"Well good, because I HATE YOUR GUTS!"

That's Black Rose in the first episode of .hack//SIGN, and the moment that I think I realized that I could be more than just a function of some boy's desire to get off. She outright rejects, in the first episode, the idea that she is just a love interest. And she does it while holding a sword as big as she is.

I think that was the moment that I realized fiction could be more than just dumb love stories between a straight boy and the first girl he sees, too.