What is hentai?

[samarm]

Not much to say really, except:

I think its something to do with Japanese porn in games/movies or something, isn't it? What is Hentai?

(I did do some googling, but all the links looked too scary to open at work!)

[Master Wang-Ka]

Not sure exactly what it means in Japanese.

In English, it means "Pornographic Japanese or Japanese-style Anime, ranging in severity from what an American would call PG-13 to X to... beyond. Especially in the popular Japanese "tentacle rape" genre."

[Mr. Blue Sky]

Go to Something Awful.com. They have Hentai reviews. Very amusing.

[Kamino Neko]

Hentai is a Japanese word for 'pervert'/'perversion'. It's commonly used to refer to drawn (sometimes animated) porn. Games, comics, and animated movies all fall under the banner.

Hentai stuff ranges from fairly vanilla (save for the fact that one or more of the participants is often a catgirl, alien, demon, angel, robot....), to hard bondage, to out and out rape scenarios.

[samarm]

Thanks. So whats with all the rape / tentacles? I'm sure I've heard about that more than once. Why would people want to watch that stuff? We're not talking about a small fetish thing, hentai seems to be huge.

[Badtz Maru]

Maybe the tentacles are related to the fact the Japanese eat a lot of seafood...

[Master Wang-Ka]

Not sure.

Over there, "tentacle porn" is fairly mainstream, no harder to get than foot fetishist videos.

I have NO idea what the appeal is. Then again, I don't get foot fetishism, either...

[Menocchio]

Tentacle porn was an attempt to do an end-run around censorship laws. It was (is?) illegal to show a penis penetrating a vagina (or to show pubic hair, thus even hardcore stuff will be censored in that area). But, by using something that is like a penis, but is not, in fact, a penis, you can show it.

Add in a market that will accept fantasy and sci-fi in porn, a folklore rich in demonology, and (apparently) a larger market willing to accept rape, and tentacle porn is born.

[samarm]

Thanks you, Menocchio and others - I am enlightened.

So, its illegal to show a penis entering a vagina, but its OK to show bizarre beastiality? Its enough to boggle the mind...

[Lamia]

I missed Modern Japan the day my professor showed a slide of an old woodcut or something called "The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife", but if the description of my friends can be trusted then this whole tentacle porn thing goes back more than a century.

[Hey, It's That Guy!]

It is true, I was just having this conversation with an art history student friend. Some ancient Japanese art and folk tales have depicted women having sex with (or being violated by) tentacles, from either sea monsters or demons. The hentai stuff isn't necessarily new.

[Evil Captor]

I'm a fan of hentai -- as has been pointed out, it's not all tentacle rape, as in "La Blue Girl" (which has some pretty good character design, plotting and animation) but there are also some that are basically adventure stories with some sex thrown in (as in Fencer of Minerva or the "Maya" episode of Cool Devices.

Some of the tentacle stuff can be kind of sexy, with all these slithery cocks invading the gals' every orifice simultaneously, while she writhes helpless/ecstatically/both. Some pretty intense imagery.

Other weird qualities of hentai: why is that a bad guy -- or sometimes a good guy -- can sneak into a woman's room, secretly videotape her masturbating in the privacy of her bedroom, then use that videotape to blackmail her into all sorts of stuff? I mean, why would a woman publicly do gangbangs and lesbian stuff with toys and bondage just to hide the fact that she masturbates in private? Kinda weird.

Also, some of the scenes feature chicks with dicks. Except we're not talking trannies here, we're talking scenes where for various reasons the women have sprouted dicks just above their vaginas. What's that all about?

That said, Japanese hentai are several orders of magnitude more imaginative than U.S. porn as a general rule.

[nevermore]

LOL, Evil Captor; if you think the situations in the movies are ridiculous, try playing the video games!!

Example: in one, for no reason at all the main character (you) gets pissed off at a girl he's talking to (who happens to be a virgin) and rapes her. Immediately following this he bursts in on her in the shower and "makes love to her" as an apology!

And I just love how sex is often made a tool to "straighten a girl out," in any type of hentai. It's like, oh, hey, I was making bad grades/being a bitch/super-unconfident/a lesbian, but with one touch of your magical dick, I'm cured! :rolleyes:

...yeah, hentai logic often ain't so logical. But it's always good for a laugh, eh?

[Sublight]

There was also a discussion of this a few months back which may be of interest.

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=165065&highlight=hentai

[SolGrundy]

You may also want to check out (when you're safely away from work) the website Hentai Jump! (http://www.hentaijump.net/), which gives halfway-serious reviews of anime hentai.

[rjung]

Originally posted by samarm
So, its illegal to show a penis entering a vagina, but its OK to show bizarre beastiality? Its enough to boggle the mind...
IIRC, it was one of the requirements imposed by the Americans on Japan after WWII. Probably something about "decency".

[Evil Captor]

ONe thing I noticed about Hentai Jump was that the guy who writes the reviews does not care at all for bondage and domination or rape themes in his stories. This will SERIOUSLY limit your appreciation of hentai, as almost all of it contains bondage imagery at the very least, and the bondage generally starts out consensual. I think this flaws his ability to judge them as stories as a result -- he gives high marks to hentai simply becaus they don't contain any bondage imagery. Since the vast majority of hentai contain bondage imagery, it produces skewed results. That said, Tales of Titillation is pretty durned good.

