a character like Diane, because I can't stand feminist mouthpiece characters. Diane is done very well because she's flawed. Deeply flawed. And she knows it. Her downward spiral, her depression and self-loathing, her attempt to hide behind things like feminism, and her hypocrisy in the sense that early on she states another character was doomed from the beginning and Bojack misunderstands this as "everything is society's fault, I'm not responsible for what happens" - it comes back to bite her in the ass because she ultimately thinks the same way, blaming society for her problems instead of taking her share of the blame.
Regardless of me agreeing with her opinions or not, the show presents her as a developed character, flawed, stubborn, impulsive. Which is why I enjoy her, no matter how annoying she can be - she's not a cardboard cutout which shows that you can have a feminist mouthpiece character who is actually 3-dimensional.
Princess Carolyn.
Oh I could go on about her. One thing I love about her is that she's an agent, a manager, one of those types who'll take advantage of any narrative to further her goal of being successful. She's fake in this sense but her personal motivations make her more than just a smooth talking agent. She's sneaky, underhanded, a liar, a manipulator, and she knows it. She knows it and has no issue with it because that's the business. Yet she's got a slew of self-doubts, thinks something is wrong with her because she can't have children, her own ambition frequently comes back to bite her in the ass. She's very self-aware of herself, fully admitting her own flaws.
She's smart, savvy, and "Say Anything" demonstrated that perfectly. When something fails, she can usually turn it into a win someway or another. A big part of her character is that she's a workaholic who is almost cripplingly lonely, but work is the only thing able to fill the void of having loved ones. SHe did just adopt a baby so we'll have to see how that plays out before I can go into that aspect of her more.
For now that's all I've got. But I've got a list of characters to talk about lol