# What is Hentai and Manga? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 23, 2003, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-hentai-and-manga/156968 "2003-02-23T14:24:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Badbug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Badbug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Badbug)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2003, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-hentai-and-manga/156968/1 "2003-02-23T14:24:23Z")
Can someone tell me the definition of the Japanese art forms of Hentai and Manga? Is this all defined as “anime” and what exactly is that? I have seen both art and mpegs and think they can be quite interesting. ---
**Author:** ![essohbee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/71c47a/32.png) [@essohbee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/essohbee)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2003, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-hentai-and-manga/156968/2 "2003-02-23T14:27:44Z")
AFAIK, Manga is like comics, drawn stills that carry a story, anime is “manga movies” and hentai is X-rated anime. ---
**Author:** ![PetW](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/d2c977/32.png) [@PetW](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PetW)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2003, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-hentai-and-manga/156968/3 "2003-02-23T14:34:57Z")
I would google some answers for you, but I’d probably get sidetracked for a few hours. ---
**Author:** ![scr4](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@scr4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scr4)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2003, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-hentai-and-manga/156968/4 "2003-02-23T14:47:53Z")
_Anime_ is short for _animation_ and refers to all animated TV, video and movies. _Manga_ means comics, and refers to all printed comics including comic strips. _Hentai_ literally means “pervert” and technically only refers to “tentacle porn” and other extreme anime and manga, but in the US the term seems to refer to X-rated anime/manga of all types. ---
**Author:** ![Indefatigable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/9d8465/32.png) [@Indefatigable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indefatigable)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2003, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-hentai-and-manga/156968/5 "2003-02-23T16:12:47Z")
It’s worth mentioning that the hentai stuff is the most notorious in the West, and Japanese animation and comics seem to have this reputation of being _all_ porn, but that isn’t the case. In Japan, cartoons and comics are made for lots of different audiences, just as live-action TV and books are in North America. Hence, Western audiences are often shocked by stuff they see in Japanese cartoons, even if it _isn’t_ porn, and is just the same level of sexual content or violence that our prime-time live action TV would have. It looks shocking because we tend to think of cartoons as something ‘just for kids’. Once you get over that hurdle, you start appreciating it as just another submedium of television/movies. There’s science fiction, soap operas, westerns, mysteries and thrillers, and kiddie drivel, and pretty much the same range of quality and content that we get on live action TV over here. (This is from the perspective of a Canadian who watches anime whenever she can get her hands on it, and has occasionally compared TV-watching notes with Japanese folks, and is by no means straight from the horse’s mouth.) ---
**Author:** ![istara](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e79b87/32.png) [@istara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/istara)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2003, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-hentai-and-manga/156968/6 "2003-02-23T16:41:32Z")
[Somethingawful.com](http://Somethingawful.com) had some fascinatingly TMI! TMI! reviews of hentai scat porn computer games. ---
**Author:** ![Terrifel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c68b51/32.png) [@Terrifel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terrifel)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2003, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-hentai-and-manga/156968/7 "2003-02-23T17:25:34Z")
Hentai anime, though totally incomprehensible by Western standards, makes more sense when one realizes that certain of its more extreme elements were originally intended to evade Japanese censorship laws. For example, the emphasis on…er, “tentacles” in a sexual context derives from a prohibition on depicting genitalia and certain types of intercourse. Japanese animators simply did an end-run around this law by featuring demonic tentacled fantasy creatures with a penchant for schoolgirls. You see, while depicting the male organ was illegal, depicting penetration with a tentacle was obviously an unreal, fantasy scenario, and therefore not prohibited. Clever, eh? Erm…not to imply that I’ve ever seen the stuff myself. ---
