We interrupt the current program to bring you an unurgent message.
Bride.
Thanks to a certain Sal9000, Love Plus has went from relatively known to the bustling internet discussion revolving around it.
For those who don’t know, on November 22nd, a Japanese man by the alias Sal9000 became the first man to ever marry a ‘videogame’ character, in this case from a DS based galge, Anegasaki Nene.
But really, who doesn’t know? When even one’s friends in the backwater village of Canada tells you about how he saw ‘the guy who married a videogame character’, you know you’ve a huge piece of circulating news on your hands.
Now, my purpose isn’t to inform, as this knowhow has been afloat for well over three weeks now. I’d be much too late if that were my purpose. No, I desire to dissect. What is the basis of this storm of controversy Sal’s actions have brewed? Could this ‘travesty’ of norms ever be justified?
Another heroine of the game, Kobayakawa Rinko.
As a fellow enthusiast of the Japanimation culture, I can’t say that I can’t see it from Sal’s viewpoint. Reprimanded heavily by western audiences, he’s been accused of being insane, senseless and without foresight. One must understand that he is none of these. Obviously, his moralities are very different from that of the man following the norms, but ‘insane’?
Most of us in fact have small degrees of obsessions that border on remotely pathological, without even knowing it. My unconscious habit of deleting desktop icons is already a characteristic of obsessive compulsive disorder, a fear of cockroaches is already a sign of phobia. In that sense, we’d all be insane.
But no, pathologists define mental disorders with these three conditions that must be present altogether: one, the person performs irrational actions. Two, it causes personal suffering, and three, it causes interpersonal maladjustment. Irrational action is quickly crossed off the list, unless one would like to debate about how rational love is. I wouldn’t know about his interpersonal skills, but I’d imagine them to be capable to a degree if he is able to appear in public and host a marriage ceremony. Thirdly, he’s definitely happy.
If he’s insane, then we all are.
The contemporary galgame heroine has gone through many evolutions, from the kind, soft-spoken and gentle childhood friend to the likes of the tsundere-type today. However, the basic premise is the same: they are a representation of the Japanese male gamer demographic’s image of the ideal partner – a panacea of all manly needs, a perfect personality that makes them irresistible to these men. Despite being in truth disproportionate to an actual human being, they are still strangely aesthetically beautiful. A sexist depiction? Perhaps, but an argument for another time. Cultural brainwashing? Maybe. But it’s a fact that it doesn’t display these heroines in a negative light – they’re kind, honest portrayals that aren’t objectified in any way. At least, usually, and definitely so in Love Plus. As such, it isn’t hard at all to understand why a ‘videogame character’ can attract Sal thus, and neither is there reason to be surprised in how this happened.
He’s the first man ever to do this; he understands what he’s doing is unusual. Don’t play him off as a fool by asking things like ‘Who the hell marries a video game character?’, ‘My God, is the world coming to an end?’ or ‘You just don’t do that! What is this guy, retarded?’
Is the world coming to an end? No, but the human race may be, spending up the Earth’s resources at such an alarming rate, so drastically changing the topology and climate that a natural global reset is near imminent.
Is he ‘retarded’? Not at all, a man who can organize such a marriage ceremony with such unusual terms and still procure a priest and MC is far, far from retardation.
Who ‘the hell’ marries a video game character? This man just did.
Don’t quip at someone’s marriage ceremony – that’s simply immature. The fluctuations of societal norm are to be studied, not insulted.
The realist would say that it’s against all logic to commit oneself to a string of data inside a computer chip. But I believe that when it comes to romance, the realist is very misplaced. ‘Normal’ marriage being nothing but a homo sapiens sapiens’ tradition that involves the illogical binding of a male and a female individual through no physical means that suddenly limits all their sexual relations to one another, thus greatly hindering the propagation of their genes is also very ‘real’. But romance and marriage is clearly not like this for couples.
The same also applies for Sal. Love isn’t something you can impose direct logic on. Even the most astute psychologists can go through relationship problems. Love is blind, not a mathematical equation.
