paging Sophocles

Steven has, unsurprisingly, an insightful take on what would ordinarily be a trite topic. My only comment is that you never see what happens after the guy gets the otaku dream girl, in anime or for that matter in any genre. That’s where the real challenge, and the reward lies. In a large sense the market for otaku dream girls is driven by the adolescent audience’s inability to look past the first goal; even though on a temporal basis, that goal is only the first and (hopefully) briefest stage of a very long journey.

And to get an idea of how long that journey can be, emotionally speaking, let us heed the wisdom of aged Sophocles, as quoted in Plato’s Republic: “most gladly have I escaped the thing of which you speak; I feel as if I had escaped from a mad and furious master. ”