Throwing in a bit of self reflection here, may or may not be of interest to anyone: I’m a straight cis-male with no body dysphoria but I really like the cutesy-anime girl oriented online trans community and associated culture and have found myself feeling that it would be cool to be a cute anime girl for what I think are similar reasons to those you outline (though I would not want to remain in that state permanently). It’s interesting to observe how much I like that culture and would like to fit into those communities. I do wonder if I would entertain the idea of transitioning if becoming a cute young anime girl (or cute egirl, I suppose) was a possibility but I do not think resembling that is possible with my body now, and that’s fine as I have no body dysphoria in the first place. I see eboys or softboys or femboys replicating a similar cutesy look in a way that seems half a step more achievable to someone like me and I have been exploring expressing myself in those kind of ways which I have mostly found pretty fun. I can confidently say no aspect of my interest is sexual or fetishy.
It sounds like I am probably ~5 to 10 years older than the OP here so these types of sizable online cutesy anime trans girl communities did not exist for me to be exposed to at that age (and I strongly suspect that I would have bounced off of them at that time), but I was extremely online in 4chan anime circles at that age and too idolized the NHK-esque hikikomori otaku lifestyle, so really quite similar to what OP describes in many ways. I cannot say I remember having any desire to play with gender expression at all until after undergrad, though I think it has been slowly increasing to a still rather mild (but high for a straight guy) level.
Throwing in a bit of self reflection here, may or may not be of interest to anyone: I’m a straight cis-male with no body dysphoria but I really like the cutesy-anime girl oriented online trans community and associated culture and have found myself feeling that it would be cool to be a cute anime girl for what I think are similar reasons to those you outline (though I would not want to remain in that state permanently). It’s interesting to observe how much I like that culture and would like to fit into those communities. I do wonder if I would entertain the idea of transitioning if becoming a cute young anime girl (or cute egirl, I suppose) was a possibility but I do not think resembling that is possible with my body now, and that’s fine as I have no body dysphoria in the first place. I see eboys or softboys or femboys replicating a similar cutesy look in a way that seems half a step more achievable to someone like me and I have been exploring expressing myself in those kind of ways which I have mostly found pretty fun. I can confidently say no aspect of my interest is sexual or fetishy.
It sounds like I am probably ~5 to 10 years older than the OP here so these types of sizable online cutesy anime trans girl communities did not exist for me to be exposed to at that age (and I strongly suspect that I would have bounced off of them at that time), but I was extremely online in 4chan anime circles at that age and too idolized the NHK-esque hikikomori otaku lifestyle, so really quite similar to what OP describes in many ways. I cannot say I remember having any desire to play with gender expression at all until after undergrad, though I think it has been slowly increasing to a still rather mild (but high for a straight guy) level.