A husbando is a male (anime) character that you are romantically and/or sexually attracted to. Quite literally, you would want them to be your husband if they were a real person.

Although not inherently restrictive to being an anime character, the terminology is rooted in the anime community and is adopted by fans of other mediums. However, the key is that the husbando or waifu is not real. They must be in some form drawn or animated. Some people have their husbandos or waifus from other animated TV shows, comics, video games, etc. These however do tend to be related to Japanese media given the origins in otaku culture.

Husbandos are the male version of waifu. Both have been popular for decades in the anime community (both Eastern and Western) across male and female anime fans, where having a husbando/waifu is increasingly popular with anime’s popularity rise since the pandemic. The terms themselves, however, are proportionately seeing a decrease in usage and knowledge across the Western community.

Etymology and Terminology

“Husbando” and “Waifu” are both essentially anglicized versions of the Japanese loanwords for husband and wife respectively. These translations have caught on due to their overly Japanese-sounding style within the Western Otaku community and have spread since.

In Japan, there are words for people who have a dedication to their husbando or waifu. “Yumejoshi” is the word for a woman who ‘ships’ themselves with an anime character. “Yumedanshi” is the male version of “Yumejoshi”. (Note the same suffixes applied for people who enjoy yaoi - “Fujoshi” and “Fudanshi”). Having a husbando

There are ranges to having a husbando. A person may have multiple husbandos or just one. There obviously has to be a threshold to having an attraction to them, but the intensity may vary.

In Japan, people can actually get married to their husbando - both formally or informally. People can hire companies that would setup the wedding day and hire photographers. A recent example of this from this year is Instagram user yoichi_o4o1 getting married to Blue Lock character Isagi Yoichi, which sparked lots of attention and plenty of SEO-spammy articles.

As geeks, scenes like this are bound to get negative attention from people, hence leading to her making her accounts private. But this is not a standout case. Perhaps the most famous of these is the man who married Hatsune Miku in 2018. Going onto this topic will, however, steer into the realm of fictosexuality.

Why do people have a husbando?

Some people can see a character and have an attraction towards their paramours - a romantic one. Many people experience this to varying degrees. The majority of people who watch TV or films will have one character that they have an attraction towards, and this is becoming a more widely-accepted phenomenon. Many people say it as a half-joke half-real statement in conversation which becomes its own topic of conversation.

This same principle applies to major anime fans and having a husbando. Mostly women, with gay men such as myself, we tend to have very nerdy interests which are aligned with the otaku community — if not in the otaku community. This involves anime, Japanese video games, visual novels, etc. To the typical Western individual they may consider this anything anime-related.

I find that this behaviour typically develops in adolescent years among nerds who won’t really go out much nor have any love live at the time, so they just may form attachments to fictional characters themselves. Of course, this does not apply to everyone who have these interests at all. It is actually a small percentage of the community who have a husbando or waifu both in the East and the West.

People with a husbando will be very engrossed in digital anime communities - partaking or not. These days it can be seen on Discords, image boards, forums, micro-circles on social media platforms, and more. This realm of subculture, given younger generations increasingly all-conusming engagement with media, may give way to the rise of this continued infatuation with anime characters.