Recent developments in my life for the past few weeks have made me rethink the question of 2D vs 3D. No, we’re not talking about animation or video games but *sigh* waifus.
You’re goddamn right, I am digging into the weeaboo well again.
Where. Do. I. Even. Start? In fact, how did this all even started?
Well, if you search on the internet, most would say that “waifuism” started in 2007 (and you got to thank Kiyohiko Azuma for that) but basing on how much I’ve seen of Otaku no Video and other Japanese media, the concept of having a 2D character as your waifu or hasubando has existed since the 1980s (or what I would like to refer to as the peak of otaku culture of Japan) all thanks to Lynn Minmay vs Misa Hayase.
No, this isn’t going to be some sort of the history of how waifuism was created and stuff. This is more of a “scientific” approach into the matter. I would like to see where do people stand when it comes to this sort of thing.
So I decided to create a simple survey with three options:
- 2D
- 3D (and by 3D I mean real-life men/women)
- Waifuism/Husbandoism is stupid (aka something something nonconformity to traditional beliefs in relationships).
Before we go to the results of said survey, let me get into some context as to why I even decided to create something of this nature in the first place. Sure most people on the internet would think “ha ha this is a funny meme”, there are some cases that it’s not a meme for them. It’s a way of life and there seems to be some psychological explanation to it.
According to Dr. Robin Rosenberg, it doesn’t matter if you have a crush on an fictional character if we imbibe some personality and human-like characteristics into it she treats it as normal human behavior.
As Rosenberg adds, “the mind fills in the blank spaces between what we know about a person, making it easy to see what we want to see. Then we get a crush because of what we see. We don’t get crushes on people we know really well”.
Case in point, the story of SAL9000. If you’ve been following otaku culture since the mid-2000s, you may have heard the story of this guy on the news. Basically, what he did is that he fell in love with a video game character so much that he married said game character.
The whole point of that introduction is that, even though the whole 2D vs 3D waifu wars is seen as nothing but a meme in the Western world (and in some parts of the East), things can quite take a serious route in the Eastern hemisphere.
Now with that out of the way, here’s the result of the survey and survey says…
..that majority of the people who took the survey would prefer to have a 2D waifu/hasubando and it’s easy to decipher why.
It’s much easier to project the qualities you would want for a perfect partner in a 2D character than it is on a real life person (3D) because once you know who the 3D person really is, the magic wears off.
I would also understand the fact that some people still view the concept of a waifu/hasubando as stupid and there are a variety of reasons that I’ve seen within the community for the past few years. First, there would be those who I would like to call “grounded in reality” wherein they only see one side of the waifuism/hasubandoism spectrum (2D) and brands everything related to it as “stupid” not realizing that having a crush is almost the same as having a waifu/hasubando, the only difference is that they’re into 3D.
The other camp is what I would like to call “shippers”. These people are not into being with their waifu/hasubando but more into pairing two characters with each other.
. Some of the shippers that I know are against the idea of waifuism/hasubandoism and it has something to do with how well they know the character and they would treat said character like a real human being thus they would assume that they would be repulsed by the idea of some joe schmoe otaku falling in love with him/her.
What’s the point of this “study” you ask? I just wanted to know what’s the consensus about waifuism/hasubadoism in the community in 2021 and I know it’s not a real study because of the small respondent size but I am not here to present a grandiose thesis on the human psyche, this is just more of a fun way to determine where the community stands on things.
In short, don’t take this seriously.
Rayas-WEB 
Good post!! I’ve never really went in depth to the topic of Waifuism, as an anime lover I would say I also prefer 2D girls over 3D, maybe it’s just like you said “It’s much easier to project the qualities you would want for a perfect partner in a 2D character than it is on a real life person (3D) because once you know who the 3D person really is, the magic wears off”, it really like is that.
Nowadays people are marrying rice cookers, pizza, pillows, cars, so I would say marrying a fictional character would be the less weirdest in modern times.
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