The Encyclopedia of Smut: H Is For Hentai

We generally focus on flesh and blood people doing naughty things, but every now and then, we like to see how the art world gets frisky. Naturally, any sensible discussion about art and sex turns to the discussion of erotic animation, so tonight we're setting our sights on one of the world's most popular art forms: hentai!

Etymology
The word hentai is a kanji compound of "hen"--meaning "change," "weird," or "strange"--and "tai"-- meaning "attitude" or "appearance." It's actually a shorthand form of the phrase "hentai seiyoku," meaning "sexual perversion."

Western audiences use the term way differently than the Japanese do. While we tend to use hentai to describe all animation with sexual content, the Japanese use the word "ero" as a blanket term for erotica. Mark McLelland explained it much better than we can when he wrote the following for Australian National University's "Intersections" journal:

In Japanese hentai can reference sexual material but only of an extreme, "abnormal" or "perverse" kind; it is not a general category. The Japanese use of hentai refers to both same-sex and heterosexual activities which are considered unusual but also extreme...hentai is only used to refer to unusual or perverse sexual situations--this might be number of partners as in gang rape, or bizarre partners as in aliens or monsters or illicit partners as in children (rorikon and sh?takon). Hence in the Japanese case, hentai manga/anime is a subdivision of the much broader category of ero manga whereas in English hentai has come to signify the genre of ero manga as a whole.

This perhaps explains why some people tend to associate hentai with tentacle porn.

[Above: We've never seen titfucking like this before! Such is the magic of "Boobalicious"]

History
Hentai emerges from the same history that we explored in the entry on Asian mosaic porn; in brief, it draws on terms and ideas that have been around since the Meiji era, but it didn't really get going--in magazines and comics--until the postwar years.

The first animated film for adults to come out of Japan was "Senya Ichiya Monogatari," also known as "A Thousand & One Nights," which came out in 1969. It was released in the U.S. along with "Cleopatra: Queen of Sex" in an attempt to cash in on the naughty-animation craze that struck after the success of "Fritz the Cat." For a while, the most popular way to enjoy hentai was with original video animation series (OVA), the same type of episode system that non-ero anime was (and still is) distributed on. The first OVA hentai came out in 1984; it's called "Lolita Anime," and it involves a lot of underage characters having sex. We'll spare you the details here, but if you're curious, you should read one blogger's take on it at Colony Drop.

The tentacle stuff first showed up in the "Urotsukidoji" series in 1986, but there was only one scene in the entire OVA that contained tentacles. Most people point to "Demon Beast Invasion" (based on a manga of the same name) as the paradigm of tentacle rape hentai; the manga's creator, Toshio Maeda, stated that the tentacles were a way of subverting the censorship laws. You can't show penises, but you can certainly show slippery appendages!

[Above: Tita isn't afraid to tell her man how she likes it in "Akiba Girls"]

Types and Sub-types
As we mentioned before, hentai isn't a genre by itself, it's a type of erotic animation. Of course, you can break hentai down into many specific niches as well, each dependent on what it depicts and who it's aimed at. Hentai and manga aimed at men is generally called ero-manga or seijin; when it's aimed at women, it's red?su komikku (ladies' comics) or josei. And within those categories, you get...

· Gei comi or mens' love, also known as bara in the West, for homosexual men
· Yaoi or boys' love, which sometimes depicts ambiguously gendered teens (bishonen), for women
· Yuri or girls' love, comes in both seijin and josei flavors

And Wikipedia also lists:

· Bakuny? - depictions of women with large breasts. Literally translates to "bursting breasts."
· Futanari - depictions of hermaphrodites or transsexuals that have both phallic genitalia (penis with scrotum, only a penile shaft, or an enlarged clitoris) and vaginal genitalia, or, alternatively, a feminine hourglass shape including breasts combined with a penis and scrotum.
· Incest - sexual activity with legal family members. [Thanks for spelling it out, Wikipedia.]
· Lolicon - depictions of prepubescent or preadolescent girls.
· Omorashi - in which individuals struggle with a full bladder before finally wetting themselves
· Shotacon - depictions of young boys, either with other young boys or older men, or depictions of young boys with older women (known as "straight shota" in western jargon).
· And, of course, tentacle erotica

[Above: a scene from the legendary tentacle-centric hentai, "Demon Beast Invasion"]

What To Watch?
Honestly, we're not very well-versed in the world of hentai, but we've asked some of our friends and family (which is weird, but we do it because we're dedicated to giving you the best) and a handful of names kept coming up:

· "La Blue Girl" - This series is by the same man who did "Urotsukidoji," but it's a lighter and almost more humorous take on the tentacle-niche of hentai. (This is the most popular title collected from our sample.)
· "Bible Black" - Originally a video game known as an eroge (a word we should've covered but didn't), this series revolves around a school that used to house strange coven of witches. Fans of these OVAs praise the high quality of the art and the engrossing storylines.
· "Taboo Charming Mother" - It's one of the most popular incest-centric hentai series. If you're squeamish about depictions of incest, you should know that it involves a boy lusting after his step-mother. Anyhow, because we love you all so much, we're going to include a clip from "Taboo Charming Mother 6" at the bottom of this post!

[Above: we don't think we love anything in the world as much as this girl loves getting her nipples sucked! Via "Anyone You Can Do"]

[At top: everything is all sparkly and beautiful, via Hentai VIP (hentaivips.com)]

[All videos courtesy of AEBN Porn Pay Per View Network and Adult Video On Demand (theater.aebn.net)]

Here's that bonus smut we promised!: