Netorare Genre

""This made me depresssed.""

- A Crossing Man and Woman reader, summing it up perfectly.

Netorare (寝取られ, lit. "cuckold", also commonly abbreviated as NTR) is a notoriously controversial genre of Hentai (or in rarer cases, Ecchi), with a degree of infamy perhaps rivaled only by full-blown Guro. Even horniest /d/viants those ones is resistant of embracing the genre, and if one finds an example uploaded at certain shady websites, one would only need to look at the comments section to see the Internet Backdraft that will inevitably ensue.

On the BAD side of Good Adultery Bad Adultery, and as its name suggests, Netorare is essentially a genre whose goal is to project discomfort on the audience's part (much like horror flicks are intended to provoke unintended bowel movements), where the discomfort comes in the form of sexual jealousy. Typically, a heroine will be introduced as having a significant other, which may be a husband, a boyfriend, or even a partner in a BST affair. The story will then show the aforementioned heroine being intimate with another man (another girl just doesn't pack the same punch), thus provoking jealousy in the audience by proxy. The nature of the affair varies, and the parties involved may be willing or unwilling: sometimes the girl is simply cheating, sometimes it's in the form of a Scarpia Ultimatum, some other times, it's rape, or the man may simply be pimping his sweetheart out to earn their bread.

Of course, the parties involved may be of either gender. Most Writers Are Male, so commonly it's the woman who engages in the proceedings. Also, it doesn't have nearly the same effect if the genders are switched; in fact, most of the guys love it.

As one might effortlessly predict, many people seriously detest this genre/trope. It might have to do with the oft-idealised nature of relationships in the anime/manga culture, along with the fanbase's obsession with purity -- a phenomenon apparent by the popularity of tropes like Sacred First Kiss, Lolicon, Yamato Nadeshiko, or Moe. That is to say, Otakudom seems to have a strong connection with a specific, sugary perception of romantic relationships, built around pure, sincere, genuine commitment. Hence Netorare, being at the opposite side of the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism, tends to rub people the wrong way. In spite of all the hate, some people are genuinely attracted to this kind of stories, for various reasons. Inversely, most fans of the genre are also obsessed with purity, which is what makes it all the more enticing when that purity is broken.

See also Adult Fear, Defiled Forever, I Have You Now My Pretty, Please I Will Do Anything, Sacred First Kiss, Scarpia Ultimatum, and Your Cheating Heart. Very often features an Idiot Plot, and is perhaps one of the few non-comedic techniques which may execute it to good effect. The reverse of netorare is netori, cuckolding someone else's love.

Further reading:

 * An interesting essay on Netorare by Tsurupeta.info may be found here. It directly uses TV Tropes as a tool to aid understanding, too.
 * The Other Wiki has cuckold explained under the light of evolutionary psychology.
 * A magazine-style article on cuckoldry.

Anime and Manga

 * Another World
 * Its extension Dreamlike Days.
 * Crossing Man And Woman
 * A chapter in Girl Material.
 * Painfully done in Ill Protect You.
 * The first story Animal Trainer in the series Choukyoushi Fujii is about a woman who has an affair with her boyfriend's friend, even though he's practically perfect.
 * Immoral Sisters
 * A brief scene in My Sister.
 * Hen Zemi: Komugi harbours this particular fetish,and actively tries to invoke it with his girlfriend.
 * Otona Ni Naritai: Pictured above
 * Otona Ni Naru Mae Ni
 * Briefly touched in A Triangular Love Affair.
 * Various Tsukino Jyogi works, including b 37°C and Prince Of The Stars.
 * Touched in Wanna Do It.
 * BLUE Series
 * Triangle Blue: the OVAs, heavily focused on the cuckould part, disregarding the romantic moments from the Visual Novel.
 * The original version "Trouble!" (Triangle Blue is the remake) had no cuckould (it does have male cheating but apparently that's okay). The added cuckould make the series so much more famous.
 * Present in True Blue and it's OAV. NTR is only one part of the Visual Novel andit was not nearly as bad as the OVA made it out to be. The same thing can be said for most eroge that have NTR elements.
 * Ditto Warau Kangofu.
 * When You Let Go Of My Hand (A rare example where it's resolved, though it's highly arguable if you would consider it a happy ending.)
 * Evergreen. It gets ugly...
 * Cat Head Imako - Infamous for its unexpected change from a comedy oneshot H-manga to a darker tale of drug addiction-fueled NTR
 * The School Days anime adapts an optional netorare event from the game. Basically, it has Makoto first being surprise-kissed by one of the girls in his Unwanted Harem, then having sex with almost all of the girls and getting worse and worse with time,
 * If a Shoujo or Josei manga has a Bastard Boyfriend as a male lead, it'll have at least a NTR variation in the plot. I.e., the infamous Sensual Phrase scene in which  comes from a misunderstanding in which  . And Haou Airen has , as well as.
 * Netori Netorare although it seems more mild than other netorare doujins.
 * Nozoki Ana: A very huge, hurtful example that many readers were predicting for ages. Not only was, the girl in this situation,  , but she decided
 * Alluded to in Air Gear, with  referring to   as "NTR # 1" and accusing her of cockblocking either her or , as they both squabble to become  's link turner.
 * While there's no 100% direct netorare in Mawaru Penguindrum, the extremely complicated Love Dodecahedron that includes almost all of the current cast has given place to the following Memetic Mutation: "(insert name) is getting NTR'd". It actually started as " is getting NTR'd", due to ; the subtle and not-so subtle parallels to the Netorare Genre were inmediately noticed by the fandom, and one thing led to another...
 * There are many PG-13-rated parallels to the Netorare Genre in the plot of the Ah My Goddess movie. More exactly,
 * A large portion of H-Doujin of Ah My Goddess are NTR. So much that they make multi-volumes from differant artists.
 * Invoked in High School DXD by
 * In Black Lagoon during El Baile De La Muerte

