"Mr. Kondo... has long known that he didn’t want a human partner. Partly, it was because he rejected the rigid expectations of Japanese family life."

"But mostly, it was because he had always felt an intense — and, even to himself, inexplicable — attraction to fictional characters.... Mr. Kondo sees himself as part of a growing movement of people who identify as 'fictosexuals.'... He wants the world to know that people like him are out there and, with advances in artificial intelligence and robotics allowing for more profound interactions with the inanimate, that their numbers are likely to increase...."

I'm getting the sense that it's not going to be enough that we regard him with empathy and refrain from saying this is trivial or mentally disordered. "Fictosexuals" will demand full respect.

Or so I'm thinking, as I read the long NYT article "This Man Married a Fictional Character. He’d Like You to Hear Him Out. Akihiko Kondo and thousands of others are in devoted fictional relationships, served by a vast industry aimed at satisfying the desires of a fervent fan culture." 

[T]he idea that fictional characters can inspire real affection or even love may well have reached its highest expression in modern Japan, where the sentiment has given rise to a highly visible subculture and become the basis for a thriving industry. The Japanese word for the feelings those characters inspire is “moe,” a term that has become shorthand for just about anything that is viscerally adorable. ...

For some, the relationships represent a rejection of the entrenched “breadwinner-housewife” model of marriage in Japan, said Agnès Giard, a researcher at the University of Paris Nanterre who has extensively studied fictional marriages. “To the general public, it seems indeed foolish to spend money, time and energy on someone who is not even alive,” Dr. Giard said. “But for character lovers, this practice is seen as essential. It makes them feel alive, happy, useful and part of a movement with higher goals in life.” 

Rather than becoming more isolated as a result of their relationships, women benefit from the elaborate communities that develop around them, Dr. Giard said. In her experience, women see the fictional marriages as empowering, “a way to challenge gender, matrimonial and social norms.”...

The article makes no mention of the declining birth rate in Japan. 

Here's the Wikipedia article, "Moe":

Sometimes feelings of moe towards fictional characters include "sexual excitement", or are understood in the context where "lots of beautiful girls and boobs appear." In these cases, feelings of pure affection that gradually become stronger over time can lead to these feelings of eroticism. 

Moe, however, is also considered to be distinct from pure lust. While small amounts of lust is generally considered moe, a feeling that focuses too heavily on lust is considered outside the scope of moe. In a light novel by Nagaru Tanigawa, one of the characters mentions that the distinction between moe and pure lust can be made based on whether one can still maintain feelings of affection even after one has indulged in masturbation. According to commentator, Tōru Honda [ja] who considers moe to be "romance within one's head", the ideal kind of love within moe is "romantic love".

ADDED: Meade noted that phrase in the last paragraph — "pure lust." It's used there to mean only lust, but it's also reads as something inherently impossible: Can lust be pure? Can the sin be a virtue? My response was: "Pure Lust" is the title of a book by Mary Daly — "Pure Lust: Elemental Feminist Philosophy." And I've read it. Long ago. I can't remember what meaning Daly intended to convey by modifying "lust" with "pure."

The publisher's note on that book is rather impenetrable:  

In this groundbreaking feminist text, [Mary Daly] extends the ³deviant philosophy² developed in her classic Gyn/Ecology, and draws from her Webster¹s¹ First New Intergalactic Wickedary of the English Language in order to deconstruct/reconstruct our speech and expose the assumptions behind our thought processes. She uncovers the patriarchal reversals that have made us the inheritors of a belief system of the absurd, exhorting us to break out of the guilt and fear in which the male ³sadosociety² entraps us. A work of flamboyant brilliance.

I genuinely don't know if those superscript numbers are in the original. Maybe they are quote marks that got corrupted.