As for hentai, whatever it means in Japan, and whatever ecchi means in Japan, "hentai's" usage in America has come to mean any anime that have adult content, period, and "ecchi" is rarely used.

[Evil Captor]

I'm gonna do a quick list of hentai I've seen and liked: full disclosure, my homepage site, found in my user profile, is a bondage humor site which features lots of movie reviews. Bondage imagery doesn't bother me, as I see it as a power/sex fantasy and not as an earnest desire to commit rape. If bondage imagery bothers you, your mileage probably will vary. I also look for strong storylines in hentai, as I think porn without a story is just boring.

I'm working on an essay which explains my thoughts about hentai so others will understand the context of my reviews a little better, I'll post it when I finish it next week.

In no particular order:

Cool Devices – The class of the hentai category, IMHO. A series of vignettes described as Operations (there are 11 of them. Quality varies from great to mediocre). All have jazzy scores and tightly written stories. Bondage imagery predominates, but there's also some stories dealing with themes of incest, pissing, etc., but all done with an intelligent and, well, cool approach to the subject matter.

Bizarre Cage Series – Workers at what looks a lot like Disney World (but is never called such) discover that someone has sabotaged the computer control program and the rides are going berserk. They work frantically to restore order to the part, meanwhile someone evil is kidnapping beautiful young park workers. Bondage and vanilla sex imagery, quite explicit. Nothing remarkable but I give it high marks for a strong plotline.

Living Sex Toy Delivery Service – A group of women hold a party, and the sole male guest at the party is drugged, rendering him paralyzed with his cock at full attention, unable to "relax" again. They have sex with him repeatedly, "milking" him of his sperm, which they collect. Then they leave him, still paralyzed in a cardboard box, which they place on the railroad tracks. But he manages to regain control of his muscles just before an oncoming train crushes him. That's the opener. The rest of the story deals with him kidnapping guests at the party to get revenge on them, disguised as a deliveryman. The revenge always involves explicit sexual bondage and rape. It's unusual for hentai in that the victims are actually guilty of something in this instance (most of the time, the females who get assaulted by bad guys and (sometimes) good guys in hentai are totally innocent). Also makes extensive use of the Japanese blackmail cliche, wherein women are photographed masturbating in private, then those photos are used to get the women to allow themselves to be kidnapped. It's a very intricate overall plot structure, but each episode is a lot like the previous one, so I don't rate it that highly. Also, not much character development.

Dragon Pink – A parody of RPGs in which a group of the usual adventurers – a warrior, a strongman, a witch and a cat slave -- travels about slaying monsters and looking for treasure. Pink, the cat slave, is constantly being captured, tied up and tortured/molested by bad guy and gals, necessitating her rescue. She's in love with her master Santa, who is easily swayed by the charms of others. I found the series to be great fun as it has a pleasant, lighthearted spirit, unlike a lot of hentai.

I'll post some more reviews as I have time, if folks are interested.

[Kyomara]

Originally posted by Menocchio
Tentacle porn was an attempt to do an end-run around censorship laws. It was (is?) illegal to show a penis penetrating a vagina (or to show pubic hair, thus even hardcore stuff will be censored in that area). But, by using something that is like a penis, but is not, in fact, a penis, you can show it.
This is almost correct. Actually, you're not really allowed to show anything entering a vagina, not even more normal things like fingers and bolognas. But there is usually a sort of "whited out" area around the penetration taking place, and I think that with tentacle porn (at least in mainstream tentacle porn) that whited out area can be a bit smaller.

Of course, in many of the more "underground" porn comics, the white out is reduced to a mere swipe about a cm thick, just for the sake of formality. It's practically blatant penetration.

Also (happily), it has been okay to show pubes in Japanese porn for quite some time now. It is called "hair nude," in order to differentiate it from the more old-fashioned stuff that couldn't show pubic hair.

Another funny thing; there are guys whose job it is to go through imported playboy and penthouse magazines and use a razor blade to scratch out all the naughty bits. If I were one of those guys, I would occasionally oops! leave one of them unscratched, kind of like a lottery for the salarymen.

Last thing: I must confess I particularly like the ones where the schoolgirl wakes up one day with a massive cock between her legs. She goes to school and happens to catch her two best (and biggest breasted) friends performing oral sex on eachother and drinking eachother's pee. Her new penis becomes so excited that she has to rush to the bathroom and jerk it off. Whereupon her friends of course find her and all sorts of hilarity and hijinks ensue.

The only thing more fun than making fun of hentai comics is enjoying them in the privacy of your own home.

[JRDelirious]

Also, some of the scenes feature chicks with dicks. Except we're not talking trannies here, we're talking scenes where for various reasons the women have sprouted dicks just above their vaginas. What's that all about?
*G* I just had this vision, Jerry Seinfeld at the Anime Con :D

And yes, there is a tradition in Japanese erotica of highly stylized/exaggerated representations that predates the postwar censorship. But that was not always mass-consumption art. There seems to be a synergy at work there.

Kyo's right, the pubic-hair ban AFAIK is no longer law, per se, but remains an "industry standard" among some publishers/producers. Direct portrayal of penetration is still off-limits, but more and more, in recent times you find material where the "censorship" is a joke -- like a two-pixel-wide "blur" exactly at the point o' pucker, or something like that. And in doujinshi it's not impossible to find it simply uncensored.

