From the Chateau: In Japan, a burgeoning “fake anime boyfriend” market is capturing the hearts of Japanese women and overseas American women.
Since the 90s, Japanese women have been playing otome (“maiden”) games, which allow the player to pursue virtual relationships with several virtual hunks. In the interest of journalism, I spent over $60 flirting with emotionally manipulative anime characters, and it fucking ruled.
So what kind of virtual boyfriends do nipply Nipponese and sassy statesiders prefer? Take one guess.
When I asked Gray which character types tend to perform best, she told me that the “sadistic but charismatic” archetype is beloved in both Japan and the US.
Chicks dig those charismatic jerkboys.
She pointed to Eisuke Ichinomiya, which she says is the most popular character in Kissed by the Baddest Bidder, Voltage’s top-grossing game in the US. […] On Eisuke’s character profile, he is billed in glittering pink and purple script as a “cold-hearted narcissist.” His quote is “I’m going to make you mine. And you don’t get to say no.”
What’s revealing about this dating simulation (aka female pornhub) is that it is essentially the female version of sex dolls for men. Women aren’t aroused as much by the visual and tactile inspection of men’s bodies as they are by the emotional and psychological inspection of men’s personalities. And when choosing male archetypes, the jerkboy narcissist is number one pulse amplifier in the arterial transverse between a woman’s heart and vagina. This is why real world feedback continually proves the efficacy of Game to the goal of seducing women: Game is the creation of sexier male personalities.
“Usually [this character is] sadistic and mean to you, but sometimes, when you and him are alone, he becomes so sweet and very kind to you,” Gray explained.
Vulnerability Game. A girl wants a challenging man (i.e., a man with a lot of poosy options) who can’t help but occasionally, and reluctantly, succumb to her erotic charms.
Also like Voltage’s millions of other customers worldwide, I was really only interested in the mean and sadistic gentlemen—which is weird, because I actively avoid mean and sadistic men in real life.
Fantasy is inward projection of outward sexual desire. We know this because no woman in the history of the world has ever fantasized about a reliable beta male in pleated khakis. Hence, the reason there’s a maxim stating “watch what women do and ignore what they say”. The details of female desire are quite disturbing to idealistic minds when seen up close, so much so that even women recoil from a cogent awareness of their own sexual urges. Which is why women are gifted with an ability to flim flam themselves whenever they are asked about what they want romantically.
This woman quoted above, when alone with her virtual tingle generator, chooses a badboy for her stimulus. “In real life”, she claims otherwise. But that’s the source of the fantasy’s power; in real life, most women don’t have the goods to attract and tame the badboys who turn them on, so in moments of introspection they fall back on sour grape-isms to rationalize the parade of dependable boring betas that is their lot in life. Or, oppositely, they have been burned by badboys so often in the past that avoiding them must be an “active” process rather than the more natural, unplanned pursuit that doesn’t require active effort typical of women who don’t have a dating history littered with alluring assholes.
Gray insisted that most of Voltage’s users “think that their real life and romance in our apps are totally different.” However, in the same response, she acknowledged that an elision between fantasy and reality does often take place. “The user who has a boyfriend plays our app to fill in the unsatisfied part of her boyfriend. Playing the app makes her happy and it helps to prevent fights with her boyfriend,” Gray told me.
Virtual alpha widows. Literally cucked by an anime lothario.
There is no bottom to the romantic humiliations that beta male boyfriends can suffer.
