Do Japanese Men Like it When Women Talk Like Anime Characters?

Anime voice actresses often use high-pitched and squeaky sounding voices to emphasize the childlike qualities and innocence of the characters they portray. While exaggerated and unrealistic, such portrayal is a hit among Japanese fans that anime voice actresses enjoy a special kind of popularity in Japan.

Youth Internet portal My Navi Gakusei no Madoguchi set out to investigated such fascination is replicated in real life, according to Rocketnews24.

The website conducted a survey among 200 male college students asking if they like it when actual women speak in anime-style voices.

The findings revealed that 36.2 % of the respondents claimed to like women speaking in anime voices. The most common reason is that it is simply “cute.” Others justify their choice for the simple reason that since they like anime, they would enjoy hearing anime voices from real people too.

“You don’t get many chances to hear that kind of voice live and unrecorded,” said one in favor of real-life anime speaking girls.

Majority of the respondents, however, don’t agree. According to the results, 63.8 % of the participants would rather hear normal voices instead of voices that they find “shrill, too hyper, and just plain annoying”.

“They don’t work well with a real person,” said one of the naysayers.

“It’s creepy, because it makes me feel like she’s not living in the real world,” another one said.