I'm slightly unhelpful, and also young, so I'll just join the venting. Maybe it'll be helpful.
If I don't find a woman I'm interested within a month of going to university, I will be on dating sites too. Even though unviersities have societies of similar interest, my brother's experience has told me that there are very few women, and the ones there are, are usually taken. I will also start spending the ENTIRE WEEKEND that an anime convetion lasts, at it.
I feel I may share a problem your friends may have suggested. I certainly never look at an anime girl and say "That's the one for me", but my problem seems to be a two parter. I VERY VERY rarely find girls I'm interested in, and NONE are interested in me. Although I later discover that the ones I found I was probably hopelessly attaching to out of desperation. At least it made some sense. I was attracted to the only girl that had an interest in video games and anime, but I discovered I didn't like other parts of her personality, and it's a moot point since she discovered she's a lesbian.
I also find it hard to find reaosns
why a girl would want me. I think all my likable parts cannot easily be described, and if they are, only if the generic way of "Oh, he's smart, and funny". If they showed interest quickly I'd probably jokingly ask them if they're insane, and then question whether they misunderstood my personality in some way, because I'd like people to like me for me, not what they think they know from quickly meeting me. This creates a reverse problem for me to. I will not be interested in anyone until I know them well, and until I'm there friend. That means if I were to try to get a relationship it'd probably always run the risk of ruining a rare friendship.
Also, my social interaction was probably went stunted with women in secondary school because since I was a nerd, people just naturally assumed I couldn't talk to them, which turned into a massive suprise for them that I made quite a few female friends at college, and thought I must've suddenly channeled my inner pimp. I actually met a quite a few gamers and anime fans. The main trouble was, even when they share interest, there is still divide in that interest. The girls I met tended to play nothing but RPGs and found anything more action-y "too frantic". One of them had never played Zelda, so I let them play Ocarina of Time 3D. After five minutes of accidentally auto-jumping off ledges, they practically ragequit, claiming the game was "too technical".
Btw, if anybody would ask me why I wnat a partner it's simple. Throughout my life I have been bullied for no adequate reason, and have low self confidence. I have also never been in a relationship so I feel I'm missing out on a normal and happy part of life. I want someone. Someone who understands me, whilst others don't. I want to be someone's favourite for once. I want to question the sanity of this person, and I want them to be able to explain logically, why out of all the people she's ever met, I'm the best. And I want to be needed, to be able to provide that same service to this person. I want to be with a person and have fantasies about us being king and queen of the world, and that if we decided to aim for world domination we would remain with eachother through the inevitable evil that would ensue, and I'm...probably getting too emotional about this. Oh yeah, kids. Kids would be nice. I'd like to show the world I have accomplished passing on my DNA.
I like weirdly funny anime too. Have you tried "Kore wa Zombie desu ka?"?
Yes, that first question mark is part of the title.
On a side note:
Slayer_2 said:
Not to generalize anime, but would it kill them to make most girls with normal-sized knockers?
They do, but when they do that the outsiders claim that they're sexualising child-like figures. Because since anime girls are "cute" apparently when you don't oversexualise them, everyone assumes they're five. And then that brings up the excuse that they're somehow making characters that look like little girls, then saying they're legal age, so the outsiders assume the creators are trying to cater to pedophiles.
There is literally no winning with the people looking for any reason to avoid anime.