Hentai Reviews: An Introduction

You may ask yourself, how did i get here? Well, despite this not being your beautiful house, it is a small blog I'm starting with the aim of writing long-form blogs, analysis, and articles about hentai!

You might be wondering, damn Gwyn, why did you decide to start reviewing hentai? Well, the simple answer is that a friend poked me about it and I ended up spending a couple hours gushing opinions at them. I couldn't just close the floodgates after that!

So this is going to be my introduction post for this blog I'm starting. So with that said, let's talk a bit about me, and my feelings around hentai.

I am not Japanese.

I am from Canada and have mostly English, German, and Jewish heritage. I am not, by any means, an expert on Japanese culture, and thus cannot speak to much of the cultural context for trends in hentai, anime, or pornography in Japan in general. Much of my experience with it is from that of an outside consumer, through a layer of translation and from a different cultural experience.

A lot of my criticisms and observations, especially regarding gender, sexuality, and feminist analysis, are going to be done with a very limited perspective. My aim is not to speak authoritatively, but with the perspective of one queer trans woman having fun watching pornography.

I really love hentai

I actually really enjoy hentai! I am a very multi-sensory enjoyer of media. I love animations, television, movies, and games. I also love erotic artwork, and eroticism, and find it way more enjoyable to jerk off to pornography with a good story or fun scenarios attached.

Wait hold on, you said "jerk off" there. Do you-

Yeah this is a pornography blog my dude did you think I was gonna play at being chaste here?

Fair. So, I guess you prefer stuff like hentai with a lot of story?

Yeah! Hell, there's some hentai that has literally improved my gender. We'll get to it soon enough on this blog, don't you worry.

And I think this is what can be so enjoyable to me about hentai anime in particular. Pornographic films rarely have more than one entry, unless you're talking about bespoke productions like Latex and Shock (Latex 2). In a lot of online animated pornography, like the material you'll find on Newgrounds, you very rarely see any sort of continuity at all. Even the relatively prolific Derpixon's Fandel Tales series only has two entries^a. And although there are many great pornographic comics, they aren't in motion and aren't usually voice acted.

When you're lucky with a hentai anime, there's possibly many entries! There are also a bunch of ecchi series which may not be considered hentai to some people. I will be covering these as I see fit. With these you can even get a full season of anime but covered with titties and sexual encounters! Fourteen episodes of horniness!

So is there any actually good hentai anime?

Well, yes, or else I wouldn't be writing this blog! But it's also very complicated, because there is a lot of very, very bad hentai. In the same way that it is hard to find really good anime, or even any really good television. Capitalism and in particular the tail-end of the global pandemic have damaged a lot of creative industries very badly, and social conservatism is going strong in most affluent countries.

Pornography is a medium which is often very looked down upon, both moralistically and artistically. This applies in Canada and the USA for certain. I can't attest to how much quality conversation might exist in Japan (see: the previous section), but it stands that there is very little conversation in our sphere about the artistic merits of pornographic cartoons from Japan.

Beyond the lack of discourse, I also find that there are three major aspects of much hentai that can make it hard for me personally to enjoy, or recommend, especially as a woman.

A lot of hentai is about highschoolers

Anime in general has an issue with sexualizing highschoolers. A lot of hentai (drawn or animated) is based around or involves teenagers. It is not uncommon to come across hentai where character's ages are loudly announced to be fourteen (14) or fifteen (15).

The artistic choices around character ages can often be baffling. Various artists use a style which draws teenagers and adults in very similar ways. I have gone through several series not realizing that the characters are teenagers until suddenly an "adult" shows up who is a full head taller than the main cast, or just resized 125%. It may in fact be impossible in some series to tell age groups apart beyond being told their ages. This is common enough that in several American dubs of hentai anime they have replaced "high school" with "college" in the dialogue. The result is mostly unnoticeable, with only a bit of weird plotting here and there. This is an odd area where sometimes dubs instead of subs can be easier to digest.

Getting into the weeds of this is extremely complicated, especially considering that I am an outsider from my own country with its own patriarchal problems with sexualizing youths. One aspect that is cited in various places is that Japan's limited age of consent can be as low as thirteen (13) in some regions. This is often raised higher than that, and there is a legal distinction between "decent" and "indecent" acts that defines the limited vs. unlimited (eighteen (18)) age of consent.¹ There also appears to be an ongoing push to raise the limited age of consent to sixteen (16). I am not a legal expert, and even thoroughly reading Wikipedia's summary leaves me feeling woefully inadequate to understand how this all fits together.