One of the things, though, that does bear repeating is of course the logic is twisted and the plot predictable (OK, so maybe Kyo's example is not predictable to the average non-otaku, but it's quite common!). It's mass-market porno, the least it can be connected to everyday reality, the better :p

[nevermore]

On the censorship thing, are there different rules for video games? I have only ever seen one game (The Maid's Story, which btw sucked) that was censored throughout. Do they just uncensor the English versions, or what?

[TeaRoses]

And in doujinshi it's not impossible to find it simply uncensored.

Yes, I always wonder about that. Because the few I have are almost all of the rather sweet and romantic variety based on anime (i.e. one fan's fantasy about Zelgadis and Amelia or whoever) and usually they have little to no censorship of this. Is it that doujinshi are not sold in the same way?

[Evil Captor]

Originally posted by Kyomara
This is almost correct. Actually, you're not really allowed to show anything entering a vagina, not even more normal things like fingers and bolognas. But there is usually a sort of "whited out" area around the penetration taking place, and I think that with tentacle porn (at least in mainstream tentacle porn) that whited out area can be a bit smaller.

I don't know if this rule has gone the way of all things or if it just applies to live action, but I have seen plenty of explicit, clearly drawn images of penises, fingers, tongues, tentacles and whatnot penetration vaginas. In fact, one of the more interesting features of hentai is "interior shots" where the penetrating whatnot is shown from a "cutaway" view moving around inside the vagina.

[Evil Captor]

Some more hentai reviews --

Nine O' Clock Woman – A young girl gets a great gig as a national news reporter for a TV network. She can hardly believe her luck, as all she has to do is be young and personable, read the news, and smile a lot. Well, you gotta give 'em points for realism here. Unfortunately, our reporter girl has a problem – she's a compulsive masturbator, sneaking off to bathrooms and janitor's closets to stir up her honeypot. One of her co-workers catches her at it, and with the amorality that's typical of male hentai characters, her secretly videotapes her diddling herself and uses it to blackmail her into doing whatever he wants. There's vanilla sex and bondage, but I think the whole point of the cartoon was the section where he forced her to wear a chastity belt with a built-in vibrator activated by remote control – while on the air. I think the fantasy was, "wouldn't it be great to have one those vibrator/chastity belts locked on your favorite newsbabe, and a button on your remote control so you could crank up the vibrator whenever you liked and watch her sweat?" and also of course, "Wouldn't it be sexy to BE the nine-o'clock woman and have someone remotely controlling a vibrator doohickey and have to fight off orgasms while reading the news before millions of people?" Frankly, it works for me -- an intriguing plotline, good character development, and a fun sex fantasy or two.

Shusaku Replay/Isaku/Isaku: Respect – These cartoon series all have pretty much the same theme – a disgusting old janitor at a toney girls' school gains control over the girls (In "Shusaku" by secretly videotaping them while going to the bathroom then using those tapes to blackmail them into becoming his sex slaves, in "Isaku" he just kidnaps his victims). Lots of forced sex, some bondage, lots of lesbianism, some enemas, peeing, etc. I didn't like this one at all as Shusaku/Isaku never gets his comeuppance here, he's kinda like Freddy Kreuger, he just keeps blackmailing and raping along. Then again, amoral male characters who succeed are not at all unusual in hentai. Also, not much plot and precious little character development in any of these – Isaku's evil, the gals start out virginal and innocent, and end up slutty but real guilty about it.

Bondage Queen Kate – The movie opens with a shot of a woman in thigh-length boots and a sex harness hiking in the desert, and collapsing in the sand. She's bondage queen Kate, alrighty. Kate is a space cadet – literally – whose first assignment consists of busting up a white slavery ring operating on a desert planet which is a lot like Dune – but is not Dune, even though it has sandworms. Kate's role is to act as bait for the white slavers, and she does a pretty durned good job of it, and is kidnapped by the slavers in very short order. She's tied up and raped by her kidnapper and his brother, so naturally she falls for her kidnapper big time – I mean, how can a girl resist such charm? The story has a lot of plot and character development, and probably should have run for more than two episodes. It's actually a fun watch, just don't take the 'romance' too seriously as the creators clearly did not.

[Götterfunken]

Originally posted by Lamia
I missed Modern Japan the day my professor showed a slide of an old woodcut or something called "The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife", but if the description of my friends can be trusted then this whole tentacle porn thing goes back more than a century. That would have been the famous woodcut by Hokusai, c. 1820. That was the first image that came to mind when samarm brought up the tentacle stuff.

I'm at work right now, and googling for this image brings up a lot of sites that may not be work-safe to open. This site (http://www.mastergraph.com/index.html) includes a fairly discreet image of it on their homepage.

[JRDelirious]

Originally posted by nevermore
On the censorship thing, are there different rules for video games? I have only ever seen one game (The Maid's Story, which btw sucked) that was censored throughout. Do they just uncensor the English versions, or what?

