The Rising of the Shield Hero introduced one of the ultimate waifu of 2019 in the form of Raphtalia and we couldn’t have been happier. While human-looking in most ways, Raphtalia is a Demi-human or basically half-human and half-raccoon girl. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this type of anime girl but in that same year we had other half-human girls rising up like the foxgirl Senko in The Helpful Fox Senko-san, Shia Haulia—a rabbit girl—from Arifuerta: From Commonplace to World’s Strongest and the anamorphic bunny girl Haru from Beastars. Needless to say whatever your taste in cute animal girl, you had plenty to choose from just in 2019 alone!

We don’t doubt there are several of you readers going “well that was only one year” and we’d like to show you that is quite untrue. In 2020 and 2021 there were even more wonderful half-human waifu and we will show just a few. There was in 2020 Vanilla and Chocola from Nekopara and Michiru Kagemori from BNA. 2021—despite only being halfway over—has also given us numerous girls from Monster Girl Doctor like Saphentite and Tisalia as well as the beefy warrior girl Ghislaine from Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation! Let’s be realistic folks, in just three years a giant amount of waifu aren’t even fully human and that seems to be the common new theme in harem series especially.

Now is this rise of new-age anime girls a bad thing? In our honest opinion, not at all. Anime girls have always been cute and quite desirable—which is why our homes are adorned with anime girl statues and body pillows—but were getting quite repetitive. As much as we love blond haired girls with oppai that defy reality, it’s nice to see anime girls that are both cute and kind of different. Sure, Raphtalia might have a raccoon tail and raccoon ears but the rest of her is 100% human and that just means we can enjoy a new fetish/desire. Anime girls don’t need to be human, they can be half-human hybrids as long as they still have the oppai we desire so greatly.

Despite the quite large cast of new half-human anime girls, this trend will never fully change the anime landscape. There will always be a greater number of normal big-chested and/or slender anime girls and they will no doubt be 100% human. So don’t fear the high amount of half-human anime girls as of recently if that isn’t your taste, anime will still be focused on creating human anime girls for us to nosebleed over but the variety is always welcome.