Aqua is a powerful goddess of water, one who guides humans to the afterlife -- unless for some reason she decides not to. We first meet the blue-haired goddess after high school boy Kazuma Satou finds himself dead and standing before her. She offers Kazuma a classic red-pill-or-blue-pill kind of choice; he can continue on to heaven or reincarnate into a fantasy world just like the ones in the games he played during his Otaku shut-in life. Aqua lacks some people skills; she is unjustifiably arrogant and tends to piss people off, including the recently deceased Kazuma. She informs Kazuma that in the new world he will be tasked with defeating the Demon King. She, in her benevolence, offers him anything to help him in his quest before he goes, in an effort to stick it to Aqua, he says “Okay, I pick you.”

“Yay! I get to go to a wonderful fantasy world with a beautiful goddess,” is what most people would say right up until you got there, with no talent, no skills, no roof over your head and the most useless goddess in the universe as your companion. We know that this article is about Waifus and we shouldn’t put any of them down. We do, however, recognize some of their shortcomings, particularly when it’s part of what makes them cute. Aqua is an airhead, she is terrible with money, and can be pretty lazy. She is also a rather stubborn girl and only seems to step up when her pride is on the line. She can be kind of sweet and, in her own way, considerate to others’ feelings. She makes this list mainly because we all want someone to take care of. She is helpless and deep down she just wants someone to cuddle with on a couch in front of a roaring fire. Besides, she’s beautiful and we all like beautiful girls.

We all have had at least one person in our lives like Mashiro, a person who seems to exist in her own world because our reality is too confining for her true genius. She isn’t like a lot of the girls we meet in anime. She’s not loud, she’s far from perfect and she doesn’t have a great sense of self. Mashiro seems to have devoted all of the portions of her brain to making art and making everything else in her life come in a very distant second, if not third. She was already a famous painter when she moved into Sakurasou Hall at Suiko College in her pursuit of studying manga. The off-campus dormitory and its group of misfit residents, most of whom are brilliant in their own right, were more than welcoming. Yet living with a genius can be hard. Mashiro has an inability to take care of herself, a job that’s left to Sorata -- a most ordinary guy. Sorata became responsible for her just like the many stray cats he’s adopted, which got him kicked out of the main campus dorms. He took over many responsibilities for Mashiro, cleaning in her room, doing her laundry, picking out her clothes and even reminding her to wear underwear.

We chose Mashiro for the list because behind those pale pink eyes is a genius. Mashiro may need taking care of and protecting because of her naiveté which may seem like a drawback, but changing her into a self-reliant person could destroy the genius. We love Mashiro because of her peculiar nature. We love her because she looks at the world in a different way than we do. We love her because her focus on the details of world around her means her mind is filled with massive amounts of distraction. When she takes the time to focus on us we accept it as a sincere compliment. When she is able to shut out the world and take us into her own world, a very special place for someone of artistic brilliance, it is a very intimate experience.

Charlotte is a first year student at the IS academy, a school that teaches young women (with only one exception) how to pilot and maintain an armed powered exoskeleton or “Infinite Stratos.” The IS are not supposed to be weapons of war but of competitions, yet, they invariably find themselves called into military service on a multitude of occasions. Charlotte is the pilot of the Rafale Revive Custom II, an IS built by her estranged father’s company. She originally enrolled in the IS Academy as boy, under the name Charles, to steal trade secrets from her roommate, Ichika, the only actual male pilot of an IS. She is eventually found out, forgiven, and is forced to move out of Ichika’s room. She is an extremely competent pilot and marksman. Her style of fighting is run-and-gun with fast movements and automatic weapons fire. She is one of those girls that don’t need to be protected; she is the kind who will protect you.

Charlotte is a cute girl with a long blonde ponytail she ties back with a red ribbon. She is most often seen wearing the school uniform with a shortened hemline, because what else would you expect from a French girl? She is on this list because in spite of the chaos going on around her, she seems to be one of the more grounded girls at the academy. Her relationship with Ichika is one based on friendship since she was just a “he” in Ichika’s eyes until her secret was discovered. Unlike many of the other girls who try to win Ichika’s heart, she tends to focus on making him happy even if that isn’t always in her lovelorn best interest. She does seem to be more emotionally mature than the other girls, but she also has a childish side (like when she dresses up in cat pajamas with her roommate). She is the girl you want to pal around with, but we wouldn’t call her a tomboy. She is very feminine and still likes to have the same fun as you do, just wearing a skirt. We would also be remiss if we didn’t mention the way she attempted to feed Ichika cookies in the crazy competition the girls had on Ichika’s birthday.

“It is the east, and Chitoge is the sun. Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon who is already sick and pale with grief.” We think turning to Romeo and Juliet is more than appropriate, considering our fair Chitoge, like Juliet, is the daughter of a powerful family of gangsters. Her parents run an organized crime syndicate known as the Bee Hive Gang who is at war with another powerful family, the Yukuza, the Japanese-organized crime syndicate. Chitoge may not be madly in love with Raku, the son and heir to the Yukaza family, but she is in an arranged marriage with him and forced to fake her love or bring all-out war between the two houses. We can tell in the beginning she may not be in love with Raku, but we surely fell in love with her at first sight.