Fan Fic

 * In PITCH, Light has sex with L and,  to watch. It's different in that L and Light are already together, and Light is trying to make   realize that L is not available.
 * A possible interpretation for  in the infamous All He Ever Wanted.
 * There's also a kinkmeme fill in which Denmark gets so jealous of Norway's relationship with his younger brother Iceland, that he fucks Norway in front of Iceland solely to "show Iceland who Norway belongs to".
 * Defied in Reconciliation, a Katawa Shoujo fanfic in which Lilly and Hisao get together after Hanako's bad ending and Hanako, despite having isolated herself from the two out of guilt, harbors feelings for Hisao. Word of God states early on that the fic is not intended to be NTR, and in the third chapter,.

Film

 * Indecent Proposal

Literature

 * In Paul Di Filippo's short story And the Dish Ran Away With the Spoon, the heroine is stolen by

Music

 * Sublime, "Doin' Time/Summertime".
 * The Killers, "Mr. Brightside".
 * Lustra, "Scotty Doesn't Know".
 * Maroon 5, "She Will Be Loved"
 * Summercamp, "Nowhere Near", It should be noted that this may be a subversion, as the protagonist Does not wallow in self hatred and in a broken state, and chooses to leave the girl. Of course, Your Mileage May Vary.
 * The Irish ballad Seven Drunken Nights is sung from the perspective of a man whose wife is cheating on him.
 * Jairo, "Para verte feliz" ("To see you happy"). It's sung from the POV of a guy who knows his beautiful girlfriend's old flame is coming to town and chooses to rather have them almost tongue-kissing in front of him rather than confronting and then losing her, since he's that much of a Love Martyr towards her.

Tabletop Games
"Mess with their heads. Get it so the victims love their keepers, will do anything for them (even better if they can work one of the couple against the other--so sweet, that betrayal)."
 * It's not surprising that this happens in Vampire: The Requiem. Netorare is usually just implied with the art and a few throwaway lines, but there are some large, heart-breaking plots that emphasize it.
 * Ancient Bloodlines speaks of a vampiric Babylonian priestess' lesbian lover being taken from her forcibly by the En emperor. Turns out the lover eventually fell for her abductor in typical NTR fashion. Unlike other netorare stories, the priestess got her revenge on them by creating the Iltani and edimmu.
 * The trope is taken Up to Eleven with the Honeymoon Hijackers Charles and Charlene Greengrass. They were kidnapped and turned into vampires on their respective wedding nights by cruel sires, with their spouses killed. Charles and Charlene meet one another ten years after their abductions, instantly recognize the predicament of the other, and fall in love. They diablerize their sires, escape vampire society, get into a scary codependent relationship, then perform netorare scenarios and serial killings on any recently married couple they can find.

- Night Horrors: Immortal Sinners, pg. 74


 * Coming full circle, Charlene cheats on Charles. He doesn't know, but she wants him to.

Web Original

 * On Literotica this genre is a source of Flame Wars in the loving wives section.
 * In Sailor Nothing,  is forced to watch while his Yamiko rapes.
 * Gaia Online has this item. It's notable for being one of the earlier items on the site.

Video Games

 * Here's the giant list.
 * Tends to happen quite often in The Sims especially if you're not careful with relationship management and/or don't have a No Jealousy hack installed and decide to have a threesome or Love Dodecahedron.
 * The Visual Novel of School Days, mentioned above.
 * BLUE Series
 * Triangle Blue: very well known Visual Novel in Japan, seen as a synonym of NTR there.

Other

 * Various pornographic films are based on this very theme.