Drawing of a revealing figure Sythatia with typical elements from manga and anime to illustrate the term ecchi. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I got in the latest Right Stuf! catalog and noticed that the "adult" section for anime is quite a bit smaller than it used to be in previous years. Indeed, the entire print catalog for Right Stuf! is much less thick than it used to be, which leads me to worry about the financial health of Right Stuf! AnimeNation finally shuttered its doors earlier this year, and I used to enjoy their podcast, too. Apparently they did want to keep their anime rental program going, but I've heard mixed reviews on how it works in practice, so I'll be sticking with Netflix and my FUNimation subscription.
It reminds me of a recent discussion on ANNCast where a guest in the industry noted that while there is actually some encouraging development in sexy adult manga, with Project H, there's less and less Hentai anime being licensed and dubbed for the North American market because increasingly so much of the stuff produced in Japan is so extreme and weird and wouldn't pass muster for importation to the USA due to legal restrictions, etc. And the guest was remarking how unfortunate because with Project H you have some very tasteful manga that is basically like your average romance story, only turned up several notches to include sex scenes that would otherwise be implied at most in "traditional" manga, and, having bought & read a series from Project H, I can testify they're pretty hot--every bit as fun as your average trashy romance paperback in the USA. But it's not abusive or gross or humiliating...I genuinely believe the main charaters in my story 1) genuinely love each other and 2) are horny as fuck. It reminded me very much of my first year of marriage with my now ex-wife. It's a shame there's not more anime adaptations of healthy romantic sexual narratives like this...but what apparently drives sales in Japan is the freaky gross sh*t that doesn't get licensed for north American release, much less dubbed anymore.
I did attend the Hentai Fest at Oni-Con XI this year, which, though curated, was mostly loud pandemonium. It was at times amusing, especially the sexy parodies of established Anime franchises, though there was also a lot of shock-and-gross-out humor as well that wasn't for the faint of heart. It's a strange experience to watch cartoon porn in a loud room of total strangers. They cheered for orgasms and spooge, of course. It was mostly something to point and laugh at, as spectacle. Very little of it was genuinely sexy or arousing, at least not in a setting like that.
I flipped through the Right Stuf! adult section of their current catalog, making mental notes. But mostly I think I'll be investing in more Project H digital manga from eManga going forward. I might pick up a dubbed Hentai title here and there, but of the Hentai titles available in the Right Stuf! adult section, many are prominently labeled as "sub-only". The dubbed Hentai content is a fraction of a fraction now. I'm glad I have the existing titles that I do. Quality dubbed Hentai seems to be dying out for the time being. It might have a renaissance in the future, but for now it seems to be phasing out and dwindling to a trickle out of Japan. I'd like sexy stories that aren't all about humiliation, domination, tentacle porn, bukkake, rape, incest, shitting, peeing, etc. I don't mind ridiculous and funny; I do mind gross-out stuff designed to make you recoil and say "ew!"; unfortunately the latter seems to be driving production back in Japan. That trend could change and I hope it does.
