Nobody comes out of the womb with a desire to nut on plastic anime figurines. This is a learned fetish; bursting forth from the infinite possibility of cyberspace and the relentless curiosity of the inscrutable male brain chemistry. You shuffle through a zillion different permutations of libido — wading into copious darkened forums, witnessing the most esoteric legends of masturbation — before crossing the Rubicon into the unknown.
For a 23-year old in Illinois we’ll call Jeff, it only took one quick glimpse into the yawning void for his life to change forever. Is it a blessing or a curse? Well, that all depends on your perspective. “I was browsing the NSFW side of Reddit and came across r/cummingonfigurines. At first I thought it was really weird, but then a few days later, I got bored so I got one of my figurines and, well, came on it,” he tells me. “Something about seeing the figure dripping with ‘it’ was very erotic. I posted it and got positive feedback.”
The subreddit Jeff is referring to has 38,000 members, and it contains one of the most complete archives of feral male id available on the internet. Here is all the context you need: Within the greater hentai merchandising industry, you can purchase tiny, painted sculptures of various busty anime girls — usually themed after whatever serials are currently burning up the Crunchyroll charts. Those figurines can be used as totems for your standard, parasocial simpdom efforts, because there is perhaps no better way to demonstrate your allegiance to, say, Kill La Kill’s Ryuko Matoi than to stack a shelfful of the character’s countenance in a series of immodest forms. But the most dedicated take their tributes a step further by offering their seed directly to the plastic.
As such, r/cummingonfigurines is an overflowing gallery of cartoon miniatures smothered with ejaculate, as men upload the results of their white-hot wanking work, which absolutely defiles the statues. This isn’t really my thing, which is why I find the subreddit dramatically difficult to look at — almost like extended exposure to the Chernobyl blob. But there is no limit to the human experience, which is why when Jeff gazed deep into the eyes of a crusty nude chibi, he found his people.
“It’s seeing the character drenched in cum. It’s almost like an art,” he continues. “The best posts are posts where the entire figure has really creamy cum on it. You probably already know this, but if you edge while masturbating, your cum can be watery.”
You have to admire the dedication. Masturbation is typically flippant, low-value and orients around a confederacy of seedy porn aggregators. But directing your concupiscent mania to anime toys requires a whole extra level of ritual. Another poster on the subreddit, who we’ll call Andrew, tells me that this fetish can get very expensive, very quickly. “Once you see a post of another figure, you’ll just want to buy it, which happened to me a couple of times,” he explains, noting that the thrills of busting on a lewd miniature cannot be mutually experienced over a Wi-Fi connection. No, this is brick-and-mortar erotica, and that stuff can quickly break the bank. Jeff tells me that authentic figures can cost as much as $200, while bootlegs run around $30. That’s a hell of an investment to cover with ejaculate.
“They must be washed after every use so they’re never thrown away,” Jeff says. “I personally own 23 figures, but I don’t cum on all of them because collecting figures to display is another hobby of mine.”
In fact, sometimes the r/cummingonfigurines denizens resort to alternative substances to get their rocks off — in the same way a McDonald’s photographer might sculpt a Big Mac out of rubber to ensure that the false tomatoes appear bright red on camera. After all, argues Andrew, the goal is to make it appear like a miniature is lousy with cum. So sometimes he uses a frothy spritz of soap, which looks suitably cum-like, and can be reasonably targeted in a way a penis on the brink of climax cannot be. “It’s a bit easier to clean, too,” he says. (Semen, of course, isn’t known for its disinfectant qualities.)
Everyone I spoke to was concerned that I’d be administrating some finger-waving, moralistic judgment, but frankly, nobody should be making fun of these guys. Yes, nutting on pint-sized anime girls is an outre fetish, but consider the other smutty options that possess much more mainstream acceptance. Every porn site is filled to the brim with exploitative production companies, who pay their hard-working talent poverty-line wages and seem thoroughly unconcerned about the havoc in their wake. These forum dwellers are giddily paying full market price for naughty statues and are downright thrilled for the opportunity to nut ethically. “Everyone thinks people who cum on figures are all degenerate losers, but that isn’t true at all,” says Jeff. “I’ve met a lot of really cool people through this fetish and have even made relationships through DMs.”
Horny men on the internet have traditionally represented one of the most destructive forces on the internet. But the boys on r/cummingonfigurines are wonderfully benign, committing beautifully victimless crimes against taste in a sanctum of their own making. I hope this fetish sparks more interest in mainstream society. Perhaps then we can finally be free.
Luke Winkie
Luke Winkie is a writer and former pizza maker from San Diego. In addition to MEL, he's written for Rolling Stone, Vice, the New York Times, Gizmodo, Vox and anywhere else good content can be found.
