Original illustration by ゆーれー published on pixiv. For use to illustrate the characteristic drawing style and content of japanese cartoon pornography (hentai) common inside dojinshi. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
So I will own up to owning a few random DVDs of some Hentai, including the infamous Bible Black,which in my humble opinion has WAY too much butt-sex for a show ostensibly aimed at heterosexual men. I also own a few volumes of adult content manga that I keep securely away in drawers and off my actual bookshelf, away from prying eyes. I do pull them out to flip through on occasion. They're mostly kind of gross and misogynistic and that is often very distracting. I also happen to keep my Hentai DVDs hidden in drawers as well.
I've been playing around with graphic novels and manga on Kindle for my iPad and became curious if any such "blue" works were available for that platform. It seems both Apple and Amazon Kindle have been rather skittish and internally censorious of such content in their stores. They're trying to promote their ebook sales without raising any controversies to as wide a mainstream audience as possible.
While there are a few items in the Amazon Kindle store that include the name "Hentai" in the title or description, this is mostly misleading. These works are at best very "Ecchi" in nature. I purchased a few sample titles to look at. The artwork is very attractive and titilating, but fall short of the kind of erotica I was shopping for.
I finally came upon an independent digital manga publisher, eManga, who in addition to mainstream manga, also sells Yaoi & Hentai works in multiple formats that are readable on multiple e-reader platforms. Since they're a 3rd party seller, buyers can easily import this content for later reading on Kindle, iBooks, or other e-reader platforms. I purchased a 3 volume series of a Hentai title which I was able to download to my hard drive in PDF format then add to my iBooks shelf on my iPad. I could have alternatively sent the files as attachments to my Amazon Kindle app via email, but the iBooks route was faster and less cumbersome. I pulled them up easily and am able to "zoom" in on the images, etc. Works as well as many of my PDF documents current in my Kindle app shelf.
Not only do I lack the drawer or shelf space to collect and own hentai titles in physical format, I feel more self-conscious and embarassed about owning them as physical volumes, while I have a (probably mostly irrational) increased sense of privacy keeping these as digital files on my iPad, where they can stay "for my eyes only", so long as I keep my iPad always close to me, usually on my night stand at bedtime. I was very pleased by the ease of use of the emanga.com website. I was able to create a profile, supply payment & billing info, and get the desired titles on my computer in only a matter of minutes.
I look forward to exploring the eManga.com site and may very well purchase more mainstream manga there in the future. There's currently a dearth of manga on the Amazon Kindle store (especially while they are in dispute with Hachette/Yen Press). I'm also leery of the proprietary limitations of the VIZ media app. I think eManga.com is the wave of the future, or at least I hope so. Multiple formats, DRM free. This if anything will fill the demand for digital manga and give peoeple better access to desired content and keep people off the illegal scanillation sites.