Yet we all know this. No one would call love ‘a homo sapiens sapiens’ tradition that involves the illogical binding of a male and a female individual through no physical means that suddenly limits all their sexual relations to one another, thus greatly hindering the propagation of their genes’. People would say, no, love is deeper than that. It’s inexplicable, more complicated. You fall in love with somebody, that’s how it happened; you can’t stamp logic on it. Then why is it that Sal’s unconventional love for Nene, though feelings just as whimsical as any other love, is reprimanded? Because it’s against the norm. That’s all it is. The question now becomes, is this inconsistency from the norm so crucial that people everywhere can justifyingly chastise it?
Again, Sal’s no fool; and it’s exactly for this reason that this confession must’ve been astoundingly difficult for him. He knew how different what he was doing was, yet still mustered the courage to do it. It’s marriage, not something trivial one can just walk away from. This is a pact of dedication one makes for the rest of one’s life. It wasn’t easy. Even if everything else I have said turns out to be false, this one point will stand true. Even in a blind fit of love, would you be able to confess it to the masses if what you loved was something no one had ever married before? No? Then is there perhaps more than an ounce of hypocrisy displayed by the norm-enslaved public the spoke ill of this couple? Keep in mind that this deviation from the norm doesn’t hurt or compromise anybody in public at all.
There’s no right or wrong. But when you arrive at a conclusion about this, make sure you’ve thought very, very hard. This wasn’t a fools joke.
It’s all in the eyes of the beholder. Though infatuated with such characters as Hong Meiling myself, I would not marry a fictional character. This is because I desire the tangible physical and psychological care of another human being, and I definitely would not have the courage to announce such a thing. Yet even I, who won’t do the same, can see perhaps where the idea is coming from.
It’s not a travesty. It’s just different.
Ningyo
Further info on the happenings of the couple here. Because link propagation is cool.
Related posts:
December 11th, 2009 at 10:39 pm
Long post is long lol. Anyways, very true on him having different moralities. Everyone has their own preferences which is why we give names to people like the otakus, the gays, the lolicons ^^ etc. So why not make another group for the fellows out there who have a desire for video game characters? Even if they do, they should welcome it more and we’ll be seeing a lot of people coming out of their closet :P. Hell Ive seen people marry dogs out there and people are fine with it and there was a lady who wanted to marry the Eiffel tower; she had some sort of object fetish. (Linky here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/2074301/Woman-with-objects-fetish-marries-Eiffel-Tower.html ) And finally, Im with u on marrying a real 3D blood and flesh human being. It would be nice to marry characters like my mio chan, but I would like to leave myself in the hands of a real waifu ^^” Thats just my opinion on the topic though.
Btw, when will u be needing ur card sleeves? :3
December 12th, 2009 at 9:44 pm
ah yes, I’ve heard of those, objectophilia/object sexualism, it was called.
It would be ideal if people could proclaim what they wish to comfortably. Rather, I’m not too sure about another group. Another group is potentially another derogatory term they could be called…
Oh and uh, just get the cardsleeves whenever you’re free and hand them to niel. I’ll give a contact number afterwards. Much thanks.
December 13th, 2009 at 9:24 pm
I agree that Sal is no fool but this marriage is a travesty. The thing that makes this marriage not about romance or love is the issue of consent. It’s a one sided love interest.
December 13th, 2009 at 10:24 pm
I really admire your writing a lot and a lot of thoughts resulted from it. Hmmm, where to start….well to be quite honest, when I heard he was marrying a videogame character, I thought about 3 things.
1) This guy is gonna get bored…like we all do of videogames. aka, the marriage will not last and he’ll just be another statistic.
2) This guy has almost no friends I bet, or very few that don’t talk to him very much.
