Male side character?

[Hayashi]

There seems to always be a male side character in most VNs, and they usually don't affect the plot much, whats the purpose of such characters?

[Eclipsed]

[Guest]

Comic relief mostly. They don't play any role larger than that because that would get in the way of scoring all the girls.

Some visual novels do tend to have more worth while male characters such as Little Busters which is pretty much about the boys and White Album 2 where Takeya tries to play the role of the wise man, for good and bad.

[astro]

What games don't tell you is that while the protag only gets 1 heroine at the end of the game, your best friend fugs all the other girls you didn't pick after you all graduate

[Nosebleed]

Bad VNs don't do anything with them, good VNs have a secret bromance route.

[TexasDice]

While VNs (or stories in general) don't have to be realistic, they should aim for immersion. And an easy way to reach immersion, is to have believable and relate things, be it a normal story or a really weird story. 

A complete absence of other male characters for example, has to be justified through the setting (all-girls schools, amazon island, etc) or it would alienate the audience.

[solidbatman]

Would be an interesting discussion to dive into the best and worst of these side kick male characters and how they add to the narrative. 

[Segai]

Would be an interesting discussion to dive into the best and worst of these side kick male characters and how they add to the narrative. 

While not a sidekick, I nominate Gasai Itsuki from Coµ as he is rather important to the plot and is generally a well-written, awesome character.

[Deep Blue]

there is actually a vn that it's all about that friend or second character, clephas did a review of the game

http://forums.fuwanovel.net/blog/46/entry-715-boku-wa-tomodachi-i-am-not-sweetheart/

[Nerathim]