It began, like most of my conversations begin these days, with Free!. My sister, my husband and I were hanging out in the pool when I just had to bring it up.
“It’s an anime about really attractive boys in a swimming club,” I explained to my sister.
Now if you don’t know my sister, all you need to know is that while she is gorgeous and smart, she’s not into anime at all. Guess we can’t all be perfect. Kidding!
“Wait,” she said. “How can drawings be attractive?”
Right about then was when I drew a blank. Ever since Duo Maxwell in Gundam Wing, I’ve been attracted to pictures of 2D animated boys. I know I’m not the only one, (seriously, no fewer than 80 people stumbled upon Otaku Journalist this week by Googling “sex anime,”) but it is a little hard to explain to people who don’t spend all their time watching cartoons.
For the primer, nobody explains it better than Genshiken’s Madarame (the video gets to the heart of the matter around 2:40).
http://youtu.be/qezJcCIH4Jo
To me, the crux of the explanation is this: when it’s an anime targeted at adults, the characters are often designed to be sexually attractive. It’s the same way directors cast sexually attractive actors for blockbuster movies. The key difference being that actors eventually have to step out of character and go back to being regular people. Regular people who snore, fart, and on occasion, say things you disagree with. With anime, or any other drawn medium, that never has to happen.
There are people who claim to only be attracted to 2D men or women (most notably Madarame himself), but I don’t think most of us are like that. Sure I like Free!, but I also like real people, like say, this Free! cosplayer right here (although honestly, it’s a tad bit uncanny valley to see people halfway between anime and realism).
(Source: King x Mon Cosplayer)
To wrap up this incredibly embarrassing and weeaboo post, the whole reason some anime fans find drawings attractive is because they aren’t real. They’ll never go out of character, they’ll never do anything awkward or human. It’s just fantasy.
Anime fans, how do you explain your 2D attraction to the people in your life?
13 Comments.
I have a rather massive obsession with Nico Robin now, where previously I had never really cared about anime characters in such a way that I would go out of my way to buy official and unofficial merchandise related to a character in all of the years I watched anime.
If I’m ever questioned about it, I usually frame it as an appreciation for the artist and what the character is supposed to represent, and that’s it. I don’t go into much more detail unless asked.
I am going to take this discussion further. Attraction to 2D characters doesn’t even have to be from just aesthetics. Indeed, sometimes you can fall in love with a character from how they are written. Basically the contextual attraction in the brain kicks in and the various attributes such as background and personality provide additional appeal. People who don’t understand general attraction to 2D characters will have to experience this contextual attraction in order to fully learn why 2D attraction is a thing.
@thedigitalbug, totally a good point. You could probably expand this discussion into a whole other blog post on the various reasons we love 2D!
I don’t like 2D girls, but I like 2D men, especially bad boy characters.
Uhhh, yeah. As digitalbug said, it’s the context that draws you in. There’s something about them that makes me wish I can be “bad” like them.
@MangaTherapy and the best part is, they’ll never, ever break character (unless a fan artist wants them to)!
I very much agree with digitalbug.
I’ve more than a few times been attracted to a character in a novel because of how the character is written.
Naturally this has also occurred in watching anime where the art design may have a bit to do with it, but most of it comes from how the character is written. Also, the voice actor can be a contributing factor.
@Zoe, I didn’t even think about the voice! My take is a bit simpler than the big picture, it seems.
I think the blog post works nicely as it’s engendering an interesting conversation here in the comments.
As to voice (and just one example), for me at least the voice actors for the Elric brothers and Winry really make the characters stand out along with the great writing in both Full Metal Alchemist series. Actually I think the voice acting in both is very good overall.
Haha! That Genshiken clip!
I find lots of 2D girls attractive. The more moe or kawaii, the more I’m into them. Now as far as sexy? Some. I “try” not to look at them that way. It’s more like seeing a pet that is cute and saying I wanna keep them.
they are so hot
2D girls with a certain figure are very attractive and the way they are is how they will always be. If they age, chances are they will retain their beauty and become adult beauties.
Of course there are wonderful ladies who cosplay as my fav anime beauties and I can dig that.
Short answer, same as yours miss.
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