Major importers of h-anime/manga/games material into the NA market that have the budget to do decent translations will seek out a "clean" uncensored version -- or in some cases even commission the original creator to redo the frames/panels to their, um,'"full glory" (of course, all the while making sure the translation portrays everyone as "over 18 and in college", no matter how obviously preposterous). But, historicaly the material was just as likely to be created censored right on the master cels/page galleys. In the case of the mentioned game, this may be still happening -- but it's more likely that the importer just got a cheap deal.



Evil Captor, you have too much time on your hands :D

[Incubus]

Evil Captor, some of my favorite Hentai:

Spaceship: Agga Reuter Done by the same people who brought us Tenchi Muyo! its one of the funniest hentais I've ever seen. Tons of gag humor, the star wars jokes are the best. Among the plot, the female characters are all playing this dating sim game at one point or another. The funny thing is, the character in the sim looks strikingly similar to Han Solo! Also the cartridge cover art of the game (which you see for a split second) looks more or less identical to the original Star Wars poster. The series is about a guy who helps various women overcome their own sexual hangups. I liked it because most of the sex seemed a little more consentual/enjoyable. And it was a very lighthearted series which didn't try to take itself too seriously.

Kekko Kamen I must say I definitely am a fan of Go Nagai, and this is one of my favorite of his works. I don't know if you'd classify Kekko Kamen as a hentai- the series is about a crime fighter who fights in the NUDE (well except for a mask, gloves and boots) and has a finishing move where she leaps in the air, spreads her legs, and sends mysterious blinding white light shooting out of her vagina, which dazzles and stuns her adversary, allowing her to jump on his shoulders (with her crotch in their face) which apparently paralyzes them with ectasy :confused:

One funny thing about Kekko Kamen's move is it shows a shot of her spread eagled doing this move while facing the camera, but her crotch is edited out with ASTRO BOY's face and and the word 'censored!' below it.

[Evil Captor]

Actually, JRD, I am writing all these reviews in a word processor and they'll show up on my website sooner or later ... probably sooner ... so I'm getting dual use here.

[rjung]

Originally posted by Evil Captor
Nine O' Clock Woman ... There's vanilla sex and bondage, but I think the whole point of the cartoon was the section where he forced her to wear a chastity belt with a built-in vibrator activated by remote control – while on the air. I think the fantasy was, "wouldn't it be great to have one those vibrator/chastity belts locked on your favorite newsbabe, and a button on your remote control so you could crank up the vibrator whenever you liked and watch her sweat?" and also of course, "Wouldn't it be sexy to BE the nine-o'clock woman and have someone remotely controlling a vibrator doohickey and have to fight off orgasms while reading the news before millions of people?" Frankly, it works for me -- an intriguing plotline, good character development, and a fun sex fantasy or two.
I believe Italian artist Milo Manara(sp?) had something similar in his graphic novel, Click! Basic plot: uppity young woman is fitted with a neural device that makes her horny when a dial on a remote control is turned. The device is stolen by a mysterious someone, who then delights in following the woman wherever she goes and giving her spontaneous horniness at inconvenient times. The art is not really explicit, but the art is gorgeous, and some of the situations are a bit extreme (at one point, the girl turns to a dog for relief).

Sounds like you'd find it enjoyable. ;)

[Evil Captor]

Originally posted by rjung
I believe Italian artist Milo Manara(sp?) had something similar in his graphic novel, Click! Basic plot: uppity young woman is fitted with a neural device that makes her horny when a dial on a remote control is turned. The device is stolen by a mysterious someone, who then delights in following the woman wherever she goes and giving her spontaneous horniness at inconvenient times. The art is not really explicit, but the art is gorgeous, and some of the situations are a bit extreme (at one point, the girl turns to a dog for relief).

Sounds like you'd find it enjoyable. ;)

And of course there's the fact that insertable vibrating eggs powered by remote control are available for sale on the Internet and are presumably being bought and used already by some people. I won't say "many" because I don't know how many, but I suspect its a popular fantasy for d/s fans.

:eek:

[Evil Captor]

Originally posted by rjung
I believe Italian artist Milo Manara(sp?) had something similar in his graphic novel, Click! Basic plot: uppity young woman is fitted with a neural device that makes her horny when a dial on a remote control is turned. The device is stolen by a mysterious someone, who then delights in following the woman wherever she goes and giving her spontaneous horniness at inconvenient times. The art is not really explicit, but the art is gorgeous, and some of the situations are a bit extreme (at one point, the girl turns to a dog for relief).

Sounds like you'd find it enjoyable. ;)

And of course there's the fact that insertable vibrating eggs powered by remote control are available for sale on the Internet and are presumably being bought and used already by some people. I won't say "many" because I don't know how many, but I suspect its a popular fantasy for d/s fans.

:eek:

[Evil Captor]

Originally posted by Incubus
Evil Captor, some of my favorite Hentai:

Spaceship: Agga Reuter Done by the same people who brought us Tenchi Muyo

Thanks for pointing that out. My wife is a big Tenchi Muyo fan, she got the "Masquerade" hentai because they were done by the Tenchi Muyo people, I imagine she'll be intrigued by Agga Reuter for the same reason.

Kekko Kamen -- I must say I definitely am a fan of Go Nagai, and this is one of my favorite of his works. I don't know if you'd classify Kekko Kamen as a hentai- the series is about a crime fighter who fights in the NUDE (well except for a mask, gloves and boots) and has a finishing move where she leaps in the air, spreads her legs, and sends mysterious blinding white light shooting out of her vagina ...