Chitoge is a cute high school girl of half English, half Japanese descent. She has long blonde hair and is just over five feet tall. Chitoge is most often seen in her blue and white school uniform that she accents with a loose-fitting yellow neck tie. She has two amazing features, her deep blue eyes and a bright red ribbon she wears in her hair that tends to stick up like a pair of rabbit ears, giving her an amazingly adorable look. She is a classic tsundere character who’s prone to sometimes violent outbursts and has poor social skills. The poor social skills come from her lack of having friends growing up. She often found it difficult to make friends as a child as many kids steered clear of the kid whose family ran the mob. Her loneliness leads to some very cute moments of insecurity as she decides how to handle it when someone is nice to her. She is an awful cook. She does her best in the kitchen and cooks with a reckless abandon, which often leads to food poisoning. We do get to see a sweet side of Chitoge; after she finally gains some friends, she is able to focus her temper into defending her cherished friends whenever they’re in trouble. We all want that in a girl, don’t we? We want someone who will cherish our friendship and who would know how important that bond is.

Urara Shiraishi is a witch, but you’d never guess it from her personality. She is a kind, quiet and cool beauty. She is a vision of sweetness with her petite stature, long blonde hair and soft red eyes. She is insanely smart, which could be attributed to her ability to block out all distractions. Urara doesn’t even get disturbed when she discovers she is a witch and has the power to swap bodies with anyone she kisses. She just makes sure she goes to class, even if it’s in someone else’s body, so she doesn’t miss anything and fall behind.

Urara is on this list for being the quiet type. She is the kind of girl who will blush and say thank you if you tell her she’s pretty. Urara is sweet and quiet and would accept your handwritten note and cherish it. She is secure in who she is. She accepts she’s smart, she’s quiet, and that boys like her -- but she doesn’t flaunt it. She isn’t needy, either. We need that kind of girl once in a while, one that would like nothing more than to spend time with you in the same room, while you do your separate things.

Yume (last name unknown) is a young girl with light brown eyes and red hair. When we meet her and the others in this show they are all in well over their heads. Yume wakes up in a world with no memory of her life and is told that there is a war between humans and monsters and if she wants to make a living she has to join the reserve army. She bands together with other young people in the same situation and begins to train as a hunter. Like her friends she has to start out at the bottom in order to scrape out a living in the cold, bleak world. She isn’t a leader, but her opinion is important within her group. Yume has also taken on the role of protector of Shihoru, the other girl in their group, who’s shy, small in stature and just learning to be a wizard. She has the determination to survive and be good at her job as a hunter, providing ranged attacks with a bow and arrow for the others in her unit while they hunt goblins. You see her practice day in and day out to become better. She understands that the life of one of her friends could come down to whether she makes the kill shot or not.

Yume is an amazing girl. She learned to fight and survive in a bleak world where a rundown barn with straw for a mattress is her shelter. She survived and never lost her smile, she never lost her will to live, she never lost the hope that she and her friends would see better days even when it seemed they’d never come. She is on this list because we all need a Yume in our lives. We need someone who will cheer us on, support us and share our burdens. We need someone who is willing share in our grief when it comes, as she did with her friend Haruhiro. Yume is a Waifu for more than her good looks, she’s definitely the kind of girl who will have your back as a friend or a lover.

The pink-haired princess from another planet is a student who attends Sainan High School with her sisters (also aliens and princesses). Like others from her planet, she’s very strong for her size. Momo also has an amazing ability to talk to and understand plants. She is incredibly smart, nearly as smart as her certified genius older sister Lala. Momo has a very girlish appearance, at just around five feet tall with shoulder length hair she pins back with a flower hair clip. She often twists and fiddles with her hair when she is mulling something over, making her even more adorable. She has a long black tail with a spade shape at its end, like most Devilukians. Her clothes are always fashionable and even her basic school uniform looks like a designer piece when she wears it. She is everything that you’d expect the “perfect” student to look and be. Did we mention she is also an excellent actress?

Momo is an amazing actress. She managed, while body-swapped in her sister Nana’s body, to convince Rito -- a guy Nana only tolerates -- that she (Nana) was madly in love with him. The majority of the characters in To Loveru would call Momo sweet and innocent. We know better. She is highly perverted and loves and lusts after Rito, a human. She often sneaks into Rito’s room while wearing almost nothing so she can wake up next to him. In some ways she has a split personality. She tends to shift to a far more violent version of herself when there is a battle and takes an almost sadistic pleasure in the pain and gore. She is can also kind and giving, so much so she’s is willing to help Rito (who’s engaged to her older sister) form a harem in order to keep her hopes for a loving relationship alive. We love the lengths this girl is willing to go to keep Rito’s love, and that is why she’s worthy of the love you only give a Waifu.

