"Nijikon" (JP), also known as "2D Complex" (JP), is a term for an otaku character who is only attracted to fictional characters and shows no romantic interest in real people. It originated in the otaku community to describe people with an attraction to girls from anime, video games, light novels, and other forms of creative works.
Etymology
Meaning of the Term
Nijikon (二次コン) is a combination of "nijigen" (二次元), meaning "2-dimensional", and "complex" (コンプレックス), meaning "repressed desires that exert a dominating influence upon someone's personality". It is an abbreviation of "nijigen complex" (二次元コンプレックス) and refers to people with an attraction to 2-dimensional fictional characters.[2][3][4]
Origin
The term originated during the 1980s as part of the otaku culture in the anime and manga fandom.[2]
History
Media
The most notable example of a nijikon character is Masamune Okumura from the 2019 harem romance manga series 2.5 Dimensional Seduction (JP). Masamune is a die hard otaku, who will scream passionately while watching anime even if he is in public. However, deep down he is a broken person. After his rejection and constant bullying after confessing to the first girl he ever loved, he refused to ever love real girls again out of fear of being hurt again and vowed to only love his anime waifu. His personality started to change when he met Ririsa, a cosplayer who developed a crush on him and started dressing up as his favorite fictional characters to seduce him. As time went on he became more open and protective over her. After spending time with Ririsa and the other girls in his Manga Research Club he learned to stop seeing cosplayers as figurines and began to treat them as real people. After the wall around his heart was broken down by Ririsa and another cosplayer named Marina, his love for 3D girls was restored resulting in him getting extremely anxious and flustered around the two of them.
Personality
Nijikon characters have a romantic or sexual attraction to 2-dimensional fictional characters. This attraction often stems from an addiction with anime or manga during middle school and they usually they grow out of it, but there are also cases where it extends into adulthood.[1]
Similar Japanese Archetypes
- Otaku: A term for a character who is highly interested in a particular hobby or subculture, often to the point of being obsessed. This generally includes anime, manga, and video games.
List of Characters
Gallery
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 I don't care what people think, if you want to be realistic, you'll lose. I'm Anti-3D: "Two-Dimensional Complex Diagnosis. Mirrorz (2024/12/15). “In this day and age, it is not uncommon for people to say that they would rather have a two-dimensional girl than a flesh-and-blood human being. The term "two-dimensional girl" refers to women in anime, video games, light novels, and other forms of creativity. The term "two-dimensional complex" refers to the fact that people are more in love with or have sexual desires for such two-dimensional characters more than for real women. Many people temporarily develop a two-dimensional complex as an extension of their addiction to anime and manga in middle school, but a certain amount of them continue to develop this complex into adulthood.”
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Nijigen Complex. Nijigen Complex. “The term "two-dimensional complex" (nijigen complex) refers to the state of having sexual and romantic feelings only for fictional entities depicted in anime, manga, games, and paintings, including novel illustrations. It is abbreviated as nijikon (二次コン). The term began to be used as a kind of jargon within anime and manga fandom to describe the attraction to anime girls during the lolicon boom of the early 1980s, which followed the anime boom of the late 1970s. It was initially called "nijigen lolicon" (二次元ロリコン) or "anime lolicon" (アニメ・ロリコン). While it was often used as a negative label for otaku, there were also cases where people who had no sexual interest in real people called themselves nijijen complex.”
- ↑ What is Nijigen Complex. NicoNico Pedia (08/05/24). “A 2D complex is a condition where a person can only show affection for fantasy characters from anime, manga, light novels, games, etc. They can treat real people of the opposite sex as people, but cannot see them as potential romantic partners. Or rather, they have no interest in real people. During childhood, when aesthetic sensitivity is developing, they become obsessed with 2D content such as anime, comics, and games, and their values regarding beauty and ugliness significantly deviate from the average values of the general public. As a result, there is a theory that people come to view the opposite sex of their imagination as objects of love, sexuality, and artistic and religious worship, while at the same time feeling aversion to the appearance of people in the real world. One possible reason is that there are too many negative elements in the third dimension. To those with a two-dimensional complex, they feel something completely different from three dimensions. They are excited by characters drawn in two dimensions, and they let their imaginations run wild with gestures, voices, personalities, and so on, falling in love with the fantasy they have created.”
- ↑ Nijikon. Nihongo Master (2024/12/15). “Two-dimensional complex; People more interested in two-dimensional (i.e. anime or manga) girls than real people”
v • eOtaku Archetypes | ||
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Overview | ||
Types |
Nijikon ♡ Yurijoshi |
v • eComplex Archetypes | ||
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Standalone |
Nijikon | |
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