I think in the US it would definitely be classified as hentai. Japan doesn't seem to operate along the same rigid lines of classification that we do. That's one of the reason I like hentai -- there's no telling what you'll find in them. And in fact the hentai that are most like American porn, with plots that are just excuses for repeated sex scenes (like Shusaka/Isaku) are the ones I tend to like least.

That said, I don't think I'd find Kekko all that titillating just because its lead fights in the nude. It sounds like it's more of an anime than a hentai in spirit.

[acrossthesea]

One thing I haven't understood since coming to Japan is why a lot of the non-hentai, regular manga derived female anime characters are shown in hentai-type situations for brief scenes or in related merchandise. For instance I've seen a lot of films where the main female character is shown nude or having sex briefly, sometimes with normal males, sometimes with monsters or demons, yet this doesn't fit into the plot at all. Or, I've seen merchandise (dolls, figurines, pictures, etc) depicting characters from certain series who are not usually in sexual situations, suddenly big breasted, nude, clutching at themselves, and whatever else you can imagine. And many of these films and tv series seem to be aimed at younger audiences! Is this just a way to get more adult attention, or is it like what we generally have in the US where they throw the obligatory sex scene into every movie even when it doesn't work with the plot?

This reminds me...I must aquire and watch Blood: The Last Vampire. It's not hentai whatsoever, but it takes place where I live!

[Evil Captor]

Mysteries of the Necronomicon – This one has a very intricate, detailed plot that involves a ponytailed, sunglasses-wearing hero tracking down a mystery involving zombies and a remote hotel. It's akin to an erotic thriller, except that in this instance the plot is the main thing in the story with the mostly vanilla sex scenes (XXX rated and explicit in some instances, but tending to be brief in duration) a side issue. Great animation, good character development, but graphic horror as well as graphic sex. Not for the weak of stomach, and it's not all THAT Lovecraftian – no Elder Gods make any appearances -- but it's worth watching on its own terms.

Tragic Silence 1 – My taste does not generally run to vampire stories, erotic or otherwise, but this one is different enough that I liked it. In a remote mountain village, humans live in peace with a clan of vampires. The vampires take humans as their lovers, and drink their blood, but don't do so to such an extent that they kil them or even harm them very much. But it's an uneasy peace in many respects. The balance of peace between the vampire clan and the humans is upset when a human woman kills her vampire lover. It most powerfully expects a pair of young lovers, one of whom is a vampire, the other of whom is human. Sort of Romeo and Juliet with fangs. Lots of vanilla sex (but the plot is king), no kink (IIRC), pretty good animation. I'm looking forward to part 2.

Mei King – A young king must guide his kingdom through some harrowing times, as a bandit queen and an aggressive neighboring king threaten his kingdom. Meanwhile, his court is full of beautiful women who want sex and love. He does his damnedest for the beautiful women and his kingdom. Well, actually, he does a lot better by the beautiful women than by his kingdom, which gets pretty thoroughly ravaged by the bandit queen and the aggressive neighbor while he's fucking just about his entire court. All ends happily though. There's a ton of explicit sex, most of it vanilla, with one or two nonconsensual bondage scenes with explicit sex. There's still a very involved plot, though it gets sloppy at times. A good solid hentai.

[JRDelirious]

acrossthesea -- ah, yes. Surely many of us have wondered about what the deal is with all the highly eroticized portrayals of someone who in the actual anime plot is a sickly catatonic.

In some cases it's basically a way to milk the product for all it's worth by appealing to everyone possible. So you will have merchandise with cute little adorable SD versions of Rei Ayanami in her fuku with PenPen, AND merchandise with hot, highly eroticised versions of a buxom Rei half out of her skintight plugsuit with a come-hither look, wearing her bandages as if they were lingerie -- both put out under legit Studio Gainax license. Hey, it's a tough economy...

Also, there SEEMS to be something of a tradition of leniency-in-copyright in Asia in general. This will result in a lot of material that is created in the same way as doujinshi -- take-offs that are "tolerated" mostly because they legit owners don't want to spend the time, money or trouble to fight them.

Within that environment, also, the rightful owners of the character may say: "hey, fanfic writers/artists are going to use these characters to make porn anyway -- let's make some legit money from exploiting them". The anime companies don't seem to be so uptight about "character integrity" as Disney or WB seem to be. Heck, the creators of the cute little children's character "Hello Kitty" licensed a vibrator !

Besides, anime is known for what is called "fanservice", essentially any gratuituous display of nudity/sex, fancy cars/weaponry, or in-jokes, for the sake of the fanboys. It's traditional!

[Incubus]

Agent Aika isn't exactly what I would consider a 'hentai' anime, but it has the most fanservice that I have ever seen in an anime. There are tons of camera angles which are practically 'upskirt' shots, fight scenes where a woman will go flying and land in such a way that 3/4 of the screen is taken up by the woman's rather suspiciously bulging crotch.

[samarm]

Interesting stuff guys... this makes fascinating reading.

Also, I couldn't resist this:
...insertable vibrating eggs...
BAND NAME!

(sorry!)

[TeaRoses]

Tragic Silence 1

I am so completely buying this, today if possible. Thanks for the reccomend!

