Aphiel1's Blog

Back to Aphiel1's Blog

So I've done this blog before and while still standing on my stance I feel I can bring a bit more to support my arguments than before and feel I should bring the topic back up as the last time I did my post was two years ago back when I was still pretty new to the game. At any rate let me begin by explaining the misconception that a lot of people hold nowadays that I'm sure many of you are intimately familiar with and that is that people who watch anime/read manga are weird perverted sickos who wack off and such to pics of japanese school girls being tentacle raped or something similar to that; typically when you mention anime and somebody above the age of 14 who watches it the person immediately thinks male/pervert/probably in late thirties/lives with parents. This however is a very bad misconception as their are many women who enjoy anime/manga and many of whom do not even fit the above descriptions in the slightest degree I digress though to getting back to the issue of why hentai is not anime and more importantly why anime is not hentai. Let's start off by how I define Anime and hentai and what needs they are meant to fulfil; anime is something that is supposed to be fun and entertaining usually containing some sort of story which is portrayed via visual images and interpreted by the brain with different emotional responses to eventually evoke a sense of overall gratification. This is not at all that different from the sensation one gets from watching tv, playing sports, or hanging out with friends and not unlike with these three when watching anime it is usually done not to fulfil some physical need but an emotional need. Hentai does not do this, as a matter of fact the whole point of hentai is to get a person physically aroused so they might satisfy their physical needs; this sensation while somewhat similar to the one you get anytime your happy is very different in that this is done for the purpose of sexual release only certainly not something we do with others (unless it is somebody we are close to and is ok with that i.e spouse/gf/close friend*though that's kind of wierd to do it with any kind of friend*. Now with that done lets move on to the second difference and that is the material contained in either first anime: anime as with any animated scenario can paint and bring to life a wide variety of situations that are usually limited only to one's imagination; this once again is usually done for entertainment purposes and while usually avoiding to do so sometimes includes a little sketchy material usually for comedic purposes. This is very different from hentai where what is expected is usually exactly what you get; unlike anime which is very diverse in what it brings to the table in terms of story, characters, and ideas hentai is limited to a very broad spectrum of story of a guy must get laid, there must be some way for said guy to get laid, and that there must be characters willing to have intimate relations with said guy. It's quite terrible when you think about it how masterpieces such as gungrave,fullmetal alchemist, death note, and gundam must be compared to filth like that. Moving on to the next point in the differences between hentai and anime is the way people within the community itself speak about the two. Think about and I mean really think about the last time you had a good discussion about an anime with a friend, what you thought about the series, what was good and bad, what pulled your heart and what made you want to walk away from the screen; now take all that and try and apply to it a hentai...it doesn't work that well does it, the reason why nobody wants to talk about that crap is because there isn't anything to talk about; it's boring one-dimensional and often shallow stuff. To be honest I can't recall a single one of friends ever sitting down and talking with me about how hentai is good or funny...why...not because my friends aren't open enough to talk about it with me when I ask any of them they've all openly admitted to watching at least one hentai in their day, no that is not the reason. The reason is because hentai is not anime, you can't discuss it like you do anime and you can't judge it how you do anime the only thing you can say a hentai accomplished is whether or not it sexually gratified you and whether or not it accomplished the deed well; After that you never want to speak of it again because your either embarassed, ashamed, or simply not that open with people about what you do in private. After all being said though I will say that the judgemental people I spoke of earlier are all at fault there are plenty of animes and yes I will call them animes that border the line between hentai and what I solidly call anime; this being said though I think that the misunderstanding is stupid, I believe who simply believe this and are disgusted by this are stupid, and more so I think that anybody who sees you watching anime and has the gall to excuse you of watching hentai is the stupidest of them all. Anime is fun and meant to be enjoyed not something we're supposed to hide from others so that they don't think we're wierd. So in conclusion hentai is not anime and anime is most certainly not hentai.