It is said that true love often transcends all barriers but some people have taken that statement several notches higher by falling in love beyond the spectrum of reality. A new trend has been seen in Japan where people are increasingly falling in love with and even marrying anime characters from video games. In Japan, the number of people carrying out this seemingly unbelievable activity is increasing rapidly. And believe it or not, there is even a term for such people. They are called fictosexuals.
Fictosexuals are part of a small community in Japan known for informally marrying virtual gaming characters. The term is coined specifically for people with romantic feelings for fictional characters appearing in anime-based video games. While most people may have harboured a crush on a book or movie character, fictosexuals differ in the fact that they have no interest in romantically pursuing a real-life human.
Vice World News spoke to people engaged in fictosexuality in a YouTube video. One of them, Akihiko, married a gaming character named Miku in 2018. Miku is a pop singer in the world of fantasy, but Akihiko has promised to support her for the rest of her life. Akihiko has also started supporting fictosexual people by raising awareness of the type of sexuality in front of the world in the form of a book that he is writing.
In 2017, a Japanese company also started the registration of marriage between humans and fictional characters, having registered Akhikp’s marriage to Miku. A woman named Midhori is married to a virtual character Morgan. Midhori realised she had feelings for Morgan when the anime character was romancing another anime character in an anime show, making Midhori jealous.
In her vast research on sexuality, Agnès Giard, a researcher at the University of Paris Nanterre, claims that fictosexuals are frequently misunderstood. “To the general public, it seems indeed foolish to spend money, time and energy on someone who is not even alive. But this habit is regarded as crucial by those who appreciate the character. They experience a sense of being alive, content, valuable, and a member of a movement with loftier aspirations,” she told New York Post.
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