It’s fun to reflect on how all of us got into anime, what show caught our curiosity at first until it eventually became something we couldn’t live without watching daily. A question that goes hand-in-hand with this is, how we all discovered hentai — a word which just means “sexually perverted” in Japanese but has come to represent all 2D sexual visual anime, manga or games from Japan in English — and how our fall to the Dark Side has changed us over the years. I asked our awesome J-List Twitter followers “How did you get into hentai?” and here are the answers we got!
How Did You Get Into Hentai?
Naturally, a lot of fans were drawn to anime by the cuteness of Misty/Kasumi, who’s adorable face and mannerisms caused a lot of fans to crush on her hard. Once they found that “rule 34” artwork exists, their fates were sealed.
Misty wasn’t the only “gateway drug” for young Pokemon fans. Some fans were drawn to Jesse/Musashi.
When Sailor Moon started airing in 1995, it really opened a lot of minds, bridging the gap between the magical girl genre for girls, and the fighting sentai five-team genre for boy into a universal show that everyone could enjoy. The sexy transformation scenes probably caused some funny feelings in the stomachs of more than a few male and female fans.
Of course Bulma stole a lot of hearts during Dragon Ball, appearing in a lot of groundbraking fanservice scenes that would inevitably be remembered by fans for the rest of their lives.
One responder’s first anime was Urotsukidoji, aka Legend of the Overfiend, which would be quite a bizarre place to start a career as an anime fan. Then he moved on to Misty in her cute shorts…
“First came Lynn Minmay. Then Priss Asagiri. Then Iczer-1. Then Eko Magami. Then Ranma-chan. And finally came Megumi Amano…the descent was complete.”
“Watching Tenchi Muyo! and wondering…what if?”
“Back in the days of dial-up Sailor Moon hentai pics started the beginning of the Hentai Rabbit Hole.”
“Wow, so this is the internet, huh.” *looks for Sailor Mercury x Sailor Mars pictures*
“When I was 16, I was searching up Naruto on a certain site and found a Naruto x Shizune doujin called ‘Pets.'”
“I blame Deedlit’s elf boobs.”
One of the attractions of the hentai genre is that it can be anything you want, since whatever can be conceived of can be drawn. Want to explore giantesses? How about monster girls? Futa? There is no limitation!
Another thing I like about hentai as a genre is that it’s fundamentally “softer” than actual live-action pornography, which some people might not want to view for any number of reasons. This enables people who might feel cut off from enjoying porn to access the lighter and more creative themes in hentai anime and games instead. I’ve got a regular customer who visits us at conventions whose wife can only get “in the mood” if she watches hentai, because she doesn’t enjoy viewing actual porn. So hentai is literally keeping their marriage happy and healthy. What a time to be alive!
How I Got into Hentai
I owe a lot to various awesome manga creators who pulled me into Japanese pop culture . Rumiko Takahashi, for getting me started with Urusei Yatsura then her magnum opus, Maison Ikkoku. Hayao Miyazaki, for filling me with wonder at watching Nausicaä for the first time. And of course the late, great Izumi Matsumoto, whose awesome work Orange Road taught me more Japanese than any other.
But the manga-ka who’s responsible for me become a fan of hentai to the point that I came to Japan and founded a hentai empire was Tatsuya Egawa. Before making his mark on the world with works like Golden Boy and Tokyo University Story, he made a deliciously ecchi manga called Be Free!, which I encountered before coming to Japan. It was so filled with violence, awesome manly posing and steamy scenes with impossibly beautiful girls that my ecchi switch got turned on permanently. Thanks for the inspiration, Egawa-sensei!
Well, how did you get into hentai? Tell us below or on our Twitter! Also, you’re invited to hang out with the J-List staff on our newly-relaunched official J-List Discord!
Life is too short to go through without some adorable anime figures to look at our side, looking at us cheerfully from our desks or from our figure shelves. J-List has posted lots of new anime figures this week, and you should totally browse them all here!
