What-is-Hentai-l
If you're a fan of manga or anime, you may have heard the term "hentai" before. While outside of Japan it refers to porn that comes in cartoon or anime or manga format, in Japan the word has a much more specific meaning – it is short for hentai seiyoku (), or perverse sexual desire.
Hentai, in its broader sense, is also used to describe sexually perverse cartoons that have no real human beings as the main characters — for instance, stories involving animals or plants or monsters, or sex that takes place between insects. Despite the perverse nature of these hentai stories, they are not considered erotic or pornographic by the Japanese, because they depict fictional creatures rather than people.
Outside of Japan, the word hentai is often associated with anime and manga pornography, a genre that many consider to be less harmful than regular pornography due to the fact that it is animated and involves non-human characters. However, it is worth noting that there are still some problems with the genre. For example, some hentai depicts extremely violent or disturbing sexual content that can be difficult for children and young adults to understand, and there are even hentai stories with no explicit sex but that still portray some very unsettling behavior.
The word hentai comes from the Japanese verb , which is used to mean "transformation" or "metamorphosis." The idea of sexual perversion or paraphilia was derived later, and this is how it is used in modern Japan to refer to a range of fetishes.
During the 1930s, hentai became more popular as a way of showing off the Japanese national ideal of the "clean" body and the "pure" mind. This led to a variety of magazines that explored both female and male homosexuality as well as sadomasochism, and this era was known as nikutai bungaku ().
After World War II, the Japanese press became more relaxed with censorship as they made ready for postwar economic growth. By the 1970s, a hentai movement developed that was focused on sex and the physical body over more socially acceptable themes. Magazines like Ningen Tankyuu (Human Research), Fuuzoku Kagaku (Sex-Customs Science), and Kitan Kurabu (Strange-Talk Club) emphasized the body over the mind, and there was a boom in low-grade pulp culture magazines called hentai shizuka ().
Today, nhentai has expanded to include anything that might be seen as a perverse fantasy or fetish, as long as it is not offensively graphic. It has also become a broad category that includes manga and anime, as well as some video games and toys. The word has even been adopted in English, with a variant spelling of "nhentai" and the suffix -ero, which is a play on words from the Japanese ero (), an abbreviation for "erotic". When it's pronounced nhentai , it sounds a little like naughty.
