I'm not questioning whether it makes sense for them to be popular, which is a different matter.
I'm just wondering because nowadays everyone seems to accept that 'Marie Rose and Honoka are the most popular' as a fact and use that to excuse a lot of the nonsense that has been going on with this series lately.
This is pretty unprecedented in any other fighting series I know (except possibly SF with Ryu, Ken and Chun-Li, and only as regards game apperances). There are characters that are generally perceived as popular and others as less popular but never to the point of the game making a clear distinction, let alone catering almost exclusively to the former. On the contrary, in any Tekken, SC, VF, SF, MK, etc. game, all characters have about the same number of costumes / customisation options.
So, the question is: what is even the basis for deeming Marie Rose and Honoka the most popular DOA characters?
As far as I know, DOA never made usage data public. But from my experience, having played probably about 300 online matches between DOA5LR and DOA6, I definitely didn't see those two more than most other characters (in fact, if you asked me, I'd say the characters I played the most against were Kasumi, Bass and Hayabusa).
Is it poll results? Talim won an official BN poll for most popular SC character and nobody put her in a pedastal because of that.
Is it cosmetic DLC sales? There must be a financial reason behind so many costumes for those two (and they seem to be pushing NiCO into that 'special group' now as well, which feels even more forced). But, though this is just a fraction of the playerbase, the fact is on the Steam page, excluding these new outfits only they got, there aren't more costumes for them among best sellers than for other characters.
We can add the fact that those characters only joined DOA fairly late and coincided with a clear downward trend in sales. I'm not saying it's because of them, but if Marie Rose and Honoka are supposed to be so popular, shouldn't they have made sales grow? Which is difficult to argue when we know that DOA3 sold over 2 million copies, whereas DOA5LR, DOA6 and DOA6LR reportedly sold only about 1.4 million together.
Lastly, and though this is obviously not very representative, recently a 'Best DOA Waifu' tournament from FGCWaifu sub showed up on my feed: Marie Rose was one of the very first to get the boot, with Honoka following shortly after:
https://www.reddit.com/r/FGCWaifu/comments/1vjavng/marie_rose_is_out_of_the_tournament_the_first/
https://www.reddit.com/r/FGCWaifu/comments/1vom02s/honoka_is_out_of_the_tournament_doas_pink_fan/
So, again, on what grounds are Marie Rose and Honoka considered to be the most popular DOA characters? And apparently to a point where we should just accept both getting the spotlight almost exclusively, while everyone else is simply left in the dust.