This Week in Anime

Whoops! Can't Show That On a Christian Anime Site!

Jean-Karlo
—this goes here... and that...
... Aha! It worked! Chris! I came from This Week in Games to tell you, there's something we must do!

Talking about Carnelian and giving me an excuse to talk about Moonlight Lady for a bit heals all wounds. I'm not even mad that you guys covered Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX without me doing my "IT'S A GUNDAM" bit. I figured I could do the old team a solid now that I beat Xenoblade 3. Anyway, there was something we had to do, but this weekend was a bit of a rush...

How bad could this—Hold the phone, when the hell did Energy Kyouka get licensed?!
There's a legal hentai streaming site now?!

(Not gonna bring it up, not gonna bring it up...) So I've made no small bones that I've got more than a few Fakku Books on my shelves, plus This Week in Games has dabbled in covering some adult game releases in the U.S. like Kara no Shōjo or the Taimanin games. While ANN doesn't normally cover hentai (it's hard to go in-depth critiquing content that is, nevertheless, designed almost entirely around titillation), I still think there's a lot of genuine validity in bringing it up as a discussion piece.

There's a lot of history to ero-anime and ero-manga, and many big artists in the anime industry's history have dabbled in it. Masami Ōbari, who recently helmed the amazing Brave Bang Bravern! series, also directed a few ero-OVAs, including Viper GTS and Marine a Go Go. Satoshi Urushihara, who's been in all kinds of productions over the years (he even did some animation for the 1980s Transformers movie!) not only headlined the famous (and luxuriously-animated) Another Lady Innocent, but also does pin-ups for ero-manga magazines to this day. More than a few mangaka for mainstream stuff like Food Wars! or the Spice and Wolf manga have works of erotica to their names—and some don't even hide it behind a pseudonym.
I won't say Xenoblade Chronicles character designer Masatsugu Saitō is the same artist as Wanna Do It? artist saitom, I'm just saying I've never seen them in the same room together because one might accuse the other of copying their style.

I'll do a Google search real quick...

(Not gonna say it, not gonna say it...) Ahem. So, anyway, as you said, the ero-anime/manga industry is... not doing so hot in the U.S.? And we can't even blame it on the tariffs, the industry itself is hanging by a thread. God bless the folks at Fakku, J18, and irodori, because they're putting in a great deal of effort to license and release ero-manga— and they go through a ton of hoops to get those physical copies printed! But ero-anime? Oof. That's in a rougher space. About the only major studio that still handles the stuff is Media Blasters—and Yara Naika, bless their heart, can only do so much.

As far as I can tell, ANN has only really covered the animated stuff as an April Fool's joke way back when. Part of that is because it's a bit hard to get critical with hentai without missing the forest for the trees, unless the rest of the production is really good like (don't say it, don't say it)... "Bible Black," because outside of the freaky sex it's still a genuinely good horror set-up. It's like The Faculty by way of The Void, only they made the title a reference to King Crimson.

It's disappointing! It's not even that things aren't on the level of Another Lady Innocent—Urushihara famously bankrupted a studio with that one, it just wasn't sustainable. But most hentai OVAs are now under 30 minutes; many are as short as eight minutes, with animation that resembles a cheap motion comic.

Between the weak yen and piracy having crippled the industry, there isn't enough money to justify more "lavish" productions like Kanojo × Kanojo × Kanojo or Kuroinu. And where a lot of these ero-OVAs tended to tie in to fairly-big ero-manga or ero VNs, these days most productions will cover, like... a single chapter of an ero-manga.

OceanVeil's whole bit is that it has a bunch of shows up for free. But you'll notice these episodes are positively bite-sized—less than 10 minutes. That's because the full episodes are hidden behind a paywall—and they involve sex! Still not quite 10 minutes an episode, but still. A lot of these feel like animating a weekly newspaper strip, only with boning involved. It works because, at least, the stories are somewhat intriguing.

