The sad situation in Ukranie continues, as Russia’s invasion continues to bring unthinkable sadness to many. While writing my blog post about JAST USA and J-List donating proceeds to My Girlfriend is the President and its fandisc to a Ukraine relief organization, I found myself getting nostalgic about the positive ways even something as niche as 18+ hentai games have managed to bring people around the world closer together, even allowing culturally distant countries like Russia perhaps feel closer to the rest of the world thanks to the concept of World Peace Through Shared Popular Culture. Here’s a blog post with my thoughts on this topic!
The History of Hentai Games in English
The year was 1995, and the Internet had made the world into a magical place where it seemed that any dream could come true. The Netscape IPO — in which a company with no revenues and no assets other than being associated with “the Internet” had rocketed into space — had happened a year earlier, and we all knew the world had fundamentally changed.
I was in Japan during these heady days, teaching ESL but knowing that I wanted to do something with this exciting new Internet thing. I cast around for an anime-related business to start, and luckily hit on hentai “dating-sim games” as a promising possibility. In those days, fans would download pirated Japanese visual novels like Doukyusei 2 or Isaku or EVE Burst Error and load them, clicking wildly through menu options they couldn’t read until boobs appeared. I figured that fans would enjoy the games much more if they were localized into English. And I was right: our early titles were supported by fans in the U.S. and around the world, and we were able to slowly increase the quality of the visual novels JAST USA and J-List were able to bring to fans.
(J-List was started in 1996, after I’d already begun translating and developing hentai games in English. Back then, I intended to run J-List only for a year or so, to tide the company over while we waited for the visual novels to take off. Of course, J-List would prove much more important, bringing out many influential products.)
For any curious about ancient history, the first hentai dating-sim game published by JAST USA was Three Sisters’ Story, an involved tale of revenge by you and your brother against the three daughters of the man responsible for the death of your father. Partway through you realize it’s not fair to punish the girls for the sins of their father, and you try to find a way to save them from your crazed brother.
Are you a fan of the classic hentai games by JAST USA? We’ve got HD remastered versions of such classic titles as the X-Change Trilogy, Do You Love Horny Bunnies? 1 & 2, and The Sagara Family, with high-res graphics and updated game engines!
Our second title was a smash hit called Season of the Sakura. This school harem game borrowed heavily from the popular anime of the mid-90s, allowing you to date and sexually interact with characters from Evangelion, Magical Knights Rayearth, and a forgotten anime called Saint Tail. Despite having published or been involved with 100+ game titles, this is the only VN that dared to do “parody” characters from established anime I’ve seen.
The third title was Runaway City, a game in which you have supernaturally good luck which enables you to always end up in sexy situations, as you explore the nature of the strange city you’re living in.
If you clicked any of those links above, you’d have been pleasantly surprised to find that all three of JAST USA’s original three titles are playable for free online. This is thanks to the hard work of The Asenheim Project, a group of dedicated programmers and classic hentai game aficionados who allow you enjoy these titles even on a phone.
That Time Russia Embraced Hentai Games
As we were publishing those early visual novels and proving to the world that a market for 18+ PC games existed, a funny thing happened. In addition to being embraced by fans in the U.S. and various other countries, JAST USA’s dating-sim games became hugely popular in Russia, which was recovering economically from the chaos of the Soviet Union changeover and the 1998 Asian financial crisis. The title they embraced the most was Season of the Sakura, and I’ve been told that no Russian male from the era failed to play this game.
Fans in Russia certainly weren’t buying the games from us, given the financial situation of the average Russian in the late 1990s. Instead, they largely purchased the pirate editions sold in shops for $2. Yet I was 100% okay with having our games pirated in this case: the idea of a generation of Russians learning to enjoy the same popular culture as those of us in the West gave me a warm, fuzzy feeling inside, and was certainly preferable to the bad days of the Cold War. I also loved the idea that many young Russians were using the games we’d published as a unique way to learn English.
There were some surprising benefits to our company as a result of fans in Russia embracing our hentai games. The popularity of our titles there lead to an interview with me being published in a Russian game magazine, which resulted in some of our titles being licensed for legitimate resale by a Russian publisher called Macho Studio, which was nice. So if you ever encounter Russian-language versions of our old titles, they’re likely licensed rather than bootleg.
Hentai, and Peace Through Shared Popular Culture
Back in the happier days before Vladimir Putin’s unthinkable war on Ukraine, we all enjoyed feeling an emotional connection with anime otakus in Russia, knowing that anime fans there got angry when Subaru said, “I love Emilia” to Rem along with the rest of us, and cried at the end of AnoHana just like we all did. Russians felt connected to the global pop culture world of anime because of the many Russian characters who featured prominently in anime. As the closest Westerners, Japan has always had a fascination with Russians, and often portrays them as something akin to Tolkien’s elves in anime and manga.
Did you know that Vladimir Putin hates being parodied in pop culture and memes? Make sure you don’t show him this post about 7 times he was mocked in Japanese popular culture.
Sadly all the goodwill Russia may have built up in certain corners of the world was flushed down the toilet, when Mr. Putin invaded on February 24, 2022. None of us is willing to give the nation of Russia the slightest leeway after that happened.
I personally hope that peace breaks out in Ukraine as quickly as possible, and we can all start moving towards a more positive and stable situation. This includes the eventual return of the average Russian to anime/hentai communities, where we can one day think of them as otakus, just like us, and once again think about “world peace through shared popular culture.”
Thanks for reading this post on the history of hentai games in the west, and the unique way they helped bring Russia closer to the rest of the world, if only for a time. I’m mainly writing this as a way of processing the feelings I have for Russia (the bad country) and Russians (the normal citizens, who are either bad or good, just like the rest of us). How are you dealing with the terrible war? Post your comments below, or tell us on Twitter!
J-List and JAST USA are doing our part to help the sad Ukrainians affected by Russia’s invasion. Until April 15th, both My Girlfriend is the President and the game’s fandisc are on sale for 50% off. All proceeds will be donated to Razom Ukraine, a respected charity providing medical and humanitarian aid. To support Ukraine, buy the digital version of both games from JAST USA. Already own the games but want to support us anyway? Buy the digital versions from J-List and send the download code to a friend!