[Evil Captor]

Originally posted by JRDelirious
Also, there SEEMS to be something of a tradition of leniency-in-copyright in Asia in general. This will result in a lot of material that is created in the same way as doujinshi -- take-offs that are "tolerated" mostly because they legit owners don't want to spend the time, money or trouble to fight them.

As I understand it, some copyright holders don't just tolerate but encourage doujinshi, on the grounds that it builds the fan base for their product and tends to support it rather than undermine it. It's kinda like the George Lucas approach to Star Wars fandom, actually promoting fan films based on Star Wars rather than attempting to suppress them, rather than behaving like the idiots who hold the Star Trek franchise.

I mean, they wonder why their ratings are slipping...

[Evil Captor]

Originally posted by TeaRoses
I am so completely buying this, today if possible. Thanks for the reccomend!

You're welcome, let us know what you think of it.

[Evil Captor]

School of Bondage -- On a college campus (note: Japanese higher ed schools are not exactly like ours, the uniforms worn by the women in the school indicate it's probably a tech school equivalent, except their tech schools are not really equivalent to ours, so I just say "college" and to hell with it) women are being mysteriously kidnapped (well, it's not so mysterious if you've seen a lot of hentai). Seems a bad guy has gotten ahold of some concoction that turns women into slavering loves slaves, so he's kidnapping coeds, tying them up in an attic, giving them the concoction, and having his way with them.

The hero of the story figures out that the women are being kidnapped and heads out to find them, but is constantly being distracted by all the beautiful coeds who want to have sex with him. It's just durned difficult to get anything done under such circumstances. The bulk of the hentai aternates between scenes of the bad guy molesting his kidnap victims and the good guy slowly working his way through all the coeds toward the bad guy's attic. Plenty of consensual vanilla sex, plenty of nonconsensual bondage sex. It's a fairly mediocre hentai, in short, whose major redeeming feature is its lightheartedness.

F-Force – From the cover copy, I was expecting a sort of Charlie's Angels story here. Well, if Charlie's Angels was set in medieval times, maybe so. In a remote mountain kingdom, demons are kidnapping all the kingdom's beautiful daughters. In fact, they HAVE kidnapped ALL the kingdom's beautiful daughters, except for the king's daughter. So the call goes out for some monster killers, bringing a lone male monster slayer and a trio of beautiful female monster slayers.

The guy arrives just in time to save the king's daughter from being kidnapped by a horde of demons who easily kill her retinue, but have more trouble with the monster slayer. He spirits the daughter away from them. At the village, he's joined by F-Force, the trio of female monster hunters. Shortly thereafter, the demons mount an attack in force on the village, and the four monster hunters unite to fight them off. They wind up taking the battle to the leader of the demons, a powerful creature who, among other things, collects panties. So you know he's bad.

Turns out the attacks are related to the re-appearance of "Four Pillars of Light" that were involved with the sinking of an entire continent in ancient times. There's a fairly involved plot associated with this one and some lively characters, too. Explicit tentacle sex, vanilla sex, some explicit bondage sex. I haven't seen the final ep of this so I don't know how it comes out. Although I found the fundamental plot engaging, the characters didn't interest me all that much, so I don't know if I will bother.

Slave Doll – Deals with the exploits of a beautiful young android maid who serves her owners in every way imaginable, if you get my drift. Lots of vanilla sex, some bondage, but the character is such a sad little wimp of a female Pinocchio with lots of submissiveness thrown in that the cartoon was painful to watch. In the opening we see her explaining that her duty is to be a sex slave to her master, 24 hours a day, every day, while an android tear courses down her cheek in manufactured sorrow at her plight. The rest of the story consists of vignettes in which she serves as a sex slave to her master, 24/7. In short, there is no plot to speak of. Boooo-ring.

[Evil Captor]

School of Bondage -- On a college campus (note: Japanese higher ed schools are not exactly like ours, the uniforms worn by the women in the school indicate it's probably a tech school equivalent, except their tech schools are not really equivalent to ours, so I just say "college" and to hell with it) women are being mysteriously kidnapped (well, it's not so mysterious if you've seen a lot of hentai). Seems a bad guy has gotten ahold of some concoction that turns women into slavering loves slaves, so he's kidnapping coeds, tying them up in an attic, giving them the concoction, and having his way with them.

The hero of the story figures out that the women are being kidnapped and heads out to find them, but is constantly being distracted by all the beautiful coeds who want to have sex with him. It's just durned difficult to get anything done under such circumstances. The bulk of the hentai aternates between scenes of the bad guy molesting his kidnap victims and the good guy slowly working his way through all the coeds toward the bad guy's attic. Plenty of consensual vanilla sex, plenty of nonconsensual bondage sex. It's a fairly mediocre hentai, in short, whose major redeeming feature is its lightheartedness.

F-Force – From the cover copy, I was expecting a sort of Charlie's Angels story here. Well, if Charlie's Angels was set in medieval times, maybe so. In a remote mountain kingdom, demons are kidnapping all the kingdom's beautiful daughters. In fact, they HAVE kidnapped ALL the kingdom's beautiful daughters, except for the king's daughter. So the call goes out for some monster killers, bringing a lone male monster slayer and a trio of beautiful female monster slayers.

