(imMature Audiences Only)

The Japanese culture and language have done much to expand my own puny horizons within the last year and a half of my life. This is due in part to dating someone with Japanese heritage and also to enrolling in a Japanese language course this semester at school. I also have been harboring a not-so-secret dream of moving to Japan after I get my undergrad degree next year. So, given the aforementioned reasons coupled with my insatiable interest in linguistics and sociology I have done a considerable amount of poking about in all-things Japanese. During one of my cultural explorations I stumbled across a little something the Japanese call hentai. According to my very dear friend, Wikipedia.org, hentai can be described as:

"...a Japanese word that, in the West, is used when referring to sexually explicit or pornographic comics and animation, particularly those of Japanese origin such as anime, manga and computer games. In Japan it can be used to mean "metamorphosis" or "abnormality". The word "hentai" has a negative connotation to the Japanese and is commonly used to mean "sexually perverted", (Wikipedia.org,2009).

Ok, so I guess I am THEE last person to discover this wicked little tidbit of Japanese culture. Feeling like I just unearthed priceless pirate booty, I raced to share my fortunate find with my boyfriend who smiled sweetly at his "Sleepers Precious" (that story will have to be another blog post unto itself) and kindly rained on my proverbial parade by informing me that just about everyone (save the one delusional exception standing before him) knows about hentai. My mental jury is still out on his assertion but what do I know?

Well, I'm glad you asked! I'll tell you what I know: Hentai is cartoon porn lubed up with a hearty helping of bizarre sexual surrealism which is repeatedly rammed down the viewer's throat until you can longer distinguish your squealing from that of the bonded school girl who's getting deflowered by a man with tentacles.(Yes, A-hole, TENtacles, not testicles...well, maybe he had both but I digress...)What's even more disturbing to me than the some the images themselves is my half-cooked idea of this being considered as "normal" in some circles. I understand that it's meant to be fictitious in nature (right...?) but my wonderbox starts to wonder real hard-like when acts of sexual "deviance" and sexual violence start to enjoy a label of "normalcy". And I'm not even talking about gettin' freaky in, ahem, unconventional ways- (although some of the imaginative modes of sexy-time depicted in some hentai-s make me feel like I score a paltry 2.3 on the Slut Bucket Scale of Naughtiness)- I'm talking about the striking prevalence of eroticized sexual violence (which is typically carried out by a supernatural being or, as I noted in the latest hentai I watched, a pack of sex-crazed female high school students bent on fucking the new female teacher) which is geared towards an unwilling victim (who is usually an infantilized female sporting unbelievably perfect double D's who was completely oblivious to her own sexuality prior to being attacked).

I know that virtually all porn is supported by implicit and/or explicit notions of abuse but I'm convinced there's something more to this hentai thing. At this point in time I can neither confirm or deny whether I have watched more hentai than is recommended by the Surgeon General but, hey, who's counting?