I can't say I feel the same way. I believe any of the character designs only detract from the big picture if a viewer allows it to. I see the entire package absolutely fine.
I never really get the "it's the users fault if they judge the intent wrong" idea, really. It's the artist responsibility to create something, and know what kind of emotions or intentions his designs are giving off.
The characters fit in the world well and none of them are an "issue" intrinsically, but simply an "issue" some others have created of their own accord.
If the issue you're speaking of is, say, Kamitani being sexist, or anything like that, I can agree, that's something that's blown out of proportion, and I don't think he personally intends to insult women or anything like that.
My issue is the fact that in a game world that could very well be a high-art painting come to life, there's a few overly-juvenile designs that (being what, at most, 6 to 10 characters, and their animations?) could end up detracting from the overall work (which includes everything, music, art, stages, gameplay, etc), and giving off the wrong idea.
I see a fluent world realized through Kamitani's work and not a desperate or crude compensation in any capacity while (rarely, yet) occasionally attempting to wrap my mind around how it could be defined as such at all by others.
To be clear, my point was that I think Kamitani is quite skilled, and has no need to compensate for anything; he's a well-rounded artist who can make everyone look cool, muscular, sexy, etc, something you rarely see in gaming now-a-days, east or west.
Which is why it's really sad to think that many people will end up writing it off as "that game with the girl with the huge, jiggly boobs that flop around like water-balloons, and that other girl who'se oversized thighs and butt are ALWAYS facing the screen, somehow...", or something like that.
---
But at any rate, yes, it's great to be "in the know" about the game, and all the wealth of content and art that awaits us, once we get to play.
It's basically taken the whole generation to get a game like this released on consoles, at this level of production value, and I really hope it can strike the right audiences, and get it's true messages and ambitions across.
I was always disappointed there weren't more "ME TOO!" attempts of things like Guardian Heroes (Panzer Bandit, and... what?) or Secrets of Mana (even Legends of Mana failed to tap into the exact feel), so I hope this actually is inspirational enough to spur even more developers to think such a game might be a great delivery method for a new style of Dungeon-Crawling Multiplayer ARPG...
The fact that no one else has created any type of RPG / Arcadey hybrid like Gauntlet Legends in recent memory is one of the biggest disappointments of this fading Gen to me, lol.
It's what many of us were hoping and wanting it to be.