i think it is useful to question if there is even a line between ecchi and hentai to begin with, and what the line is.
hentai and ecchi are terms used to refer to specific types of anime/manga/drawings, pretty much only in the western fandom. ecchi in japanese is derived, as i'm sure many are aware, from the spoken english letter "H," the first letter of "hentai," and usually refers to suggestive behavior rather than a type of anime. "hentai" usually refers, clinically, to sexual deviancy or perversion, once again, not a type of anime. it's also used more colloquially to refer to perverts and weirdos of various kinds. i'm sure we've all heard characters in anime refer to certain actions as "ecchi," or to other characters as "hentai."
H-games and eroge are two terms for the same thing, porn games. the latter being more official. these games can be like what we call ecchi, or they can be much more explicitly pornographic like hentai. what we're talking about as ecchi is essentially just softcore porn, and what we're calling hentai is essentially hardcore porn. they are two different kinds of "ero." or you have "adult videos" in the live action porn world, which are also sometimes called "ero douga." they can be hardcore or softcore.
in the west, explicit penetration is essentially the difference between hardcore and softcore, as simulated sex with no visually exposed genitals between two or more people even qualifies as softcore porn, but it can also be as mild as suggestive images of people in revealing or nearly no clothing.
so if you want to apply the same difference to ecchi and hentai, the difference is still essentially whether the characters explicitly fuck or not, and if you see (censored) genitals. however, there are also times in the course of a "non-pornographic" narrative where the characters have sex or are sexually abused or what have you, like, say, in berserk, where both occur. or whats the difference between an ero douga and a pink film? or erotica and pornography? which brings us to a question like "what distinguishes porn from cinema/art/literature?" good luck answering that one, or if you try, get ready for all the people whose buns you've steamed to come out of the woodwork hurling around terms like "fake deep" and "elitist." or perhaps you'll conclude "maybe there is no difference," shocking the audience who would like to say "the difference is obvious" but nevertheless love to claim "art is subjective" in every thread without ever asking themselves what that really entails
then you'll realize things are porn when we agree they're porn, things are good when we agree they're good, things are literature when we agree they're literature, things are bad when we agree they're bad. categorizing things is not a matter of subjective/objective, as it's always subjective: it's a matter of widely agreeable standards which, though we tend to agree with them, can always be called into question and altered. the anime fandom holds peculiar standards. if you ask me it's because these people are only interested in anime and light novels and shit, and are allergic to anything too experimental or complicated because it's all about what's "entertaining," what's the point of watching or reading something that isn't "entertaining?" how can you say you enjoyed it if it was difficult?
anyway, tl;dr:
the question isnt so much "are there anime that blur the line," but "isn't the line already just blurry?" |