As the person that writes Zidane a lot:
I don't hate him.
Does he get blown up a lot? Sure, for being a pervert.
Is he a pervert?
Yeah. Pervert, ladies man, etc. Whatever you wish to call it.
Do people react to this in-game poorly with him getting one slap and little/no mockery otherwise?
Yeah. Despite it largely being a comedic trait, the game...doesn't play up the comedy at all.
Do most perverts in RPGs get off this easy?
Sten nearly gets beaten to hell in-game.
Siegfried the unicorn gets more of a reaction out of his crowd.
Edgar has two? three? perverse moments. He gets mocked in every single one of them.
It's not hate; It's the reactions that every other RPG pervert gets.
(My honest opinion is that Zidane is the epitome of a bad main; A protagonist you could remove and have nothing notable change about the game. But that doesn't mean I dislike him. Put him in a secondary role and he'd be inoffensive; He's just got as much real importance to the plot as, say, Amarant. Well, no, he has the romance with Dagger, I suppose that's a bit more than Amarant, but...)
Does Zidane have other, highly notable traits?
Well, he has the thing that makes people call him emo(ehhhh I've never thought of him as emo. I dislike that scene, too out of character, but.).
He also is...generally, blandly cheerful, a trait that maybe half of the minor characters in the DL have, that doesn't make him notable for any writing purposes. One could easily say that I like Zidane, after a fashion; After all, I write him into scenes he has no real place being. Just, as humor.
Zidane's obviously not written quite true to in-game, it plays up his scenes of perversion, and has him have such terrible luck that there's a 60-odd-K linked series of writeups that describes exactly why. (What was that, Season 30? I forget though. It's been a while.) It's just played up for laughs. I've never claimed to be a great writer, just a silly one.
Anyways, my suggestion would be to not go too overboard trying to "reverse" the effect, if that's what you want. Having Zidane suddenly turn into a perfect gentleman who can suddenly slay Ghaleon would be kinda...ah, tacky.
And also, welcome. ^_^