Otakulypse Now: Japanese Man Marries Virtual Girlfriend
November 29th, 2009Via: Stuff:
We may occasionally wish our spouses had an “off” switch but a Japanese man will have that luxury full-time after he married his virtual girlfriend in an official-looking ceremony over the weekend.
In a bizarre story reminiscent of the film Lars and the Real Girl, the man, known by his nickname SAL9000, fell in love with a fictional character from the Nintendo DS “love simulator” Love Plus.
Popular in Japan’s geek subculture, the game invites players to pick a girlfriend and then challenges them to woo her by taking her out on “dates” and perform boyfriend duties such as saying “I love you” 100 times into the handheld games console.
The most successful lotharios can even give their virtual love interest a kiss by literally kissing the DS’s touch screen.
But that wasn’t enough for SAL9000, who wedded Nene Anegasaki in an official-looking but not legally binding reception in Tokyo on Sunday.
Unusually, before the wedding, he took her on a “honeymoon” to Guam.
The reception included a priest, an MC, a DJ, speeches from friends and family, photo slideshows, wedding music and even a bouquet. The entire event was streamed live on a Japanese video-sharing site, of which SAL9000 is a prominent member.
…
“I’m so happy so many people were able to witness this,” SAL9000 wrote in a letter to tech culture blog BoingBoing.net, calling it a milestone in his life.
“Some people have expressed doubts about my actions, but at the end of the day, this is really just about us as husband and wife. As long as the two of us can go on to create a happy household, I’m sure any misgivings about us will be resolved.
“The two of us hope to continue to let our love for each other grow as time goes on.”
Related: Kasumi “Hugging” Pillow
otakulypse—-wow, i hadn’t seen that term before. very nice.
as for the goings on mentioned in the article, the most worrying aspect is that i am not surprised in the least by this crap. how can i put this politely? let’s just say that a significant portion of the under-45 Japanese male population faces significant social challenges. ouch.
oh, and this is not unconnected to Japan’s shrinking population, imo.
Another effect of mass-media hypnosis: people cannot distinguish, or in any case, prefer the illusion to the real. This reminds me of the men who buy and collect life-size, latex “love” dolls, and then fabricated phantasmic relationships with them. For men raised on an image diet of air-brushed, photo-shopped, perennially young co-eds, their “real” romantic prospects can be quite a come-down, especially in a country with sky-rocketing obesity and related illnesses levels. Rather than accept the advances of their unattractive peers, the consumer instead opts for prefabricated phantom partner. Additionally, when one considers the fact that consumers watch a lot of television, see movies, play video-games, and read celebrity-fixated tabloids, they are already in a number of equally fictitious relationships with centrally-controlled, mass-media generated images. There have been numerous documented studies and anecdotal observations that a significant percentage of the population cannot determine or has difficulty separating media phantasms from reality. For example, people often confuse actors with the roles they play. Additionally, as children, people played with action figures. Thus, the next logical step would be to form a relationship a life-sized, mate-replacing “love” doll.