Blogpost #8 Virtual Wife

Each and everyone of us has our own unique attractions in life. Some people may find other people's attractions weird and creepy, while others may not. In my previous blog,  I talked about a man who married a pillow with an anime character imprinted on it. Now I found this rather unique guy whose attractions may seem uncanny to others too, a guy who is in love and married a video game character.

I read this article entitled The One About the Guy Who Married a Video Game, written by Owen Good from kotaku.com. There he talked about a man who married a female character from a video game. The unnamed guy is Japanese, he married Nene Anegasaki, a virtual girlfriend from the game Love Plus. His wedding is held in  Guam, there is also a reception held in Japan. The wedding was just like a real wedding, with a priest, his relatives were, and the media was also present. 

As he quoted "The unnamed man took his DS and the game to Guam where he said vows with to Nene Anegasaki, one of three virtual girlfriends featured in Love Plus. " I think the guy is really in love with the video game character, but I didn't think a wedding was necessary. Maybe the guy wanted a little fame and recognition that's why he held this wedding. Some people also rode along with it because they find this event unique.

I researched on about the reason why someone would fall in love and marry a girl from an anime based video game. I found this article entitled Fetish of the Week: Schediaphilia (Toonophilia), written by Willow Monroe from zzinsider.com. There he discussed what Toonophilia is and what are the reasons someone would have this. Toonophiles are basically guys who love and are sexually aroused to cartoon, especially anime characters. Unfortunately, since this is a philia, there is really no legitimate reason why someone would have this, the easiest reason is because of lack of physical and emotional contacts with actual humans. Since humans and virtual characters can't have physical interactions, toonophiles would simply revert to masturbation, or for someone's case, marry a virtual character.

As he quoted "These fetishists get their juices flowing and hearts and fists pumping at the sight of their fave sexy cartoon characters. Sexy for the Toonophile need not be a blatantly erotic character like Jessica Rabbit, or Betty Boop, rather, the subject of affection and desire can be any animated or sketched figure from Bugs Bunny, to Ms Pacman. Due to the absence of physical contact between humans and cartoon characters, most schediaphiles practice masturbation." I sometimes too am attracted to anime characters, but I'm not that attracted to be called a toonophile. In fact, many people are also very attracted to cartoon or anime characters. But only some people are serious enough to marry a lifeless form of entertainment.

I can't say that the Japanese guy who married a virtual girl, and some other toonophiles are bad. Because that's just the way are in life, there's nothing we could do to change them. The only thing we could do is accept them for who they really are, and simply move on with life.