Ask John: What’s the History of Hentai Anime?

Question:
How did hentai come about anyway? When I first saw it in a video store I thought it very strange indeed to have animated pornography. I thought it stranger still to have animated pornography filled with demons and monsters having intercourse with human females. Where did hentai come and when did it start?

Answer:
Sex has had a place in Japanese visual art for centuries. Erotic “shunga” woodcuts and paintings dating back to the 7th century depict sexual conduct and situations, and even serve as instruction manuals to unusual sexual positions and techniques. Contemporary hentai anime is arguably just a natural evolution of traditional Japanese erotic art. Unlike predominantly Christian culture, which closely connects sex with morality, Japanese culture tends to consider sex a natural, instinctual act. Therefore, Japanese culture is widely tolerant of fictional depictions of sexuality precise because such depictions are fictional and not necessarily reflect reality.

Japan’s first “adult anime,” was Osamu Tezuka’s feature film 1,001 Nights, released theatrically in Japan on June 14, 1969. Although not pornographic, the film did include nudity and sexuality. The success of this film from Mushi Productions encouraged Leo Productions to quickly produce and release an explicit, erotic anime film titled “Maruhi Gekiga: Ukiyo-e 1001 Nights,” on October 29, 1969. But adult anime didn’t carve out a major presence in Japan until the early 1980s when anime made specifically for home video became viable. The first true pornographic anime was “Yuki no Kurenai Kesho – Shojo Bara Kei,” (“The Reddening Snow, Girl Tortured with Roses”) released on February 21, 1984. Anime historian Fred Patten has called this first episode in the Lolita Anime series, “A half-hour video… [that] consisted of two 15-minute dramas of rape and sadistic sexual torture/murder of schoolgirls, whose spirits exact a gruesome supernatural vengeance.”¹ While the Lolita Anime series may have been the first hentai anime, it was the Cream Lemon series that premiered later in 1984 that first achieved massive success and is most responsible for the birth of the erotic anime genre. The original 16 episode Cream Lemon adult video series combined interesting and entertaining stories with gratuitous sex and provocative themes. Notable animators including Toshihiro Hirano (creator of Iczer-One), Yuji Moriyama (creator of Project A-ko), and Hiroyuki Kitakubo (Blood the Last Vampire director) worked on Cream Lemon episodes.

Osamu Tezuka’s second “adult” anime film, the 1970 movie Cleopatra, was released in American theaters on April 24, 1972, subtitled but still missing 12 minutes of footage. In America, the film was titled “Cleopatra, Queen of Sex” and rated X, even though the original film had relatively little nudity or sex. Similar to the long delay between the first erotic anime in Japan and the beginning of Japan’s erotic anime industry, adult anime didn’t appear on American home video until over a decade after “Cleopatra, Queen of Sex.” In the late 1980s, anime OAVs including SF Lolita Fantasy OME-1, Cream Lemon 3: Superdimension SF Legend Rall, and Cream Lemon 10: Star Trap were released on American VHS as part of the Brothers Grime X-Rated Cartoons series- dubbed, uncensored, and re-titled with names like “Gonad the Barbarian,” “Search for Uranus,” “Offenders of the Universe,” and “Sex Trap.”

In 1991, Central Park Media made the first attempt to faithfully release an adult anime in America. During the 1991 AnimeCon convention in San Jose, California, CPM promoted its plans to localize the softcore adult anime Minna Agechau (“I Give My All”). The American promotion included even paper flyers shaped like pink panties. Unfortunately, the LA Times Newspaper and Fox TV news aroused public outrage over a perceived corruption of American youth via pornographic cartoons. That controversy forced CPM to cancel the release. CPM rebounded and released the first of the Urotsukidoji OAVs on American VHS in August 1993. A.D. Vision, a new distributor that had entered the burgeoning American anime industry by releasing the risque Devil Hunter Yohko OAV on December 15, 1992, ventured into distributing erotic anime in 1994 with titles including Rei-Rei, F3, and Flare: Legend of Lyon- the first title distributed under A.D. Vision’s adult anime label, SoftCel Pictures. Beginning in 1995, the number of adult anime titles released in America began to explode as interest in all types of anime steadily increased. It’s also in 1995 that the Japanese term “hentai” seemingly came to become associated with erotic anime in America.

Erotic anime has become so prolific that it has its own unique sub-genres and themes, such as tentacles, “lolicon,” and extreme S&M/B&D. Japanese legal prohibitions first appeared in Article 259 of the 1880 Penal Code, but it was the 1907 revision of Article 175 of the Penal Code that outlawed obscenity that introduced the first significant legal censorship. A prohibition against the explicit depiction of genitalia and pubic hair was later written into the Japanese criminal code following WWII. Since animators couldn’t legally depict a male genitalia, they created a surrogate for the male appendage. The 1984 erotic anime OVAs “The Satisfaction” and “Lolita Anime 1: Uchiyama Aki’s Obyoki Aki-chan” introduced monsters with one or more phallic tentacles. Although these tentacles were invented for a very pragmatic purpose, they quickly became a powerful visual icon that’s now internationally associated with erotic anime. Countless monstrous tentacles assaulting a woman is a powerful visual image for both male and female observers. The idea of a single male completely overwhelming a woman and driving her to an impossible height of stimulation can be an empowering image for male viewers, and a fulfilling fantasy for females.

The balance of power and control in sexual relationships is also the foundation for the “lolicon” and “shotacon” themes frequently found in anime and manga. “Lolicon,” a Japanese abbreviation of “Lolita Complex,” places female children or young looking female characters in sexual situations. “Shota” or “shotacon” is the male equivalent- young boys engaged in sexual situations. Petit and inexperienced sexual partners can be attractive because they’re not intimidating. They’re also very cute. Conventional Christian morality finds such depictions repugnant, but lolicon and shotacon are tolerated in Japan because they’re recognized as pure fiction.

Sexual empowerment is even more apparent in series that emphasize S&M/B&D themes, including Shusaku, Isaku, Mujintoh Monogatari, Natural, Yakin Byouto, and Kojin Taxi. Rape, bondage and sex by coercion are common themes in erotic anime because these themes simultaneously depict sexual gratification without restraint or guilt, and exact a physical and psychological revenge against the submissive female, or sometimes male. In other words, the depiction of intense, violent sex serves as an egress for sexual frustration.

Because it’s doesn’t involve real human beings and isn’t restricted by the limitations of reality, anime and manga pornography is uniquely capable of satisfying the natural human fascination with sexuality. Hentai portrays fantasies impossible with real pornography, and allows for much more vicarious immersion than “real” porn because viewers don’t have to consider whether or not they resemble the actors on screen. The appeal of animated pornography is that it’s simultaneously sex and fantasy, in every sense of the word. That characteristic is universal, and explains why erotic anime is popular worldwide.

1. Quoted from Fred Patten’s 1998 article, “The Anime ‘Porn’ Market“.

Article revised July 29, 2008 with assistance from John C. Watson.