It’s time to admit the uncomfortable truth: anime women have broken something in an entire generation of men. Characters like Nezuko Kamado from Demon Slayer are the perfect example of how fiction has warped male expectations of women and relationships.
Nezuko is everything the average lonely guy thinks he wants: she’s eternally young, beautiful, fiercely loyal to one man (her brother, but that’s beside the point), and almost never speaks—literally. She’s powerful, cute, submissive, and emotionally dependent, wrapped in an aesthetic that feels both innocent and ethereal. She doesn’t age. She doesn’t have agency outside of her connection to a male figure. She doesn’t have flaws. She doesn’t challenge. She’s engineered to be ideal.
Now compare that to real women. They grow older. They have their own personalities, desires, opinions, and baggage. They aren’t flawless dolls with exaggerated proportions or unwavering devotion. They aren’t magical or otherworldly. And most importantly, they don’t exist solely to orbit around a man.
And for a lot of guys raised on anime—especially ones who were never socially successful or emotionally supported in real life—this comparison becomes unbearable. Real women just can’t compete with a fantasy that was never meant to be realistic in the first place.
So what do these men do? They check out. They dive deeper into fiction. They fall in love with characters like Nezuko, and convince themselves it’s better than dealing with the disappointment of the real world. They spend their 20s and 30s watching seasonal waifu bait, spiraling into parasocial attachment, and convincing themselves that 2D is superior because it never rejects them, never ages, and never fails to meet their impossible standards.