No matter what people say, the vast majority of Eastern male players aren’t just self-inserters, they’re playing to become the girl. And I don’t mean roleplay-lite. I mean full-on identification: they see the cute, elegant, powerful heroine and think “that’s me.” That’s why so many gravitate toward gacha games, it’s not just escapism, it’s wish-fulfillment. It’s transition through pixels.

In the West, you get “you’re not her” memes. In the East, no one says that, because they are her. Whether it’s through avatars, fan art, or even starting HRT, it’s all part of the same fantasy: to live as the soft, beautiful, idealized girl they can’t be in real life.

And when a game breaks that illusion, when it treats the female character as someone other instead of letting the player become her, it loses them. A gacha doesn’t thrive on waifu collecting. It thrives when it helps someone feel closer to the girl they wish they were.