3) He knew damn well he was marrying a videogame and wanted to do it for the headlines/record. Jeez, I would have thought someone would have broken this record already…-_-”
No, this guy isn’t “crazy,” it just seems he’s lonely. And not in a, “he’s a creep” kind of lonely. About the little things weird of everyone’s personality, I can relate. I don’t have ANYTHING on my desktop. It’s just my background pic of a blazblue hand-drawn marker pic. I’ll have to give it to you sometime soon or post it. But yeah, I have this program called object dock which hides all my shortcuts off screen. So I know exactly what you mean. I HATE it when other people touch my computer, except my cousin. Everyone else can back the heck up. Even my girlfriend…isn’t that bad?
It gets much worse, but I won’t go on. When you think about it, people have even worse “disorders” emotionally…ohhh let’s not forget about emotions. I could write a whole post on that.
But other than that, I agree with most of your post :) Good job
December 14th, 2009 at 12:42 am
@Yi
True, and true. I didn’t actually think of consent; with how a fictional character can’t possibly provide consent, I thought it an illogical matter and disregarded it to some other corner of my mind. But.
The question is now the definition of ‘travesty’. ‘A grotesque and debased likeness or imitation’. A very opinionated word; it’s definitely true that, with a marriage being the unity of man and woman, the unity of man and computer sequence is surely an imitation of the actual ceremony. However, it is entirely based on oneself whether to call it ‘grotesque’. That’s a very powerful word to call anything; do we, people with all our own shortcomings, deserve to call this ceremony so?
I agree with you, the lack of consent only makes this an imitation in likeness, but I’m arguing against those that feel they are seated in a position where they can judge people and criticize this man and his actions. Perhaps if this man killed somebody they would be more justified, but he hasn’t hurt anyone. In middle eastern countries, prepubescent girls are wed to men well past their forties to establish connections between family. No one thinks it a travesty there.
Of course however, know that in whatever I’m saying I mean no offense.
@FaS
aw, shucks, thanks, I needed that. With the viewer to commenter ratio it seemed like everyone who didn’t comment was just TL;DRing everything. And I’m more glad than anything that it elicits thought, because that’s what I’m here to (hopefully) do.
1. Yes, he will very likely get bored; however, I don’t think he’ll quite fit into the normal statistics of ‘those who become uninterested in their marriages’ because of his ‘unique’ marriage circumstances. And in my opinion, since no arguments could possibly arise from it, his marriage might end up lasting longer than the average one…
2. An otaku has no die-hard buddies and infinite friends on 2ch.
Just kidding. I wouldn’t know, but probably.
3. I don’t think he did it for the publicity; knowing I’d be very different the last thing I’d want is publicity. Afterall, marriage is a huge commitment; if it was something small and forgettable, than I’d consider someone doing it for the exposure they’ll get, but with this I’m less convinced.
Yeah, it was pretty disconcerting when I learned that psychopaths and schizophrenics don’t actually know there’s something wrong with them in psychology. For all we know, we could all… No.
Yeah, I used to use object dock, but gave up on it since coming to vista. and you definitely have to show me that hand-drawn marker pic.
I wouldn’t let my girlfriend touch anything but my body.
Just kidding. Probably.
December 14th, 2009 at 4:31 am
“Of course however, know that in whatever I’m saying I mean no offense.”
Don’t worry about it. ^ ^
It’s a very valid position and I really truly love it when people disagree with me. (reasonably of course)
It’s probably too strong for me to call it a travesty, especially when the guy is sincerely putting his feelings in there. There is definitely no debasing qualities here.
The grotesque point that you made reminded me of some of William Faulkner’s literature (American classics), in which he explores “the grotesque”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Faulkner
To me, the grotesque is not a negative term and it can in fact be really something quite fascinating and differently beautiful.
December 14th, 2009 at 6:20 am
Someone finally decided to discuss on that news article. I remember seeing it on the newspaper, it was on the news as well and I overheard some people talking about it on the KCR.
Anyways. I don’t think the marriage was any form of insult to homo sapiens sapiens. Nor was it any act of “rebellion”. The man did something no other man in History had the guts to do so. Perhaps he is the first one to even think about but that doesn’t matter. The fact is that he has done it already and it will affect the restrictions on marriage in the future.
