Category:Hentai



""I've seen enough hentai to know where this is going.""

- Memetic Mutation

""Like three weeks before med school started, I got way into shoplifting and watching anime pornography — I mean, I'm talking some weird-ass cartoons, man.""

- Elliot Reid, Scrubs, "Our Stuff Gets Real" (S09E09)

Hentai (hen = 'weird', tai = 'perspective/view') is the misinterpreted Japanese word for "pervert" or "perverted", and is used by the western world to describe sexually explicit Anime, Manga/Doujinshi, video games (aka Eroge), and other Japanese media of similar nature. Sometimes these can have actual plots, but much of the time they are as devoid of such a thing as most western pornography. Hentai material can focus on tender moments between high school students who are discovering passion together for the first time. It can be sweet, tender, and airbrushed, or it can be ghastly, gory, grotesque things that'd horrify a Castro Street leatherdaddy.

Material that is less explicit or intense is called "Ecchi" ("H", pronounced "eh-chee").

It should be noted that both of these usages are specifically western. In Japanese, "H" is a catch-all term for all things naughty. It can be used as a noun, adjective or verb as the situation requires. When used to refer to porn, there is no implication of the degree of lewdness.

"Hentai", on the other hand, is not a word that is ever used to refer to porn in Japan, although in manga and anime it is used as an insult ("pervert"). Japanese people tend to find it extremely hilarious or just plain confusing that English speakers refer to Anime porn as "hentai"; of course, using the letter of a foreign language to refer to it is pretty baffling too. In general Japanese usage, hentai means "strange", "perverse", "transformation", "mutation" or "metamorphosis" and can refer to things that are entirely nonsexual. Note that there are two words pronounced "hentai"; the other means "strange shape" or "deformed"

It should be noted that "perverted" in this case can mean as to either manner of preferred sexual conduct or the desire therefore -- a man who excessively desires sex with women (or a woman) can be told off as "hentai" as much as a man with moderate desire for men (post-Meiji). (Western mediæval and Renaissance morés were similar: sodomy was often seen as being the culmination or product of an undifferentiated and excessive weakness toward the sin of Lust; old reprobates who were too slow to hire women were thought to hire boys.)

Definitely not to be confused with Sentai, though Rule 34 has made sure that there's some overlap between the two.

Hentai works can contain examples of the following tropes

 * All Anime Is Naughty Tentacles: A common assumption.
 * All Men Are Perverts
 * All Women Are Lustful
 * Always Female: A common but well justified assumption is that all victims of non-consensual sex are female.
 * Anatomically-Impossible Sex (H-manga often features the "sperm-flowing-into-the-womb" entry under this trope.)
 * Asshole Victim
 * The Bad Guy Wins: See Karma Houdini
 * Break the Cutie
 * Calling Your Orgasms
 * The Modest and Immodest Orgasms
 * Child by Rape
 * Cold-Blooded Torture
 * Date Rape
 * Depraved Bisexual: Women villains.
 * Dull Surprise
 * Everybody Has Lots of Sex
 * Extra Parent Conception
 * Eyeless Face: The men in some works, for purposes of Audience Surrogate.
 * Fate Worse Than Death
 * Fan Service / Fan Disservice: YMMV
 * Genre Busting
 * Go-Go Enslavement
 * Good People Have Good Sex
 * Gorn
 * Gratuitous Rape
 * Green-Skinned Space Babe
 * I Have You Now, My Pretty
 * Intimate Psychotherapy
 * I Showed Her What A Real Man Is
 * Ironic Echo
 * "It's Not Rape If You Enjoyed It"
 * Just Here for Godzilla
 * Karma Houdini: This is very common in works that feature non-consensual sex scenes. Occasionally a thin justification is given to say that woman being raped somehow deserved it.
 * Laser-Guided Karma
 * Lolicon
 * Looks Like She Is Enjoying It
 * Love Potion
 * Love Redeems
 * Luminescent Blush: Essentially every female character during a sexual act.
 * Mind Rape
 * Murderers Are Rapists
 * Naughty Tentacles
 * Off-Model: Hentai as a whole doesn't have the best reputation for care put into animating it.
 * Polyamory
 * Positive Discrimination: Most men are portrayed as depraved. On the other hand the story has a way of portraying them in the sympathetic role often as a Anti-Villain or even Anti-Hero.
 * The Pornomancer
 * Rape and Revenge
 * Rape As Comedy
 * Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Inverted.
 * Rape Is Okay When Its Female On Female: Although as far as examples of that trope go, hentai does tend more often to explore at least the physical consequences of such rape, like pregnancy, STD, etc... In the former case Futanari will be involved.
 * Rape Is Okay When Its Female On Male: As above, though it's usually Played for Laughs more than usual.
 * Refuge in Audacity
 * Revenge
 * Romantic Comedy
 * Rule 34
 * Screw You, Elves: If the main character is a human, and there is at least one elf around, this will happen...in both ways.
 * Serial Romeo
 * Sadist Show
 * Sex Is Good
 * Sex Is Interesting
 * Sex Slave
 * Sexual Extortion
 * Villain Protagonist
 * Villain Sue
 * Your Cheating Heart: Usually brought upon by Blackmail.
 * Netorare: A subgenre that is meant to arouse sexual jealousy by playing on this trope.