Hey, Moe. (2-D love in Japan.)

The Sunday NY Times Magazine had a fascinating article a short while back on the phenomenon of 2-D "relationships" in Japan.

The story was so weird that part of me thought it was a spoof - or a "trend" identified based on the aberrational existence of one deeply disturbed individual.

In either case, a featured "character" in the article was a 37-year old technical support guy whose "girlfriend" is:

...a stuffed pillowcase — a 2-D depiction of a character, Nemu, from an X-rated version of a PC video game called Da Capo, printed on synthetic fabric.

Nisan drives Nemutan to the beach, takes her on merry-go-round rides, and poses with her for photo-booth stickers. They've been together for three years now, and there's no danger that Nemutan will do what Nisan's former girlfriend did. She dumped him.

And if you're wondering how Nemutan does all this traipsing around without getting worn out - that's synthetic fabric we're talking here, so there's got to be some fading and pilling - Nisan has backup and replacement pillowcase covers.

He knows it’s weird for a grown man to be so obsessed with a video-game character, but he just can’t imagine life without Nemutan. “When I die, I want to be buried with her in my arms.”

Nisan is apparently not alone, but "is part of a thriving subculture of men and women in Japan who indulge in real relationships with imaginary characters."

They are called 2-D lovers, and they're obsessional fans of anime, manga, and video games. Not all are as extreme a Nisan - "some are even married" to real people.

But "the experts" believe it stems from the hard times that young Japanese have with modern romance.

According to a government survey, more than a quarter of men and women between the ages of 30 and 34 are virgins; 50 percent of men and women in Japan do not have friends of the opposite sex.

Gotta ask yourself which came first. Can you imagine having a real relationship, real friendships, real live sex with someone who's BFF is a figurine or a stuffed pillowcase.

2-D love even has a lifestyle guru, Toru Honda, who built his movement by railing against a growing social focus on good looks and money being the only thing that matters. Decent guys who had neither were being scorned in the romance market and turned to 2-D instead. Honda's schtick is that 2-D love is an I'm okay-you're okay kind of deal that shouldn't be looked down on. It's even gotten it's own slang name - moe - which, naturally, I found interesting.

In an ideal moe relationship, a man frees himself from the expectations of an ordinary human relationship and expresses his passion for a chosen character, without fear of being judged or rejected.

There's even a sliding moe-scale, from those who prefer human women to the anime kind, on up to the 10's who, while they may not want to say it loud/say it proud, want to be left alone to live the life they want.

Moe subculture has spawned a substantial market of goods centered on the desire to live in 2-D, from virtual girlfriends to body pillows to busty desktop-size figurines to cafes with waitresses dressed up as video-game characters. Every day, 2-D lovers come from all over Japan to Tokyo’s Akihabara district just to scour specialty shops and attend fan events in search of new character girlfriends to add to their collections.

Some of the "girlfriends" are just cutesy, some are out and out erotic. All, it seems, have a disturbing kiddy-porn aspect which is not the surprising, given the Hello Kitty, schoolgirl look adopted by real young women there. And, yes, some of those "moes" do just what you think they would with those 2-D girlfriends - minus the pillow talk.

Meanwhile, Nisan would like to get married, but understands that this might not pan out .

..."'Look at me. How can someone who carries this around get married? People are probably wondering what psychiatric ward I escaped from. I would think the same thing if I saw me.”

Sad, weird, disturbing, sure. Particular to Japan, however? Maybe this manga-anime manifestation of it. But the more that people let themselves inhabit the virtual world - gaming, second-life-ing, watching porn, or just plain hanging around - the less time they have for the real world, and the taxing, messy, disheartening, exhilarating relationships you can have there.

Imperfect as it is, I'll take the real world most any day.

But I can sure see how a lot of wounded individuals, feeling the harsh rejection by "the market" that demands perfect everything - looks, patter, wealth -  take refuge in another world entirely. Unfortunately, the more time they spend in it, the less likely they are to ever wend their way out of it.

No, everybody doesn't have to live the same sort of life, and there should be room enough on the "lifestyle continuum" to tolerate a fairly wide latitude when it comes to 'do no harm' choices.

Still, hard not to find 2-D love sad, weird, and disturbing.