Philips Magnavox Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution Trigger Happy - Manual (Page 246)

Trigger Happy
248
But what is it about the deformed aesthetic that
makes it so desirable? To most Western eyes, such
characters look merely childlike and childish: “cutesy.”
But remember that unrealism in videogames need not
be a handicap; it can be a positive, deliberate pleasure.
The Japanese preference for “deformed” physiques, in
this case, is a logical extension of this idea to the
human form itself. Unearthliness is part of the charm.
This idea in turn explains another peculiarly
Japanese phenomenon: that of virtual “girlfriends” and
“dating” videogames, in which the (almost always
male) player tries to woo a deformed anime-style
female character with massively enhanced breasts,
eyes and legs. Several of these games, which in
general do not cross over into the West at all, were on
display in Makuhari, including one schoolday-romance
RPG named Little Lovers: She So Game; the
company’s stand was decorated with large display
boards on which were pinned life-size schoolgirl and
sailor uniforms. Writer Robert Hamilton has supposed
that young Japanese men, to go by the weighting of
magazine sales (those sorts of glossy fanzines that
Hamilton nicely terms “devotional” literature) actually
prefer deformed anime and videogame idols to human