The guy arrives just in time to save the king's daughter from being kidnapped by a horde of demons who easily kill her retinue, but have more trouble with the monster slayer. He spirits the daughter away from them. At the village, he's joined by F-Force, the trio of female monster hunters. Shortly thereafter, the demons mount an attack in force on the village, and the four monster hunters unite to fight them off. They wind up taking the battle to the leader of the demons, a powerful creature who, among other things, collects panties. So you know he's bad.

Turns out the attacks are related to the re-appearance of "Four Pillars of Light" that were involved with the sinking of an entire continent in ancient times. There's a fairly involved plot associated with this one and some lively characters, too. Explicit tentacle sex, vanilla sex, some explicit bondage sex. I haven't seen the final ep of this so I don't know how it comes out. Although I found the fundamental plot engaging, the characters didn't interest me all that much, so I don't know if I will bother.

Slave Doll – Deals with the exploits of a beautiful young android maid who serves her owners in every way imaginable, if you get my drift. Lots of vanilla sex, some bondage, but the character is such a sad little wimp of a female Pinocchio with lots of submissiveness thrown in that the cartoon was painful to watch. In the opening we see her explaining that her duty is to be a sex slave to her master, 24 hours a day, every day, while an android tear courses down her cheek in manufactured sorrow at her plight. The rest of the story consists of vignettes in which she serves as a sex slave to her master, 24/7. In short, there is no plot to speak of. Boooo-ring.

[dorkusmalorkusmafia]

Dragon Pink – A parody of RPGs in which a group of the usual adventurers – a warrior, a strongman, a witch and a cat slave -- travels about slaying monsters and looking for treasure. Pink, the cat slave, is constantly being captured, tied up and tortured/molested by bad guy and gals, necessitating her rescue. She's in love with her master Santa, who is easily swayed by the charms of others. I found the series to be great fun as it has a pleasant, lighthearted spirit, unlike a lot of hentai.

Man that sounds like almost every episode of Superfriends with Aquaman being Pink. Oh no, off to save Aquaman again. The strongman is obviously Superman. And I guess that the witch could have been Jana (?) from the wondertwins.

[kimera]

Just an FYI.... only Americans refer to it as "hentai." The Japanese say "h." If you tell a Japanese fan that you like "hentai" they are going to think something far worse. :P

[Evil Captor]

yet more hentai reviews ...

Imma Youjo 2: Maya -- In a futuristic city reminiscent of BladeRunner's L.A., only the weather is a lot drier, a brilliant android maker has a gig manufacturing android love slaves for a bunch of gangsters that run a bordello for such androids.

The scientist's current project is Maya, a SUPER android love doll. Her responses are much more human than that of a normal android love doll, so much so that she could easily pass as human. (Which begs the question, if being humanlike is such a great android trait, why not save yourself all the trouble and just date a nice girl from the neighborhood? I mean, isn't the POINT of android love dolls their inhumanity, i.e., their programmability, if you get my drift?)

Relations between the scientist and the gangsters are strained, they being vicious thugs and he being a nice guy who just wants to be left alone to build robot sex slaves in peace. As soon as he has Maya complete, he and his trusty robot guard dog take a powder along with Maya. They go to a lakeside villa and have a wonderful idyllic interlude while they wait for the gangsters to find them. Love blossoms between Maa and her creator, who has neglected to tell Maya she's a robot sex slave. Romantic love, which means they smile at each other a lot before they have the vanilla sex scene.

The gangsters find the villa of course, destroy the robot guard dog, tie up Maya and her creator, then by way of explaining her actual position in life, rape her while her creator watches helplessly. They leave the creator a broken man, and haul Maya off to their bordello where they have a great sex slave job for her, which she doesn't even have to interview for.

Maya works out just fine as a bordello whore, in fact she's soon their star "performer." There's more to the plot including a surprising final status for Maya, but why give it ALL away.

This is definitely one of the better hentai, and worth watching for the story alone. Has some vanilla sex, a couple of bondage scenes, and a lot of sex that's just plain questionable. I mean, does consensuality mean anything when you're talking about an android love doll? Sure, the Maya doll doesn't seem real happy to be doing anyone that comes into the bordello's doors at first, and given the Pinocchio syndrome that's commonplace among Japanese anime/hentai that deals with robots, it's probably reasonable to treat them with human standards. Still, I would tend to think Maya's sadness is as programmed as the rest of her responses, hence that it's meaningless.

My My Mai -- This is a fun little hentai about a fun little prostitute called Mai. Mai is fun because she likes her job. She likes having sex with all the middle-aged men who visit her brothel, and they like having sex with her. There wouldn't SEEM to be much of a potential for a plot here, but the writers handle that problem easily.

My My Mai is a series of vignettes about Mai's adventures. There's the guy who's convinced thqat a pleasant, outgoing gal like Mai must have been forced into prostition and so he keeps trying to rescue her, much against her will. There's the gal who's basically using a young guy, promising him her affection in return for transportation and other useful services, but never "paying off." When she finds out that her tool has been going to Mai for sexual relief, she becomes jealous and challenges Mai to a sex contest. And there's the story of Mai becoming just too popular one day and having too much sex even by her generous standards.