**Author:** ![bibliophage](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bibliophage/32/7615_2.png) [@bibliophage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bibliophage)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2003, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-hentai-and-manga/156968/8 "2003-02-23T19:11:25Z")
Since this is about animation, I’ll move this thread to Cafe Society. bibliophage moderator GQ ---
**Author:** ![High\_Priestess](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ee7513/32.png) [@High\_Priestess](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/High_Priestess)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2003, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-hentai-and-manga/156968/9 "2003-02-23T22:18:13Z")
Along with what **Indefatigable** and **Terrifel** said; this is also the case with the _yaoi/shounen-ai/boy’s love_ genre. There’s another thread on that topic in here somewhere. This is all AFAIK, being a Japanese-American who happens to collect H/H-games/dojinshi for, uh… educational purposes… and has been doing so for five, six years. Anyway… “Hentai” in Japan actually refers pretty much entirely to a pervert (as in a person), not a genre of animation or comic-book. What you refer to as ‘hentai’ is actually called ‘ecchi’, which is the Japanese pronunciation for “H”… which stands for hentai. I think the reason Japanese came up with a slang term for ‘hentai’ is because the word hentai is actually -used- in common speech, whereas somewhere outside of Japan, ‘hentai’ in itself could be used as slang since it’s not a part of the everyday language. Hentai/ecchi/whatever, by the way, does not refer simply to ‘extreme’ material. What would be called ‘softcore’ also falls under those categories, although apparently there’s some confusion in the non-Japanese fanbase that thinks ‘hentai’ is hardcore and ‘ecchi’ is softcore. I have absolutely no idea where this started; I’ve spoken to my friends who import h-goods for me, and they had no idea either. ---
**Author:** ![DKW](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dkw/32/3118_2.png) [@DKW](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DKW)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2003, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-hentai-and-manga/156968/10 "2003-02-24T02:18:49Z")
Manga is Japanese comics, usually printed in paperback book format (what we call “graphic novels”, although they’re more accurately called serials). Nearly all of it is uncolored, just pen and ink. Unlike American comics, most titles are one- or two-person productions. There are dozens of titles in a number of genres, and each artist has a different style (“big eyes, small mouth” is far from standard, let alone enormous humanoid robots, ill-fated romances, angst, blood, etc.). Hentai is an extremely broad term referring to any and all “adult material”. Not all of it is X-rated; it includes scenes where the genitalia are not visible, or the panties never come off (the one part about “hentai” that irritates me more than anything else), which is more accurately labelled “R-rated”. ---
**Author:** ![Sublight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@Sublight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sublight)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2003, 6:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-hentai-and-manga/156968/11 "2003-02-24T06:47:40Z")
**High Priestess** , I’m not sure I really agree with you about ‘hentai=ecchi’. From what I’ve seen, ‘ecchi’ just refers to sex, sexiness or horniness in general, while ‘hentai’ is used more often to describe someone who’s truly weird. On (non-anime)TV, for example, ‘ecchi’ is frequently used to mean ‘dirty’ or ‘horny’ and is often used to describe someone who always wants to have sex or is acting in a lecherous manner. There is also the expression ‘ecchi suru’ which means ‘to do ecchi’ or ‘to have sex’. ‘Hentai’, on the other hand, seems to come across as a much stronger insult, and is often used to describe the guys who steal underwear from women’s clotheslines, try to film up schoolgirl’s skirts, or have floor-to-ceiling collections of porno and sex toys but have never even kissed a girl. I also don’t believe the expression ‘hentai suru’ exists. Anyway, I’m neither a native speaker nor much of an anime fan. I suppose I could ask some of my native-speaking co-workers for confirmation, but I’ve got enough of a reputation around the office as it is. ---
**Author:** ![High\_Priestess](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ee7513/32.png) [@High\_Priestess](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/High_Priestess)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2003, 7:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-hentai-and-manga/156968/12 "2003-02-24T07:43:27Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Sublight \* > \*\ ***High Priestess** , I’m not sure I really agree with you about ‘hentai=ecchi’. From what I’ve seen, ‘ecchi’ just refers to sex, sexiness or horniness in general, while ‘hentai’ is used more often to describe someone who’s truly weird. > \*\* Whoops, should’ve clarified. My bad. ^^; I meant that the terms seem equivalent in the H-collecting community in regards to subject matter. As for the use of the words in everyday language, I think you’re right in that ecchi is specifically ‘sexual’ and ‘hentai’ is used for perversion/strangeness.