In my own opinion, I wouldn’t go against this man at all. He knows what he is doing more than anyone else. If he didn’t, then he probably would be divorced by now. The only thing that came to mind when I heard of this incident was “How in the world is he going to manage it? Will no one else be allowed to play H-games with naked scenes of her?”. I, of course, couldn’t answer them myself. So instead of raging at the person for not being able to comprehend such a natural wonderment, I decided that I ought to respect the man; not to look down on him instead. Why? Because being in a relationship with a woman in real life is already hard enough. Marriage? Even harder. Marriage with a woman in a game?
I salute to you, Sal9000.
December 14th, 2009 at 10:52 am
“pathologists define mental disorders with these three conditions”
Don’t mean to be picky but is the counter for the 2nd and 3rd conditions swapped by mistake? Just saying in case you wanted to correct it.
It never crossed my mind at all concerning consent until Yi mentioned it. Which reflects on me that I fail to accept a 2d character being a wife. Seeing how I didn’t think about the wife’s point of view in all this.
My thoughts on this is simple and straightforward. As long as he isn’t hurting anyone, why stop him. Though I do wonder if a tread should follow, how will the un-accepting minds think then. Will they get even more judgmental? They probably will.
Hmm.. Now I’m really curious. How does Japan itself see this. Are the people surprised at all? It IS Japan after all.
Or is the hype blown up by non-Japan residents and bloggers like me. :)
December 14th, 2009 at 11:10 am
typo… :)
tread = trend
And I forgot to highlight. If memory serves me right, in BoingBoing’s version of the video, the commentator did mention that Sal9000 didn’t mean anything outrageous and that the ceremony was more for show.
December 14th, 2009 at 4:21 pm
Wow, interesting, but even if it is a video game character, it does not have its own free will. So i’m kind of confuse as to how Sal can LOVE love a character that is created by someone else. The fact that its personality is comes directly from the person who created this char, so yeh
December 15th, 2009 at 12:35 am
@Yi
I’ll have to read him sometime, as with all people whose reputation precedes them. Or in this case, knowledge of them… the past sure had its array of visionary intellectuals. I’ve just the feeling that our advanced developed culture today is limiting free thought somehow.
@nish
Wow, it’s reached the public of the KCR? Thinking about it, it’s not that surprising, but I always felt like the Hong Kong public were numb to such Japanimation events…
And yes, That’s exactly what I thought of at first. Wouldn’t other people playing the game be considered adultery? Others told me that this only applied to his copy of the game, so he’s good as long as he keeps that out of others’ hands. I don’t take law, so I’ve no idea how that works, but it makes sense. And really, even If I did take law, I doubt they have ones that deal with this situation.
I agree with what you said. It’s a basically a confident, in your face version of what I said, haha.
@blur
Counters for the conditions? I was taught them exactly in that order. If all three conditions need to be present anyways, and they don’t present themselves in the person in any particular chronological order, they really can be listed in no particular order, no?
Yes, it hadn’t crossed mine as well. It seems galgames have taught me to see such characters as unconditional lovers. I suppose it’s one of the reasons I thought perhaps it’s a sexist depiction, but to be perfectly honest, I like how they’re depicted and don’t wish to argue for the opposition anytime soon…
I would say that the hype is blown up by non-Japan residents, though as a Hong Kong-er now Canadian, It’s not in my place to accuse anybody. I do know this though, the otaku subculture, even in Japan, is a minority. It’s not as if you can walk throughout the streets with a dakimakura slung across your shoulder and not expect strange looks. There seem to be cases of extreme individuals there, but otherwise I’m sure Sal spurned about as much controversy there as he did elsewhere.
And I see. I did watch that recap on the site, but I question the validity of it as a news center – it seems more entertainment oriented, so I guess I didn’t commit much of its recap to memory.
@mat
Hey, true. I hadn’t thought of that either. It’s almost considerably homoerotic if you put it that way…
I’m kidding. but true, the creator has actually a very large role to play in the character’s personality.