What It Is:
Hentai is actually an anime theme - one that focuses around explicit sexual content - and could fall under any one of the standard genres. But because hentai has taken on such a serious following of its own, we'll treat it as a genre of anime here for profiling purposes.The History:
Hentai is a Japanese word that actually means "abnormality" or "metamorphosis". It is most commonly used to mean "sexually perverted".In the West, hentai has come to mean anime porn and encompasses both heterosexual and homosexual material. A more accurate Japanese equivalent is the slang term "ecchi" which is used by the Japanese to describe anything that is sexually explicit.
Incidentally, the word "ecchi" is actually the sounding-out of the Japanese pronunciation of the letter "H". You might also be interested to know that a Yahoo! search for "hentai" produces over 97,500,000 results!
Media:
Although most commonly associated with anime, hentai can be found in a variety of media, including manga, CG artwork and video or computer games. There is also a form of hentai known as adult dojinshi, which is fan-created pornographic material that uses copyrighted characters from other shows or series.
It should be noted that dojinshi also exists outside the world of hentai and does not automatically indicate that the work is pornographic or adult in nature.
Players:
In Western markets, hentai is produced and distributed by specialty studios as well as some notable anime companies.Amorz Entertainment
Akiba Angels
Anime18 (division of Central Park Media)
G-Collection (hentai games)
Icarus Publishing (manga)
Kitty Media (division of Media Blasters)
SoftCel Pictures (division of ADV Films)
JapanAnime
SomaVision (games)
Sub Genres:
Within hentai are two sub-genres, known as Yaoi and Yuri.Yaoi depicts relationships between male characters and typically contains mature sexual content, although not always as explicit as true hentai. A less-graphic version of Yaoi is Shonen-ai, which depicts romantic relationships between male characters but without the sexual content.
Yuri is essentially the feminine version of Yaoi. It depicts sexual relations between female characters but again, often not as graphic or explicit as true hentai. The less-graphic version of Yuri is known as Shonen-ai, romantic but not sexual.
