I told Cecil, when he passed on a draft for me to look at, that I feared what Slug’s imagination would come up with for the illustration on this.
There’s so many ways Slug could have gone with this one, but he did a pretty good job.
I rolled my eyes when I saw the article because it seemed like a subject that was beneath the Straight Dope (if such a thing is possible). But I have to say, it actually did a good job of putting their erotica into perspective (aside from the legal explanation for the tentacles). It’s no more perverted than our porn, it’s just more cutesy and fantastical.
As for the “koonago” stuff, it seems to me to be another manifestation of the Japanese obsession with completely drenching their women in semen. They’re either getting ganged up on bukkake style, dominated by some multi-tentacled beast, or getting shrunken down and soaked by a single man. What’s up with that?
I blame Cthulhu.
I’d just like to point out that Japanese Tentacle Porn would make an awesome band name.
I have seen one .dont look them in the eye.
I’ve seen that Legend of the Overfiend before, as I’m sure plenty others on here have. It’s actually far too ridiculous to be taken seriously.
Cecil passes over one aspect of tentacle porn that I’ve pointed out – on this very Board (“beneath the Straight Dope” indeed! Nothing is beneath us!!) – with tentacles you can actually show more of the woman and the sex act. Most depictions require some careful positioning of the participants or odd angles if you want to see actual penetration. But when the penis is replaced by a tentacle, you can get much freer viewing, which to the male reader is all to the good – he probably doesn’t want to see the guy, anyway.
Koonago is hardly the weirdest of the Japanese porn industry… try googling guro sometime.
Supposedly that includes necrophilia. Who really thinks that’s weird? I remember a music video by Tom Petty in the 80’s that was extremely suggestive of his character getting it on with a quite lovely corpse. There was even a movie around in the early 90’s I think about a female mortician who would inject blood into the penis of a dead male (always young and handsome) in order to have sex with him.
OK, it is pretty fucking weird. You got me. but not compared to some of the other “shit” (shall we say) in that genre. 
Bukkake is one form of Japanese porn that I just do not understand the attraction of. Koonago, a term I hadn’t seen before Cecil’s column, is another. I’d seen examples of it in various places, but didn’t know it had a special name.
Re tentacle porn: Some years ago, there was a report that scientists had observed octopuses stiffening one of their tentacles and using it to insert sperm into their mates. Upon reading it, my first reaction was “Japanese tentacle porn was right?!”
I believe I read the report in Science News, but apparently their on-line archives don’t go back far enough. I’d try to google this report, but …
Just to clarify: no, it’s not possible. You’re talking aobut the man who has written about such things as the caloric count of semen, fartistry, using flatulence to become airborne, many other columns on flatulence (search the Archives), and coprophagia… nothing is “beneath” us.
This is more of an anecdote than anything else, but I have noticed that Japanese porn is definitely much bigger on depicting bodily fluids in general, not just semen. Women will sweat profusely, have the female equivalent of come run down their legs when excited, wet themselves, and sometimes even take a crap if that’s the kink being explored. (Ditto men.)
What bothers me more is the bottom, regardless of gender, is very rarely depicted as wanting the sex. Their starting attitude tends to be “I’m not really comfortable with this, but I’ll go along with it if it makes you happy” and then even when they start to enjoy themselves they’re still depicted as being ashamed of arousal. Characters that want sex are perverts (if not outright rapists) if male or sluts if female.
(But then I guess you can’t win with this one. If she doesn’t want it, then it’s a rape fantasy. If she does, then she’s being objectified.)
'Cause there’s nothing more adorable than a lecherous octopus…
Hey, I used to be completely baffled by that whole tentacle porn thing. Then I saw the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy and had this really weird dream about that Davy Jones character, and THEN I got it …
I’ll be in my bunk.
(Yes, I’m weird. That’s why I fit in around here)