In November 2018, an elementary school administrator named Akihiko Kondo married Miku Hatsune, a fictional pop singer. The couple's relationship had been aided by a hologram machine that allowed Kondo to interact with Hatsune. When Kondo proposed, Hatsune responded with a request: "Please treat me well." The couple had an unofficial wedding ceremony in Tokyo, and Kondo has since been joined by thousands of others who have also applied for unofficial marriage certificates with a fictional character. Though some raised concerns about the nature of Hatsune's consent, nobody thought she was conscious, let alone sentient.

Are video games better than sex? That's the sort of ludicrous question that is only posed by someone who has never had sex, or is searching for an attention-grabbing way to open an article about a cleaning simulator. However, I will say this: last week I had the opportunity to have it off but I played PowerWash Simulator instead, and honestly I'm not sure I had a worse time. Maybe it's to do with age. Like every middle-aged female gamer I know, I love Lara Croft.

In almost every way, Akihiko Kondo is an ordinary Japanese man. He's pleasant and easy to talk to. He has friends and a steady job and wears a suit and tie to work. There's just one exception: Kondo is married to a fictional character. His beloved, Hatsune Miku, is a turquoise-haired, computer-synthesized pop singer who has toured with Lady Gaga and starred in video games.

An American man who murdered and beheaded a Japanese woman he met on an online dating app has been sentenced to eight years in prison, according to reports. Yevgeniy Vasilievich Bayraktar, of Long Island, New York, was sentenced on Tuesday in a Japanese court after reportedly admitting to strangling Saki Kondo, 27, in February 2018 at an apartment he'd rented while sightseeing in Osaka. Bayraktar strangled the young woman and then used a saw to dismember her, and buried her body parts across different cities, the New York Post reports. Bayraktar, 27, was not indicted for murder in the case, because prosecutors could not prove that he had set out with the intention to kill Kondo. He was instead charged and found guilty of manslaughter and abandoning a body.