Furthermore, I think it is extremely worth comparing how the USA often has lower ages of unrestricted consent than Japan does. ^b I bring all this up to emphasize that like every socially patriarchal culture, young women are often the target of sexualization and objectification. There are many people who cite Japan's restricted age of consent to portray Japan in some uniquely negative light, or reversely to excuse some real heinous shit. It is good to understand context as best as we can, and it's also important to know when we don't have the whole picture. And it's also extremely important to check our own culture's dirty laundry before making accusations about other people's.

Now, speaking more practically: It would be obviously absurd to pretend teenagers do not engage in sex; because they do. But the thing is that I as a thirty-or-forty (30/40) -years-old woman want nothing to do with that personally. And from a much simpler angle, a lot of hentai's target audience is guys in their late-teens to early-adulthood, where fantasizing about a Scott Pilgrim situation isn't quite so squicky.^c But the point remains that this is a medium where the production isn't targeting me: a thirty-or-forty-years-old trans woman.

Sexual violence can be pretty casual

I am not about to say that noncon shouldn't exist in pornographic fiction. Lots of people of all genders and orientations enjoy noncon erotic fiction, including me! There's a lot of factors involved, and different aspects tend to attract people in different ways. The issue that arises is that hentai is often fairly bad at telegraphing when noncon might be in a series. A lot of contemporary pornography tries to telegraph what is to be expected from it, to give people a good idea of what they're in for and help avoid being surprised by things they hate.

There's a lot different between a pornographic story about orcs pillaging elven villages and a pornographic story about a woman working as a gardener. You can make certain expectations, you know? I don't think the elves are going to have a good time. I don't see why the gardener should have a bad time!

However, it's fairly common to find out halfway through a hentai series that one episode just like, has a rape scene in it. Incidents of "prank rape" are about as common as in 1980s American frat comedies, but with the whole incident played out in much more gratuitous detail.

To reiterate, the issue here isn't the content itself, but the way it isn't telegraphed clearly. Regardless of what you're into, this is not ideal. If you're into certain types of noncon, it can be hard to know where to find it! And if you're not into it, you may find various series suddenly a lot less fun.

Women just aren't really allowed to enjoy sex in hentai

One of the most infamous aspects of hentai is probably the way that women constantly protest during sex. If you have any familiarity with hentai, you know what I mean. You also might know what I mean if this is the reason why you are not familiar with hentai.

Even the most loving pair-bonded couple may end up with the woman squealing embarrassment and rejection during a scene. It's very jarring, especially when the subtitles often very clearly will say No! in their elaborate .ASS formatting.

I'm actually very curious why this is such a deeply common aspect of hentai. I have heard rumors that this is some kind of cultural expectation, but not from any reliable sources. I have also wondered if it is a kind of odd aspect of how pornography is published. With the recent evaporation of online research tools (thanks Google) it has become difficult to find good sources of information about this, but hopefully my research can pan out and get me some good sources for a future discussion.

Regardless of the reasoning, it is kind of exhausting to deal with, whichever reason is the cause.

The best way I personally have gotten through a lot of this is to treat these protestations as the sort of consensual resistance found in BDSM encounters. I don't know what safeword these couples have but I assume there is one, quietly agreed upon off-screen. I don't know. This is a mental gymnastic you either have to do or don't need. Don't ask me to justify the logic here.

The plan

I am really excited to get into the weeds and talk about some of my favorite hentai here! We'll be talking about some longform series, some OVAs, maybe a film or two if we're lucky!

I will primarily be focussing on hentai anime, since for me personally I find the multimedia presentation of them (animation, sound, story) to be really impactful. I would also love to get into discussing some visual novels, and more elaborate hentai games.

Much like anime is sometimes adapted from manga, hentai anime also sometimes starts out as hentai manga! But what is very interesting from my explorations of the medium is that there are also a lot of hentai anime that started out as games.

As an example, my favorite hentai anime, (and likely the one I will be discussing first on this blog,) Viper GTS, started out as a game. And I say this with full sincerity: damn I wish there was more of that! I love the characters! The setting is cool! It's fun and horny and has demons and angels!

Which brings me to my last note, which is how we're going to rank and rate all this media.

The review system

There isn't one! Fooled you! These are going to be free-form reviews! Ha he!

End Notes

1. And like honestly the first entry isn't quite as good as the second. Oh, but the second? Holy shit. Herzha is fucking iconic and massive amounts of succubus gender. Hearty recommend.

2. According to Wikipedia there are twenty-three (23) U.S. States and Territories where the unrestricted age of consent is lower than eighteen (18).

3. Though like. The whole point of Scott Pilgrim was about how Scott is a piece of shit and emotionally immature and is dating a high schooler because he can't handle dating somebody with emotional maturity. So like. Idk it still seems squicky to me.

References

1. McLelland, Mark J., Thought policing or the protection of youth? Debate in Japan over the "Non-existent youth bill", International Journal of Comic Art, 13(1) 2011, 348-367. https://ro.uow.edu.au/artspapers/260