For better or worse, anime tentacles are among the most famous images in anime and manga. In this post, let’s explore the history of tentacles in anime and find out who the Father of Tentacle Hentai from Japan is!
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Why Does Japan Love Tentacle Anime So Much?
If you ask a Japanese person what images foreigners associate with Japan, they might suggest something like samurai, sushi, geisha, or Mt. Fuji. Or maybe they’d name anime and manga. Japanese pop culture has become such a cultural juggernaut around the world that it’s common for athletes to regularly make poses from Dragon Ball or JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure before competing, which thrills Japanese fans when they see it.
But another famous image that’s come to represent Japan around the world is tentacle porn. Whether it’s full-throated naughty tentacles in an ecchi anime or comic relief in a garden-variety isekai, it’s hard to think of many shows that don’t have at least one random “tentacle” episode thrown in for fans. I thought it would be fun to explore why this particular trope has become so prevalent in modern anime!
The Origins of Tentacle Hentai: The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife
As I’ve written recently, modern anime fans owe a lot to the Edo-period artist Hokusai (1760-1849). First, he coined the term manga — which literally means “whimsical pictures” — with his influential Hokusai Manga sketchbook series, in which he doodled everything from landscapes to caricatures of everyday people going about their day. The book proved so popular that booksellers couldn’t keep it in stock, making it the first publishing sensation in Japan. He also created pretty much every famous ukiyo-e image of Japan you’ve ever seen, including The Great Wave Off Kanagawa and Red Fuji.
But Hokusai is also the Father of Tentacle Porn. It all started with his 1814 woodblock print The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife, called Tako to Ama (“Octopus and Shell Diver”) in Japanese. The image of a woman entwined erotically with two octopuses really must have gotten imaginations flowing back in those days. Who would have thought that tentacle hentai is older than the invention of the telegraph!
The Beginnings of Modern Tentacle Hentai: Urotsukidōji
The 1980s arrived, and anime really came into its own. As early fans thrilled at Urusei Yatsura, Macross/Robotech, Nausicaä, and Akira, an awareness of the “dark” side of anime was slowly growing, too. Some of us would watch fourth-generation copies of the Cream Lemon series in our hotel room at anime conventions.
Then came the influential Urotsukidōji: Legend of the Overfiend, an anime based on the manga by Toshio Maeda. The anime used plenty of tentacles to depict the action, as a way of getting around Japan’s strict censorship laws, which forbade showing male or female genitals directly. If the “penises” were actually monstrous tentacles that spewed white liquid, he could dodge the law.
Evolution of Tentacle Anime
Tentacle anime soon became its own genre. Works like La Blue Girl, Twin Angels, and Bible Black made sure to “insert” (heh) tentacles into their stories. Fans in Japan ate it up, and when the licensing boom for anime and hentai got started in the 1990s, fans around the world got on board, too. Concerned parental groups forced licensors to put “ABSOLUTELY NOT FOR CHILDREN” labels on their titles in the US, but this had the reverse effect of making every fan want to know what all the fuss was about.
Modern Tentacles as Parody
Fast forward to today, and tentacle anime scenes have become a beloved trope in anime, alongside beach episodes, hot springs episodes, or a transfer student who just happens to sit next to the main character. These days, many anime include a ‘tentacle’ fan service episode for laughs, often as a bonus to reward fans who bought the Blu-rays.
The Top 7 Anime Tentacle Moments
Let’s look at some memorable tentacle hentai moments!
Another hugely important person in the history of ecchi anime and manga is Go Nagai. Among other things, Cutey Honey was one of the first series to explore the drama of having our heroine bound up in tentacles.
Urusei Yatsura was another groundbreaking anime that played with octopus tentacles to provide fan service.
A lot of fans probably got their first exposure to anime tentacles by watching Sailor Moon. J-List certainly sold a lot of tentacle-themed doujinshi about the Sailor Scouts back in the day!
Anything that can be imagined can be animated, and that goes for tentacles, or Sapphee’s tentacle-like snake body.
It’s common for ecchi series to use tentacles for fan service. The Futoku no Guild anime had several such episodes.
The “surprise tentacle” scene in That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime was a good example of how fan service is often used to thank fans for buying the limited Blu-rays, releasing a special episode that only collectors could watch.
The reach of naughty anime tentacles is so pervasive that even Western animation series like Scooby Doo and DC’s Justice League couldn’t resist throwing some in. What do you think of that?
Thanks for reading this blog post about the history and influence of anime tentacles over the years. What was your first experience with tentacle scenes in anime or hentai? Tell us in the comments below!
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