“Yours Truly” is part of a series of soft sculptures exploring how kawaii culture gamifies and commodifies romance. It is reminiscent of Galgames which typically offer heterosexual male consumers the dating sim experience they long for. By generating various types of the ideal female lover, Galgames render the bishōjo as a vessel of eros par excellence.

Taking the form of a Tamagotchi, “Yours Truly” speculates on the fictional nature of love, while simultaneously aiming to reveal the often-overlooked violence within kawaii, a softened and sugar-coated violence which turns women into playthings and objects of desire. Sianne Ngai wrote in her book Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting that “cuteness is not just an aetheticization but an eroticization of powerlessness”, likewise, I would argue that it is precisely the bishōjo’s passivity and trauma which make her so adorable.