| Hentai (変態) is a Japanese word used outside of Japan, mostly in western countries and several English-speaking countries, to refer to Japanese animation
("H anime"), comic-book-style magazines ("H
manga"), and computer games ("bishōjo games", hentai games) with explicit sexual or pornographic artwork (see Japanese
pornography).
Background
Many dōjinshi hentai are works based on popular books, movies and manga. During the late 1990s, Sailor Moon characters were among the most popular characters to appear on these
types of websites. In the West erotic cartoons based on popular animations also have a long history, going back to the Disneyland Memorial Orgy by Wally Wood. The source works can even be live movies, as is in the case of Harry Potter hentai dōjinshi.
Unlike in the West, the line between hentai and mainstream works is somewhat blurred in Japan. Children anime can depict nude
characters, for example in the Sailor Moon show the girls are nude
during their transformation. Many artists add nudity as fanservice.
This form of Japanese culture acquired some popularity in the West thanks, to a large extent, to the Internet. Although there have been many pornographic comic books and animations produced in the West, they
never were as popular as hentai is today.
Meaning of the word
In Japanese, the word hentai means
metamorphosis, abnormality, or sexual perversion. It is never used to refer to "normal" sexual activity, or
to adult manga or other entertainment that is merely sexually explicit. The terms 18-kin (18禁, literally
"18-prohibited") meaning "prohibited to those not yet 18 years old", and seijin manga (成人漫画
"adult manga") are used.
The English-language use of hentai comes from anime and manga fandom. Compare otaku for another word altered somewhat in this transition. The English use is compared to the Japanese slang
エッチ (H, or etchi, often spelled ecchi by
non-Japanese), which refers to any sexually explicit content or behavior — or simply a lewd comment. Etchi is simply
the spelling-out of the Japanese pronunciation of the letter H; and is believed to be a shortened form of hentai
used as a polite codeword in the 1960s. (Note that even in Japan the origins of
etchi are unclear — one playful suggestion is that an H is someone who always follows a G, or girl.)
Exactly how the term hentai came to refer to all sexually explicit content in American anime fandom is unknown. With
the rise of the World Wide Web, however, the term was extensively
promoted by pornographic sites selling access to (frequently bootlegged) erotic manga. Banner ads promoting these sites might, for instance advertise "live girls and hentai", with the latter meaning
erotic manga as opposed to photographs. In addition, many people outside of anime and manga fandom had come to associate anime
with a particular genre of extreme pornography (e.g., tentacle rape)
which could easily be called hentai in Japanese as well.
"H" in Japan is now broadly used to refer to all sexual content or activity, so "H manga" are manga with sexual
content—however, "H" and "hentai" are no longer interchangeable. Also, the term "ero" (エロ), short for
"erotic", is now used more often instead of "H".
Homoerotic hentai
There are three kinds of anime porn: works that feature strictly heterosexual interactions (often abbreviated "het" by its
users), yaoi, and yuri. Yaoi refers to
homosexual male pairings, and yuri to lesbian pairings. Yaoi commonly features males of ambiguous gender in
both physical appearance and mannerisms. These males are called "bishōnen",
which literally means "pretty boy." The traditional "bear" of gay porn
in other countries is very rare in Japan. The reason for the androgyny is that yaoi most commonly attributes its fandom to
females, often teenage girls who tend to care more about the romance of the relationship than the actual sex. Yaoi also exists
outside of the hentai genre, since it is a fairly ambiguous term that is usually applied to any form of anime that includes male
homosexuality. However, it is different from shōnen-ai (literally,
"boy-love"), in which two males simply express romantic feelings for each other and never actually have sexual relations. As
implied, yaoi, more often than not, involves sex or at least "fooling around" between the participants.
Yuri is very similar to yaoi, except that the focus is on homosexual female interactions, and the females in a typical yuri
illustration or animation tend to be far less realistic than the males in yaoi, as is usually the case in most forms of porn. The
females in yuri are known as "bishōjo", which, predictably, translates as
"pretty girl." Shōjo-ai ("girl love") is the female equivalent of shōnen-ai. Shōnen-ai is far more popular in
Japan than the US.
External links
- Animetric (http://www.animetric.com) — hentai and anime reviews
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