I highly recommend this hentai to those who don't like rape/forced/bondage scenes. All the sex is consensual, even though money is the rationale for it. Mai is portrayed as a pleasant, cheerful gal who like sex a lot, her clients as guys who realize what a great gal she is and are happy for the chance to avail themselves of her services. To Western eyes it's an unrealistic portrayal of prostitution, but its cheerfulness and warmth makes up for a lot.

G-Taste -- This is a hentai that is not to be confused with the anime G-Force, much like the hentai F-Force (already reviewed).

G-Taste is a series of short which have a fetish theme.

The first involves a woman who enjoys wearing pantyhose and rubbing them on things? What things? Oh, just 'bout everything. That's it, that's the whole of the story, the young woman who wears out the crotch panel of her pantyhose on everything she can.

In the most well-developed vignette, a young woman goes to work as one of the maids at a mysterious mansion. Its owner wears a mask and is almost never seen by the maids, but is instead seen by his female chief of staff who oversees the maids and also has sex with the owner, who wears the mask during sex and like to have his factotum sit on the mask as he wears it.

The maids' main job is keeping the grounds tidy and serving guests, and the new maids are told that whenever a room has a mask on the door, they are not to open the door, enter the room, or even think about what might be going on behind that door.

Of course, in no time flat the new maid opens the door and discovers one of the maids kneeling with her face on the floor and her hands tied behind her back, while the chief of staff rubs her foot into the maid's panties from behind.

Well, the maid is being "punished" for losing track of the maid who has just entered the room, and who has also to be punished for entering a room she shouldn't enter. But it turns out the maid who's being "punished" actually has a fetish for shoes and is enjoying the hell out of her punishment. The new maid is enlisted to aid in the punishment, and in the way of hentai pretty soon they're whipping out the ballgags and the strap-on dildos and whatnot. It all leads to a big party where drooling is used as a torment (don't ask) and the mansion burns down. (Mansions burn down a lot in hentai -- offhand, I can recall it happening in an ep of Cool Devices, in Mysteries of the Necronomicon, and a few others. It does sometimes add a sense of finality when your plot has gone nowhere, I suppose.)

I found this watchable in the sense that it wasn't all that mean-spirited, but the plot went nowhere. There was a little character development, but not much. The animation was nice in the sense that it was a little more Western than most ... the women didn't ALL look like bobble-heads of Keene dolls mounted on pornstar bodies.

In short, this is a mediocre hentai, of greatest interest to fetishists, though it does have some nice imagery.

[Evil Captor]

Maya: Imma Youjo V – The fifth entry in the Imma Youjo series is a pretty good watch, although it seems to have every hentai cliché in the book going for it, starting with the lead female's name, Maya. (Cliché #1: many hentai heroines are named Maya or some variation of that, such as Mai or Mia). Maya is a young woman who's starting a new job as a maid (Cliché #2: maids are so commonly objects of lust that the Japanese term for "maid" is prolly something along the lines of "Bend Over Girl").

Her new boss resides in an isolated mansion (Cliché #3: really, I don't know how you can dominate anyone unless you live in a mansion) and is of course very wealthy (Cliché #4: goes with the mansion, I guess). There's already a maid working at the mansion (Tomoka) who shows Maya the ropes (no, not THOSE ropes) and gives her a drugged drink every night so she won't notice all the sexual bondage acitivity she engages in with the mansion's owner and his sunglasses-wearing henchman (Cliché #5: to be sure, this is a general sort of cliché and not hentai specific).

Tomoka's master is training her to participate in a sex contest on his behalf. It seems that businessmen in master's circles cement deal with sexual surrogates. Each presents his surrogate (or "collection") onstage at a party and they have sex with one another. First surrogate to come loses, not just on her own behalf, but on her master's behalf as well in some real-world business deal of considerable import. (Hmm, d' ya suppose Enron … and Worldcom … and Adlephia … bad surrogates? … naaaaah!).

Well, Tomoka blows it on her debut, leaving her master considerably less wealthy, but master has another card up his sleeve … Maya! So he's ready to start training Maya via BDSM sex. But the Master's mentally dirsturbed son has feelings for Maya, and so Oedipal conflict ensues. How does it all end? Well, let's just say the mansion burns down (Cliché #6 – see the review of G-Taste for the particulars on this one.)

Depsite all the cliches, Imma Youjo V rolls right along and is a good watch. Its predictable plot and threadbare characterization mean it isn't gonna show anything new, but at least it has a story to tell.

[Evil Captor]

Much as I hate to rouse this thread from its two-month slumber, I would like to announce that I have finally gotten the hentai review site that I threatened up and running. "Happy Hentai Land" is now extant on the web, and contains reviews and essays about hentai. It's illustrated, of course. The link that follows is work safe, as it's a warning that the site you'll be visiting has adult content The site itself is NOT work safe. Repeat, NOT work safe. Don't go getting yourselves in trouble, folks.

http://www.jollyroper.com/hentai/index.html

Enjoy! Feel free to post comments about the site or any of my reviews here, if you want to take issue or just agree wholeheartedly.

[TigoleBitties]

Needs more reviews and a better design. But overall, the reviews are intelligent and worth the read

I can help you with both if you want

[DreadCthulhu]

Originally posted by Evil Captor
[b]. Not for the weak of stomach, and it's not all THAT Lovecraftian – no Elder Gods make any appearances -- but it's worth watching on its own terms.



I remember that one. Too bad my agent couldn't work out a deal. :D