HENTAI

Hentai, often reduced to simply "H" (pronounced "ecchi" in Japanese), is a Japanese word meaning perverted or perversion, but is most commonly used outside of Japan to refer to pornographic animated cartoons - Hentai Anime. Pornographic animation is not unique to Japan, Robert Crumb�s Fritz The Cat movies of the early 1970s predate what are recognized to be the first Hentai animes in Japan (Lolita Anime I and Cream Lemon, both of 1984) but Hentai Anime is yet another of Japan's cultural exports that has established itself outside Japan and is estimated to be worth 20 million dollars in sales in the U.S. alone. The storylines in H Anime cover a range as broad as in mainstream anime, and include fantasy, science fiction, ninja, crime, black magic, the dramas of adolescence, and even, surprisingly perhaps, romance. The pornographic content varies from just a few scenes of sexuality that complement the storyline, to almost non-stop sex with no pretensions to storyline at all. As with other forms of pornography and erotica in Japan, graphic depictions of extremely violent rape and domination are not at all uncommon, though not as widespread as is often reported in western media. Two sub-genres of H anime are Yaoi - male homosexuality and Yuri - female homosexulaity. The characters in H Anime are almost invariably young, and in the case of the girls, extremely young, and when they are represented, adults are often Chikan (molesters) or teachers, and often one and the same. Being cartoons, there is a wide latitude in representing the characters without the limitations of reality i.e. the laws of gravity, so the girls all have extremely large breasts - often perfectly spherical - very long legs, and extremely short skirts allowing for plenty of the obligatory panty-shots. The boys are similarly endowed with enlarged biological features. Mention must be made of a unique feature of some H anime, and that is "tentacle rape" wherein the female victim is simultaneously raped by a monster with multiple tentacles (and sometimes robotic appendages). Seen by many as a device to get around Japan's laws prohibiting depiction of sexual organs, in fact is more likely to be derived from early Shunga, as tentacled creatures have appeared in Japanese erotica long before animated pornography appeared; among the most famous of the early instances (and perhaps the first) is a Hokusai woodcut called The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife, depicting a woman entwined and sexually molested by a pair of octopuses.