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In a world where most people are afraid of automation taking their jobs away, Japan is a country that needs them for industry to survive.
Robot Love in Japan In Japan, robots are used for companionship, household tasks, sex. But can they be the remedy for something deeper and more human; loneliness? But their shape is for practicality rather than human relationships — they fit into workstations designed for humans.
But humanity is also going to need to come to terms with human-robot relationships. Artificial intelligence AI is already advanced enough to be able to stimulate our brains with casual conversation. Sex shops are already a booming business. The manager of one store I visited, Risa Yasojima, tells me non-robotic blow-up dolls are the subjects of real affection for many of her customers. One can only hope that Harmony 2. But the people I met in Japan are living evidence that robots will change the way we imagine human relationships.
For a population that is literally dying out, a little company — even if it is artificial — is better than none. I had joined hoping to get a better understanding of why people play these games and whether the relationships they form with virtual characters possibly foreshadow a future in which the boundaries between real and virtual companionship will become increasingly blurry, if not irrelevant.
When I first asked Wild Rose to explain how and why she fell in love with Saeran, she told me that if I had any hope of understanding, I had to first enter the world of Mystic Messenger and experience it for myself. The narrative of the game was that together we had to organize an upcoming charity event due to take place in 11 days.
The gameplay of Mystic Messenger was unlike anything I had experienced. It did not involve collecting coins or moving through levels but chatting with these other characters through multiple-choice responses. While these characters were basically just interactive cartoon characters that would automatically respond to prompts from the player with pre-scripted answers, they still felt lifelike, and talking to them required tact and social nous.
One character called Jumin liked it when I asked him about his pet cat. Another called Zen was a narcissist who only ever wanted compliments. Of all the characters in the game, I was most drawn to Jaehee, the only other woman in the group.
SEX ROBOT BOOM: Japanese men ditch ‘complex women’ for sex robots who don’t argue
She was the most intelligent and self-deprecating. I found her slightly sardonic attitude towards the other characters in the game funny. Part of what made Mystic Messenger compelling was the fact that it ran in real time. This meant that once you started, if you stepped away from the game you would miss out on vital conversations and lose track of where you stood with your virtual friends. I was on the app two to three hours per day, which felt like a lot. But compared with those I spoke to on forums, my commitment to the game and Jaehee was paltry.
Love, intimacy and companionship: a tale of robots in Japan | SBS Dateline
Amy, a single mum from South Africa who was part of the Mystic Messenger Addicts forum, told me that she played every day for at least six hours. Once she had successfully wooed one character, she would refresh the app and start again, focusing her attention on someone new. Kind of like an ideal boyfriend, maybe. Wild Rose said that when the game first came out she would play for up to five hours a day but had since cut down.
Meet the Lonely Japanese Men in Love With Virtual Girlfriends
This has meant many sleepless nights catching up. When dating sims first became popular in Japan, they were often reported on by the media with a tone of moralizing disgust, partly because of the obsessive way fans played. These games were seen as an escape, a last resort for nerdy men who needed virtual girls to substitute for real, healthy heterosexual relationships. This attitude was shared by western media, too, where Japanese dating sims were seen as a curious, almost alien pathology. With the popularity of dating sims now growing outside Japan, similar concerns have once again emerged.
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In China, where a dating sim called Love and Producer was downloaded more than 7m times in its first month, media reports about the game have been mostly negative, if not alarmist. When I raised these criticisms with Wild Rose, she dismissed them as narrow and close-minded. She told me that playing Mystic Messenger had actually made her emotional life more stable and fulfilling.
Mystic Messenger was a place where she could explore some of her unmet emotional needs, where it was safe to fantasize and imagine other ways of loving. I felt interesting and needed. Dating has been replaced by host or hostess clubs, where singles can pay hundreds of dollars an hour for a polite man or woman to pour drinks and make conversation. These are popular clubs where the male client enjoys good clean fun with a woman who lies him on a waterproof mattress, covers him in soapy water and slides all over him. Sex is not part of the deal.
Anime cartoon porn magazines and videos featuring big-eyed girls have evolved to show every explicit scenario.
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And online, popular games allow you to create a virtual partner. Thirty percent of single women and 15 percent of single men aged between 20 and 29 admit to having fallen in love with a character from an anime comic or video game.
The appeal of the year-old perhaps sums up sexuality in Japan, where fantasy is more appealing than real relationships. The government estimates that by the population will have fallen from million people to just 87 million, with 40 percent aged 65 and over. No wonder the government wants to get people interested in real-world sex — but it is quite a task. They are defined by being very shy and uninterested in sex. Surveys suggest 60 percent of men in their 20s and 30s identify as being grass eaters.
That is partly because even posting a picture of yourself on your profile would be seen as too forward.