Hentai Fox! Want to read some XXX manga? Alright, I’m going to level with you guys—hentai is not really my thing. Lots of pornophiles out there swear by it, though, and it has become one of the most popular genres of porn, even outside of Japan. Its popularity is actually probably highest in the United States. Hentai in Japan does not necessarily refer to this genre of anime and manga porn, though.
The term, rather, is shorthand for a phrase roughly translating to “any perverse sexual desire.” The word also derives from the ancient Japanese terms for “change,” “weird,” and “strange.” And, looking at some of the Hentai available on the web, this is an appropriate label. I’m sure we have all heard of things like tentacle porn—a subgenre of hentai that features petite animated girls getting ravaged by strange and often unidentified tentacles in every orifice.
Not all hentai, though, is quite as extreme as that. In fact, it would be insanely difficult to narrow the entire genre of hentai porn down to any one type of prevailing image. The very nature of hentai is that it is broad. It all depends on the artist and whatever they feel the inspiration to draw. And what fans feel the inspiration to parody, or pay homage to.