Romance roadblock:
Japanese women prefer virtual boyfriends to real-life men
Dear blog readers, I’ve
just about ran out of ideas for the male point of view in romance fiction, so I
poked around the internet and found the below. It might be used to inspire a
fresh romance idea for a book. Enjoy.
Below is the Honey article.
“Love on demand: Women in
Japan are increasingly ditching real-life men in favour of virtual boyfriends
found on romance gaming apps.
After breaking up with her
boyfriend at age 22, Tokyo resident Ayumi Saito discovered a romance game
called Metro PD: Close To You. And she says the game's male lead filled
the "lonely" void in her heart.
"When I was tired at
the end of the day, before going to sleep, I was so relieved to hear his sweet
and gentle words," Ayumi, now 31, told CNN. "Japanese men are shy and not good at flattering
women. But girls want to hear 'I love you'."
The $130-million romance
gaming industry is booming in Japan. In a country where nearly half of all
women between the ages of 18 and 34 are virgins, it seemingly helps them tap into intimacy they're
not otherwise receiving.
"These romance games
make me feel I want to be in love with someone," a 26-year-old woman named
Yuirka told CNN. "The boys in these games have something lacking in the
real life boys -- they are so sweet."
The games tend to feature a
female heroine who meets a slew of potential suitors on her life journey.
[Read more at
http://honey.nine.com.au/2016/11/22/14/56/japanese-women-romance-gaming#S5uzsbrbS1LAokhd.99]
"The strong and
selfish men are the most popular," head of Voltage games, Nigahi Higashi,
told CNN. "The most popular characters are strong on the outside and only
sometimes sweet for you."
(Voltage tweaks their
formula for North America audiences, where they say women prefer a "macho
man, both mentally and physically".)
While some may say the
gaming obsession is preventing Japanese women from finding off-screen romances,
a recent government survey found that 40 percent of all singles in
their 20s and 30s (men and women) aren't actually interested in having a
flesh-and-blood romantic partner.
"[Women] dream of a
guy who is handsome, controlling, and unreasonably in love with [them],"
Marcos Daniel Arroyo, a software engineer at Cheritz games, told Vogue.
"[The games provide] the fantasy of a relationship that cannot occur so
easily in real life."
Read more at
http://honey.nine.com.au/2016/11/22/14/56/japanese-women-romance-gaming#S5uzsbrbS1LAokhd.99
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