Asuna Yuuki was never really a gamer or a leader or stood out in any way before becoming trapped in SAO. She was simply the good daughter of an upper class family, always expected to go to a good school, get a degree, marry a man of her parents’ choosing and become the perfect wife. She just happened to be trying out NERVE GEAR, total immersion virtual reality equipment that belonged to her brother, when the SAO incident happened. She became one of the 10,000 players who became trapped in the virtual world. She had to learn to live in a fantasy world where you had to fight monsters and sometimes each other in order to survive. If you died, you died in the real world as well. Asuna did not just cope but flourished as she became someone far stronger that she was before SAO. She was also considered the most beautiful girl in SAO, with long orange-brown hair, hazel eyes and the stature of a model. Her beauty in the male-dominated world of SAO made her the subject of male devotion and sometimes the target of the obsessed.

Asuna is on this list because she wasn’t raised to be a fighter or a leader but because she rose to the occasion and became one of the best fighters in SAO and second-in-command of the most powerful guild. She also uses that power to defend the weak, a most admirable quality. Asuna is the type of girl who will be your partner and treat you as an equal -- and expect to be treated as an equal in kind. She may show a temper on occasion but it doesn’t seem to control her actions, she seems to always be cool underneath a more passionate exterior. She definitely seems to change a bit after the events of SAO and becomes a little more submissive as she slips back into her role as a “good daughter” but the confidence she gained in SAO really does help her change her parentally preplanned life into something far greater then she could have imagined

Hiyori Iki is the daughter of a well-off family and a bit of a tomboy. Her tomboy qualities were previously confined to her love of martial arts and wrestling, until meeting the Stray God Yato. Her involvement in the world of gods and goddess and their battle against phantoms that prey on men has made her, shall we say, more active in less ladylike pursuits. The world doesn’t see much of it since most of her interaction with the people from the far shore, a term for the spirit world, happens when her spirit slips from her body leaving most to think she’s narcoleptic -- not off doing battle with other worldly creatures. Hiyori is a tall, thin girl with long black hair and eyes that match the lavender color of her school uniform. She also has a purple tail that appears when she is in her spirit form. It’s a rather adorable accessory representative of her soul’s tether to the world of the living.

We put Hiyori on this list because of her sense of responsibility. When she first gets dislodged from her mortal body and realizes that there are bad things out there in the world harming people, she jumps right into combat imagining herself some sort of hero of justice. She is also kind to friends and strangers alike. She has a cheery personality that helps people feel at ease even if the world around them is scary. She also is a devoted friend. She spends a lot of her time tutoring Yukine, a boy who died young and now lives as a regalia, spirit weapon, for the Yato. She teaches Yukine regardless of the fact that he can’t go to school and have a normal life. Hiyori makes this Waifu list for one main reason; she has the patience of a god. She should be the god of patience. She puts up with Yato with all his quirks, his selfishness, his ego and his sometimes self-destructive behavior. When you meet a girl who can take all of your baggage and still smile you know you’ve found your Waifu.

Aoi is simply the girl next door, who happens to love anime as much as we do, so we know this is fiction. She is a lot like most of us when we finished school, she has a vague goal in mind but not too sure how to accomplish it. Aoi just knows she wants to make anime. So, she gets a job at Musashino Animation as an assistant at the production desk. We see she is a hard worker, organized and very courteous to those works with and for. She is a model employee. She has a cheerful personality and has one of those personalities that stays positive and upbeat no matter what kind of crazy stress is thrown at her while at work. Aoi also tends to wear jumpers, the skirts with overall bibs usually made of denim, adding a childlike charm to go along with her endless optimism.

We place Aoi on the list at number one because she is so grounded, she is the most real girl on this list. Unless she is driving; then look out, she should probably join the rally circuit. Aoi is filled with passion for her work. She always willing to put in the long hours come crunch time to make sure everyone succeeds. We know that it’s a girl like that that who will put the work into a relationship. Aoi also has an active imagination, often sifting through problems using mental surrogates, a gothic Lolita doll and a stuffed bear. She is definitely the kind of girl you marry and you don’t mind being poor living in a tiny apartment eating ramen half the time because she is simply your best friend. We also love her because she makes anime and we love watching anime it’s a match made in heaven. She also loves donuts, so much so, her and her friends created a ritual toast each time they share them. So in honor of this perfect Waifu “Dooh, dooh donuts, lets go nuts!”

Eiri is a high school girl from an affluent family and at school she is a perfect student, member of the art club and role model for all the young ladies in her class. When Eiri is at home she can be a fowl mouthed otaku who make extremely popular +18 dojinshi under the pen name Egotistic Lily. She avoids malls, stating they contain human garbage, and has a very hot temper. She is also beautiful, with pale skin, blue eyes and blonde twin tails tied up with blue ribbon. She is the girl you want to hang out with and play video games with, discuss anime and manga with she is an otaku’s dream right down to her tsundere altitude. The standoffish and hot tempered attitude is just a front in many ways, because we know at heart Eiri is a maiden waiting to be swept off her feet by a grand gesture on a balcony in front of a firework filled sky.