Pillow Sleeves and Obsessed Fan
This article about a subset of Otaku into "body pillows" is quite disturbing. It makes me wonder if people in other cultures, as anime/otaku culture has gone global, have the same fetish/depth of emotion. The article is somewhat graphic in a few parts, but here's an excerpt:
She lifted him right out of his misery. “It’s hard to explain in words, but it’s a feeling similar to romance. Sasami gave me the will to keep going.” Since then, Okayama has turned to 2-D for all his emotional needs - the desire to buy new anime helped him get through a period of unemployment in 2003, and his body-pillow girlfriends, whom he dates two or three at a time, consoled him when his first real-life girlfriend dumped him in 2007.
“I was steps away from getting married,” he explained earnestly when prodded about his experience. “You have to make sure you don’t hurt a real person; you have to watch what you say, and you have to keep your room clean. In Japan, it’s not O.K. to like another person if you’re already with somebody else. With an anime character, you can like one character one day and a different character the next.”
Interestingly the article mentions that women as well as men have these strong feelings, though it does mention that the majority are men. The author also is really not objective, as her feelings about the situation seem very clear, not that I had a problem with that.
The New York times linked to the article writer's blog where I found this video of a Japanese fan-girl interviewing Rubert Grint a. k. a. Ron. She's very enthusiastic...and odd, but it's an amusing video.
Be well.
She lifted him right out of his misery. “It’s hard to explain in words, but it’s a feeling similar to romance. Sasami gave me the will to keep going.” Since then, Okayama has turned to 2-D for all his emotional needs - the desire to buy new anime helped him get through a period of unemployment in 2003, and his body-pillow girlfriends, whom he dates two or three at a time, consoled him when his first real-life girlfriend dumped him in 2007.
“I was steps away from getting married,” he explained earnestly when prodded about his experience. “You have to make sure you don’t hurt a real person; you have to watch what you say, and you have to keep your room clean. In Japan, it’s not O.K. to like another person if you’re already with somebody else. With an anime character, you can like one character one day and a different character the next.”
Interestingly the article mentions that women as well as men have these strong feelings, though it does mention that the majority are men. The author also is really not objective, as her feelings about the situation seem very clear, not that I had a problem with that.
The New York times linked to the article writer's blog where I found this video of a Japanese fan-girl interviewing Rubert Grint a. k. a. Ron. She's very enthusiastic...and odd, but it's an amusing video.
Be well.