Fans Have Chosen Their Ideal Anime Wife

One of the more prominent arguments in anime fandom is which anime character is the best wife, or the more colloquial term “waifu.” But which anime girl is actually the best?

Who do fans think would make an ideal wife? With Wife Day recently passing in Japan (a day meant to thank wives for all of their hard work over the year), fan website Anime! Anime! ran a poll on Japanese fans, as spotted by Otaku USA.

This final list was made by taking suggestions from social media, then narrowing down 25 final girls with a questionnaire. Anime! Anime! then published the results from a pool of surveyors that was 67% male and 70% in their teens and 20’s.

Here’s the final list from least ideal to most:

10 (tie). Miho Nishizumi – Girls und Panzer

10 (tie). Vignette April Tsukinose – Gabriel DropOut

9. Sakura Kinomoto – Cardcaptor Sakura

8. Miho Azuki – Bakuman

7. Chise Hatori – The Ancient Magus’ Bride

6. Tsubasa Hanekawa – Monogatari series

5. Akari Kawamoto – March Comes in Like a Lion

4. Sakura Mato – Fate series

3. Megumi Kato – Saekano: How to Raise a Boring Girlfriend

2. Rem – Re:Zero -Starting Life in Another World

1. Asuna Yuuki – Sword Art Online

The trends in this list skew toward a few things. Most of the series depicted here are relatively new, with Cardcaptor Sakura being the only series from more than ten years ago. Though this also might be attributed to its recent resurgence given its upcoming sequel series Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card.

Though there are a few picks that are unsurprising given their massive popularity. Asuna from Sword Art Online (which has just announced its next story arc) may have made the top of the list not only for her popularity, but the fact her “ideal” qualities are heightened by her character arc with Kirito in the series’ first arc.

Also most of the characters chosen are from a certain age group, with Sakura being the youngest. This eliminates many “waifus” fans may be more particular to in the West like Cowboy Bebop‘s Faye Valentine, Dragon Ball‘s Bulma, or women from an older series (even considering the recent spin-off starring her) like Lupin III‘s Fujiko Mine.

This isn’t the only Japanese survey to skew differently than it would in the West with a list of fans choosing their favorite anime transformations not listing Western fan-favorite transformations like Super Saiyan from Dragon Ball.

via Otaku USA