From what I've seen of Japan from an external viewpoint, and really Joegrundman would be the better man to address this, but there's a strong work ethic in Japan, you work, work, work and work. Japanese women are no doubt as fussy as American and European women and so for the average bloke who likes his anime and manga, is at work for most of the day, his coping mechanism is to escape to a fantasy world.
Let's face it, if there wasn't such a market for it, it wouldn't sell, which means that it's a release valve of some sort for a generation of men (and women mind you, although the games rarely tailor to them) whose only escape from the crushing brutality of reality is unreality. Once it was books, then it was films, now it's video games. Japan just takes it a step further, as they usually do. Different countries, different sociologies. We may look down on them, but they probably look down on us in different areas.
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