The good news is that OceanVeil has a lot of these series — and many of them are even dubbed and unpixelated! The bad news is that, altogether, a given "series" can clock in at an hour long. Surprised they didn't call the website "One-Minute Warrior." On the other hand, OceanVeil does offer a smattering of "fuller-length" titles with more reasonable runtimes. These can include both several newly-licensed anime that I had no idea had been licensed and would likely pique a few people's interests (like Majuu Jouka Shoujo Utea or the aforementioned Energy Kyouka), as well as some older titles like My Stubborn Sister-In-Law (formerly licensed in the U.S. as Lover-in-Law). Most of these are still pixelated.

I didn't want to dwell on the site's shortcomings, but the lack of a search function is pretty dire. Also, not great—you can't open videos in new tabs! Normally, you'd right-click on a link to open it in a new tab (or simply middle-click it with your mouse wheel). That doesn't work here! The video player isn't the best, either: it lacks resolution and subtitle options. Additionally, if you're watching a dubbed version of an episode (hosted as a separate video, not even as an alternate audio track), the video won't have any subtitles. I don't want "perfect" to be the enemy of "good," but those are a lot of features that are practically standard for a streaming site!

I won't be too much of a doomer and wag my finger at folks for stuff. Still, getting people to pay for porn is rough—a lot of people just straight up don't value the work enough (and like finding excuses not to do it). Arguably, OceanVeil isn't helping themselves with their promotions—again, I had no idea that the likes of Energy Kyouka was even licensed and available on a legal streaming service until I was scrolling through the page. Energy Kyouka is no Kuroinu, but an acquisition like that feels like it ought to be a bigger deal? I remember when Yara Naika got their start with Media Blasters, they put a ton of work into reaching out to fans and polling them for what they'd like to see licensed. And while there was a lot that they couldn't do (like the Taimanin OVAs just aren't on the table), Yara did an amazing job of walking the tightrope of being honest about limitations and obstacles without giving people too much information, while also encouraging folks to be open to The Powers That Be™ about their love and support of ero-OVAs. Because as it turns out, if you build it and people don't come, nobody else is going to bother!

Speaking of "yaranaika"...!

A good bit of fandom insight from OceanVeil is that they had the infamous OVA adaptation of Kuso Miso Technique (the faces from which you've likely seen on memes from all over the Internet for decades by now). It's like Fakku having gone out of their way to get Tiny Boobs, Giant Tits History (a.k.a., "the one with the "MEGA MILK" shirt"). You have to speak your audience's language!

So, on my end, one of the titles I chose to watch was Unexpectedly Naughty Fukami (which Chris was nice enough to share clips from). The set-up is simple: Kaji is a handsome man sought after by his female coworkers, but he's strictly gay. Provided, he's also filtered himself out of the dating pool by his impossibly high standards for partners. After going on a business trip with the homely Fukami, Kaji realizes Fukami actually cleans up quite nicely, so they have a tryst... only for Fukami to seemingly not be that interested in post-coital snuggles.

Normally, that kind of synopsis only really covers the overarching plot of a series—but I just covered the entirety of the first episode right there.

That's the same situation with Game World Reincarnation; another villainess isekai, where a 30-something office lady gets isekai'd into the world of an otome game (she dies from "karoshi"—being overworked). Right from the get-go, she tries to hook the prince up with the heroine—but oh boy, the prince loves getting his mitts on her instead! In eight minutes, we barely get an explanation as to why the prince might care for her before he drags her away from a party for some heavy petting. Not everything can be My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!, but give us something to care about with regards to these characters!

I think a case where the shallow characterization works is Adam's Sweet Agony, which is basically "What if World’s End Harem wasn't stupid?" After a plague strikes the world, Sonomiya is the only man alive capable of popping a boner—and there's a harem of very desperate women who find themselves itching for a taste of the action. It's a dumb, goofy story with hot girls and a reasonably inoffensive guy. I can dig it.

My bar for entry for this one was "Must be better than World’s End Harem," and by actually being able to see the screen, this one won by a landslide. I never said that was a high bar!

(scream.mp3)

I wanna wash the taste of that horrid thing out of my mouth with another one I found rather cute: Show Time!. It has a rather novel approach, being an adult romance: a widower falls into a tryst with the hostess of his daughter's favorite television show, while trying to avoid the tabloids' scrutiny. It's a cute set-up that stays refreshingly mundane throughout its runtime. I wish it were fleshed out more, or we could get more ero-manga/ero-anime along these lines!

