Tokyo - More than 1,000 Japanese signed an online petition to legalize marriage between humans and comic-book characters launched by a man who wants to marry a girl from a poplar Japanese manga comic series.

Taichi Takashita said he wanted to collect more than 1 million signatures to present to the government to legalize marriage to two-dimensional characters.

As soon as the law was passed, he plans to marry long-legged manga character Mikuru Asahina.

The brown-haired girl, wearing her trademark cute bunny or maid costumes is a visitor from the future. Originally created as a character in a novel, she soon rose to manga fame.

Within a week of its launch, Takashita collected 1,226 signatures.

"We are no longer interested in the three-dimensional world," Takashita wrote on his website, making clear that he feels more at home in the manga world than in real-life Japan.

If he could, he would love to move into the virtual world, Takashita said, but as this seems impossible with present-day technology, the least he can do is to push for legalizing marriage between Japan's so-called otaku geeks and anime characters.

Manga, anime another other forms of animated entertainment are highly popular in Japan, with Prime Minister Taro Aso a dedicated manga fan.

Takashita's campaign success is an indication of Japan's increasing obsession with escaping reality.

Last week, a woman was found guilty of murdering her vitural husband in a popular online game after his character divorced her. (dpa)