Can Otakus Find Love? Anime Will Show Us the Way!

Can otakus find love? Is it possible to be dedicated to anime and games and figures and 2D characters yet find romantic love with a 3D flesh-and-blood person? The question has become one of the themes of the spring 2018 anime season.

First there’s a fun show called 3D Kanojo: Real Girl about a socially awkward otaku boy named Tsutsui who encounters a rough-around-the-edges girl from his class named Iroha, who casually teases him for being a virgin. Later, when Hikari defends Iroha, she decides she’d like to be his girlfriend even though he lacks confidence. Can an otaku boy who loves 2D anime characters handle having an actual 3D girlfriend? Can he overcome his self-doubt and realize he has a lot to offer Iroha? And what is the secret Iroha is trying to hide? It’s an adorable show so far.

Another related series is Wotakoi, aka Wotaku ni Koi wa Muzukashii, aka Wotakoi: Love Is Hard for Otaku, the story of halting otaku love in a Japanese company. Narumi is a woman with a secret: she’s a secret video game and yaoi otaku. When she learns that her childhood friend and fellow otaku Hirotaka is working at her new company, she tries desperately to get him to hide her secret from her co-workers. In the end, Hirotaka and Narumi realize that dating another otaku might be logical, and they start going out, despite both having, shall we say, an incomplete set of social skills. I like the show a lot because it’s about two people doing what many of us are doing, trying to balance our fun-loving otaku selves with the real world, and the characters are all lots of fun. As with shows like Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun, Net-juu no Susume and Tsuredure Children, it’s quite fun to root for the two would-be lovers as the story unfolds.

So can otakus find love? Watch these two new series and find out!