Love knows no boundaries, and no one believes this more than 35-year-old Akihiko Kondo. The Japanese man found the love of his love and insisted on marrying her despite his mother's disapproval. There's just one tiny problem with all of that.
She's not real. That's right.
Images courtesy: AFP
Kondo just married a hologram of Japanese pop-icon Hatsune Miku, in a 2 million yen (Rs 12.7 lakh) ceremony in Tokyo, that all of his relatives refused to attend. That's because Hatsune Miku isn't even a hologram based on a real person, she's a digital creation through and through.
Also Read: Meet Hatsune Miku, A Japanese Pop Sensation That Doesn't Even Exist In Real Life
We've actually talked about Miku before, and how she's the digital avatar of a voice synthesis software. Translated as "first sound of the future", Hatsune Miku was originally just a voice style for the Vocaloid software, which allows people to write and compose their own songs, and then have it sing it back. Of course, she's since gained a cult following in Japan, and elsewhere around the world, opening for human music artists and even performing at shows of her own.
None of that stopped Kondo from marrying Miku though, walking her down the aisle in the form of a stuffed doll with her trademark gigantic anime eyes and aquamarine pigtails down to her ankles. At home though, Kondo has been living with a holographic version of her since March, floating above the projector on an expensive desktop.
"I'm in love with the whole concept of Hatsune Miku, but I got married to the Miku of my house," the school administrator told AFP. "I never cheated on her, I've always been in love with Miku-san. I've been thinking about her every day."
Hologram-Miku is powered by a basic artificial intelligence, waking him up as his morning alarm, greeting him when he gets home from work, and even reminding him when it's time for bed. Kondo makes sure he's always in bed with Miku as well, in the form of a stylized body pillow, with a wedding band now around her left wrist.
Gatebox, the company that makes the hologram devices, also provided the newly-wed couple with an official "marriage certificate", one of over 3,700 they've distributed for "cross-dimension" marriages.
"Miku-san is the woman I love a lot and also the one who saved me," he said. "I believe we must consider all kinds of love and all kinds of happiness."
One slight problem though here Kondo my man. Even if we, for the sake of argument, assume that Hatsune Miku is real, there's a glaring oversight here. She's designed to be a perpetual 16-year-old,, and that's only based on her lore. If you go by her real age, she was only designed in 2007, making her 10 years old.
So congratulations Kondo, you're probably a cross-dimensional entity now.