Ask John: Where’s the Creativity in Hentai Gone?

Question:
Why is there much less variety in h-anime than in h-manga? Anyone familiar with h-manga knows there is a staggering amount of original material covering an incredible range of scenarios, fetishes, and character archetypes. Many h-manga are hilarious and find creative ways to be smutty. But when it comes to adult anime the industry just recycles a handful of basic setups – half of the time they just swap some names and alter the character designs slightly. What’s up with that? Wouldn’t they industry be better off it it tried to do something different once in a while?

Answer:
Anime is a commercial art, but that principle is rarely as principal as it is to adult anime. Erotic anime has a very limited consumer audience in Japan, so ero anime is produced cheaply and designed to maximize profit. Erotic anime frequently employ simple, quick to draw character designs and limited animation that reduce production cost and time. Erotic anime is also most often based on popular manga and PC games rather than original concepts in order to appeal to a pre-established consumer audience. And much contemporary adult anime feels recycled because most of it adheres to a pragmatic idea that if viewers like something, continue making more of it to capture more revenue. As a result of this practice, contemporary adult anime titles including the Stringendo/Accelerando/Stretta franchise, the Kansen franchise, and the Yakin Byouto franchise have so many episodes; there are an abundance of enslaved princess/amazon hentai; and what can be called Pixy’s house style may also be simple redundancy. Even further revealing the contemporary adult anime industry’s efforts to prioritize and maximize profits, within very recent years, numerous ero anime are getting shorter, running only twenty minutes instead of the traditional thirty. Providing less while keeping the price at or near the same certainly boosts profits.

Ero anime has undergone an ironic simultaneous bipolarity. Early adult anime was marked by tremendous creativity. The 1980s and 90s were typified by diverse adult anime series including the Wonder Kids and Nikkatsu Lolita anime series, Cream Lemon, Cool Devices, Urotsukidoji, and La Blue Girl. Production values and particularly visual design improved significantly in 2000’s adult anime, bringing viewers works like the Stringend series, Aneki… My Sweet Elder Sister, Bible Black, Fault, and Taimanin Asagi. However, while the visual appearance of contemporary H anime is typically attractive, creativity has nearly evaporated entirely. Titles like Himekishi Lilia, Himekishi Janne, Himekishi Angelica, Makai Kishi Ingrid, Mesubuta, Ikusa Otome Valkyrie, Dorei Maid Princess, and Hime Dorei all seem practically indistinguishable from each other.

Creativity seems difficult to push through in today’s adult anime industry. Satoshi Urushihara released his gorgeous OVA Front Innocent in 2004. Widespread speculation suggests that no sequel has been produced because the first episode was just too expensive to make. Several years ago the adult anime production studio Pixy challenged the status quo by moving to a system of producing high quality adult anime sold at half of industry standard. The move has proven successful to sustain the studio, but, practically speaking, no other Japanese adult anime studios have followed suit. And Pixy has, thus far, flatly refused to license its titles for American release in order to maintain Japanese retail value and avoid cheaper American DVD imports. The Chichi no Ya studio premiered in 2009 with budget priced original hentai DVDs. But Chichi no Ya’s low prices reflected its low-budget productions. Occasionally distinctive contemporary adult anime surface, titles like Nami SOS!, Angel Blade, HHH Triple H, Kara no Shoujo, Princess Lover, and Hatsu Inu. But these titles rarely last for more than two episodes.

Erotic manga is cheap to produce and publish. Japan has countless creative hentai artists and a large consumer market for erotic manga. Adult anime is more expensive to produce and has a smaller consumer audience. Only a small handful of Japanese studios currently produce ero-anime, and most of those studios evidently prioritize generating profit over publishing creative and unique erotica.