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If you want interesting and well-planned tactics, play Commandos or X-com.

Early on in a couple’s romantic relationship, there’s still a lot the two individuals don’t know about each other. Each date is another step in the gradual process of discovering things about your partner while at the same time revealing a little more of yourself.

Sometimes the surprises are happy ones. Your new boyfriend turns out to be a great cook, or have a wonderful sense of humor. Other times, though, the things you learn are much less pleasant. You notice he’s a heavy drinker. He mentions he blows half his paycheck on pachinko. You learn the bone-chilling reason all the turtles have gone missing from the park behind his apartment.

Or, maybe, that he has a crush on an anime girl.

With the majority of anime enthusiasts being male, Japanese animation has long featured plenty of attractive female characters. While there have always been some fans who become fervently, even romantically, attached to their favorite heroine, the phenomena has become increasingly prevalent as studios pull in more and more of their revenue from character-based merchandising, and in turn dedicate an ever increasing amount of screen time to their comeliest characters.

At the same time, the number of people who identify themselves as anime fans is on the rise, meaning that numerically-speaking, there’s a decent chance the guy a girl just started dating is pretty into animation. This in turn leads to another troublesome possibility: even if he’s not seeing another girl on the side in real life, he might have a preexisting relationship with his favorite two-dimensional gal.

Nobody enjoys playing second fiddle, though. Internet portal Niconico News recently spoke with women who’d found themselves in this sort of situation before, and asked for their advice on how to handle it.

1. Make no effort to hide your disapproval
The first method is to simply voice your displeasure directly. This strategy has an advantage in that it bypasses the need to pick up on subtle cues, something that men, as a gender, don’t exactly have the best batting average for.

“It’s embarrassing, and if my friends found out my boyfriend’s hobby, I don’t think they’d want to hang out with me anymore,” worries one 25-year-old. “But I do like him, so I’ve told him that I think his interest in that kind of stuff is nasty.”

Actions speak louder than words, though, so some women feel it’s necessary to make sure their boyfriend knows they’ll take action to limit his obsession if he lets it get out of hand.

“It bugs me that he even likes anime at all,” gripes one college student, “and when I saw his collection, I thought about just throwing it all in the trash. I didn’t, but he noticed how I felt, and now he’s trying to keep it in check.”

While this definitely shows you mean business, we should point out that unceremoniously tossing out your guy’s painstakingly acquired hoard of anime merch doesn’t have the best track record, as that’s exactly what may have broken up at least one marriage in Japan last year. Besides, even if you’ve got no respect for the personal property of others, why stick it all in the garbage can when you could sell it online, instead?

That would be an instant turn-off.

Hmm, maybe if Heaven hates "lifers," I should start hating "healthers." Or whatever they're called.

Hmm, maybe if Heaven hates "lifers," I should start hating "health enthusiasts"? Or whatever they're called.

There are too few of them.