Squall was indeed modeled after Gackt. It's been written in press releases and everything, and the developers have even mentioned it.



Tidus was also modeled after Gackt from what I hear, but I never heard that stated by developers, like Squall. I think it's true though, because I remember reading in a magazine before they were talking about Squall and Tidus structure simularities. Then there's this picture from a site I saw long ago that discussed it:



Anyway, pretty boys aren't really my taste, but Ashley is correct. Pretty boys (or "Bishonen") are preferable and looked at as most attractive in Japanese socitey. If you watch anime, you'll notice that most of the guys that are popular or whatever will have the bishi complex. In just about every case I can think of in anime where all the girls were swooning over some 'hunk', he had the bishi complex (Motoki, Mamoru, The Three Lights, every other guy in Sailor Moon). Of course, you do have you're manly men (reffered to as "Bara" as pretty boys are "Bishonen"), like say, Jet Black, but they never end up being the ones all the chicks are after...it's always the bishis.

So it makes perfect sense that FF main heroes tend to have that prettyness to them. As graphics grow more and more superior, the look gets closer to life, thus they get more idealy pretty I guess. That's not to say all FF guys are like this though. There's always the non bishi heroes (Barret, Cid, Amarant, Wakka, Auron, the brown haired guy in this game, ect.), they just never seen to be the main character.

Personally though, I don't care how the main character looks (like Necro stated, he doesn't even begin to rival Kuja in girliness). Especially when there's that masculine brown-haired dude to make up for it.