Those aren't twins, are they...

(Don't bring it up, don't bring it up) ... Yeah, what's up with that?
Provided, a lot of that is likely because of audiences: a lot of guys watching porn likely have hang-ups about guys. I think there's a big discussion to be had here about myriad sexual orientations and how well hentai can appeal to them. I once had a great conversation with someone from Fakku at a convention about the lack of hentai featuring transmasculine characters.

This is one of those don't let "perfect" be the enemy of "good"' issues that I wanted to be careful with, because I've seen how fans of hentai and tokusatsu get when something gets licensed that isn't their baby. The issues with OceanVeil's features should be at the top of its list for update and repair. But licenses are a bit trickier because I understand there's a lot of red tape to be crossed.

Considering how much of Mira's ero-manga irodori has managed to release in the U.S., you'd think someone would've clued in and made animated adaptations of, say, Happy Nudist Beach or Sacred Milk of the Elf Princess. But I think part of that would require someone with capital to throw around—and as I said earlier, there just isn't a lot of that in ero-anime these days. Even with ero-manga, it's easier for some creatives just to make lateral worksafe adaptations of their ero-doujin to publish in mainstream publications, as was the case with The Elder Sister-like One, or Yandere Dark Elf: She Chased Me All the Way From Another World!. And while I don't think this is an inherently bad decision, a lot of these stories feel a bit neutered without the sex. Like Hinata and Bell's relationship feels so much more forced without knowing that Bell is riding Hinata like she paid for it.

The anime industry as a whole is in a bad position due to the overwhelming amount being produced (far too much for any person to watch in a reasonable timeframe) and the miserable pay. And it's only harder to get an erotic venture off the ground, no less in America, where even payment processors can be a pain and a half. Never mind being able to pay for stuff on Fakku or irodori with PayPal (because you can't), but you can't even use PayPal to buy stuff abroad on Booth!

For all the issues that might be raised with ero-manga or ero-anime, it still needs to be said that there are a lot of very passionate people working on the material. One of my favorite artists, Miray Ozaki, has spent twenty years on her series, The Great Escape (think of it as a very Japanese take on Larry Welz's Cherry comics). That's longer than many currently-running Shonen Jump hits! Black Dog has been drawing naughty Sailor Moon doujin since the mid-90s—longer than many anime fans now have even been alive. And, of course, there's the legendary Toshio Maeda, whom I got to chat with during Puerto Rico Comicon in 2012. All of these people are incredibly dedicated to what they do, embodying the spirit of "doing it for the love of the game," as it were. And I wish it were not only easier to support these people, but easier for them to get their work out there.
There's a lot to talk about when it comes to ero-manga or ero-anime besides the boning because the folks working on it come from all over and have all kinds of wild inspirations, like Butcha-U's love of Hooters or Chiba Toshiro and (according to what he's told me on Twitter) his love of American superheroes and '90s American supermodels. And part of what drew a lot of fans into hentai—or, at least, what drew people into hentai during the '00s—was how in-depth the story could be. Even if a visual novel were condensed into three to five episodes.
Chris, help me out here, I'm this close to hijacking this column and going on a Moonlight Lady spiel—!

MangaGamer has even made enough inroads with Steam that many of their titles are now available through Valve's storefront—if you don't mind people knowing far and wide that you're playing Funbag Fantasy.

I think many people have a genuine interest in seeing hentai thrive in the U.S.. While I think things are going to get worse before they get better for the anime industry, erotic and otherwise, fans can do a lot by trying to appeal to The Powers That Be™. Let people know when you buy their stuff, join their Discord, and all that. For God's sake, support the official release. And whenever possible, let the folks in Japan know that you enjoy their work. My personal experiences aren't everyone's, but Japanese artists love the support, and it makes them happy to see people abroad enjoying their work and supporting it. The real secret with hentai, as with good sex, is communication.

I was right to leave This Week in Anime to you guys. Now, time to head back to This Week in Games, I have a gaming column—