The Metro has a story today about a Korean man who married his pillow.
Lee Jin-gyu fell for his 'dakimakura' - a kind of large, huggable pillow from Japan, often with a picture of a popular anime character printed on the side.
In Lee's case, his beloved pillow has an image of Fate Testarossa, from the 'magical girl' anime series Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha.
Now the 28-year-old otaku (a Japanese term that roughly translates to somewhere between 'obsessive' and 'nerd') has wed the pillow in a special ceremony, after fitting it out with a wedding dress for the service in front of a local priest. Their nuptials were eagerly chronicled by the local media.
HT to ExpatKorea poster Dave Pup. It's not a new story, rather it seems to have become big tabloid news in Korea in January when the tVN show 화성인 바이러스 did a thing on him and his pillow. You'll find plenty of news results and pictures from then and now in Korean via Naver. Here are a couple pictures from the episode, via Max Movie.
That's an interesting show, by the way.
Korean internet news sites always use screen captures when they want to use a picture on another site but don't have the rights to it, so that's sort of what I did up there with my screencap of a screencap of The Metro's article.
9 comments:
30 Rock did an entire episode on these pillows. Classic.
Recently, a man in Japan also married a video game character if I recall properly. What I wonder is are these marriages legal? Do they get marriage benefits? How does one divorce a pillow?
I've only read this blog for about 14 months, but this is by far the best piece you've done, Brian.
I'll be linking this everywhere...
Bravo!
Thanks Dan, I appreciate the love (and extra traffic). But best?
The Herald has written on it now, saying they're not married.
http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/NEWKHSITE/data/html_dir/2010/03/10/201003100103.asp
Whatever.
Does he have sex with the pillow too?
Oh, those wacky otaku!
WHaT The FUCK???
Given what I know of the media, he was probably told the "wedding scene" would be used in a fantasy sequence, and then it was presented as reality. Weird enough that he's willing to act it out, but sadder that they'd exaggerate his, er, condition.
What was gonna say was, if this is a legal marriage, I sure hope they're ready for gay marriage, because marrying a pillow is way more of a stretch than marrying another human of either sex.
Also, can't you just see some right-wingers thinking this is a satisfactory alternative to all that miscegenation that's sullying the bloodlines? Not a majority of people, but some bastards out there probably would argue it suitable for men who cannot attract a "real" (ie. Korean) woman. When the tech gets developed enough... one wonders if they could even pull it off...
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