Hentai: Myth vs. Fact
Myth: Hentai is all just pornography. I know this because "hentai" means "perverted". There is no plot or characterization... just sex, sex, and more sex.
Fact: First of all, most Japanese fans of adult anime do not like how we use the word "hentai". There actually doesn't seem to be an umbrella term for all adult anime/manga material in Japan. The term they usually use is "ero" for adult anime with sexual content. Other terms used in Japan are "18-kin" (literally meaning "18-prohibited", as in "prohibited to viewers under 18" ) ; "poruno anime"; "bishoujo" (however, not all "bishoujo" is hentai, and not all hentai is "bishoujo"... "bishoujo" is simply "beautiful girls" ) ; and, for adult manga, there's "seijin manga" (meaning "adult manga" ) . They will use "hentai" only if the title is truly worthy of the label. By that, they mean an adult anime that really is perverted, exploitive, and offensive. Despite popular belief, hentai can have characterization, plot, and animation that are just as well-done as in "regular" anime.
One thing is that what I consider disgusting and extreme versus what the person next to me considers disgusting and extreme can be very different. It is all personal views.
"Hentai" literally means "strange appearance". It can also be interpreted as meaning either "metamorphasis", "abnormal" or "perverted" (not necessarily "perverted" in a sexual manner). Very rarely will you ever hear a Japanese person use "hentai" to mean simply "sexual material". Most likely, the material (or person, if they call someone "hentai" ) is deviant or offensive. "Hentai" is actually a derogatory word, and is certainly not a compliment or a neutral word.
Myth: Wait! These anime have 18+ labels! That means they must be sick and twisted with no value whatsoever!
Fact: I actually read a comment like this on Gaia.
The best way I can probably approach this is to look at the other type of anime which earns an "18+" label... extremely violent anime. To judge the quality of an anime just because of its age appropriateness rating would also lead anime such as
Beserk and
Ninja Scroll to, as this person said, be "sick and twisted with no value whatsoever". Any fans of those two anime could tell you otherwise.
Here, you can see that just because an anime is extremely violent, doesn't mean it is bad. I will say the same thing for ero anime... just because it has sex, doesn't mean it is bad.
Also take into account non-pornographic Hollywood movies with sex scenes in them. Believe it or not, there are a few anime/manga that are classified as "hentai" which are only as explict as that, if not less!
Myth: Hentai gives people improper views on women's bodies. It makes women all seem to have perfect breasts and perfect body proportions (i.e.: skinny, huge breasts ).
Fact: A few things here.
First of all... regular anime doesn't? Really. All the jiggling breasts and petite, scantily clad bodies could have fooled me. You can not use this statement against adult anime without bringing regular anime into the picture.
Secondly, adult anime featuring women with realistic bodies actually does exist, although it is not common. Then again, finding regular anime women with realistic bodies is also something very difficult to do.
Thirdly, we are going by our society's standards. Japanese society is quite different. Due to differing diets and genetics, the average-sized woman here is quite different than the average-sized women in Japan. More often than not, people are drawing what they see. Seeing a woman who we'd call "plus-sized" here in Japan would be very, very, very rare.
Myth: People who watch hentai can't get real sex. They are lonely individuals who have no boyfriends or girlfriends.
Fact: This is not true at all. This myth is just a stereotype that isn't true.
Also, on hentai forums I visit, questions such as "Would you abandon hentai if you had a boyfriend or girlfriend?" do get asked every so often. The people who respond usually either say "I already have a boyfriend/girlfriend, and we watch hentai together!", "I already have a boyfriend/girlfriend, but I still enjoy watching hentai, and he/she doesn't care!" or "I want a boyfriend/girlfriend who also likes hentai and will watch it with me! It would be so much fun!".
The results of a poll I used to have in my old "Hentai: Myth Vs. Fact" thread were interesting. Of the people who watched hentai, about 57% were not in relationships while the other 43% were. Of that people that were in relationships, about 88% of the respondents voted that they looked at hentai. I think that puts this myth to shame.
Also, the fact that some people do not have sex doesn't not make them "desperate". Perhaps they have religious beliefs, or are waiting for someone they really love to come into their life. There are also people who are shy, people who are very scared of talking to people they find attractive, people who may have had traumatic sexual experiences in their pasts, and people who aren't interested in having sex at all. Not every person who isn't sexually active is that way because no one will give them the time of day. There are many, many reasons why people may not have sex as a part of their lives right now.
Myth: Only desperate heterosexual men watch hentai.
Fact: Although the majority of hentai watchers are heterosexual men (they are the target audience, and these men are not necessarily "desperate" ), there are also female viewers (again, not necessarily "desperate" ) and sexually-active couples who do. I'm female myself. When I'm in relationships, watching all kinds of anime is a favorite thing to do with my boyfriend or girlfriend.
An interesting, although mostly unrelated, observation I have made is that female hentai fans I have personally encountered (I include myself among them) seem to be far more tolerant of some of the more taboo and unusual sex scenes in hentai than the males I have personally met.
The "desperate" part has already been proven wrong by the poll that was once here.
Myth: All females in the anime/manga fandom like yaoi.
Fact: I can understand why some people may assume this. After all, anyone who's been to an anime convention before has most likely seen the large crowds of girls and women screaming about "yaoi" and the crowds which cram the Dealer's Room looking to get their hands on some yaoi manga. However, what may not be noticed is those of us who walk right past the noisy crowd, or right past that table in the Dealer's Room. Those of us who don't like yaoi, who don't like most of it, or who only like it "once in a while" exist.
Another thing which needs to be acknowledged is that many of the girls and women who say they like yaoi may only like BL or slash and may not be familiar with proper terminology.
I find most yaoi to be boring. The settings and plots are usually too cheesy to me, and the sex is not explicit enough. Very few anime/manga boys/men are what I'd call "hot". I also am the opposite of a lot of women in that I do prefer to see girls/women when I look at porn. Even the few "exceptions" I make for yaoi manga are manga that I just consider "okay, nothing special". I do like the odd bit of slash, but I'm very particular about pairings, how characters are portrayed, how detailed it is, and, if it's fanfiction, the writing style.
Myth: Hentai is all just sex, sex, sex and has limited appeal.
Fact: Hentai has many different genres. There is horror hentai, fantasy hentai, adventure hentai, tragic hentai, comedy hentai, slice-of-life hentai, etc.
Hentai has many different types of stories. While there are hentai with teenagers falling in love and experiencing their first sexual encounters; there are also stories of rape and debauchery; really silly comedies and parodies; fantasy stories with princesses, catgirls, swordfights, and heroes getting really lucky (heh); stories of virgins being introduced into BDSM and hard sex; murder mysteries; bizarre cults; science experiments; and many, many more.
Hentai has many different levels of explicitness. Some hentai will only let you see breasts and butts, and will use the power of implication more than being in-your-face. Some hentai will let you see every single detail of the sexual encounters, including shots of the genitalia and bodily fluids.
Hentai has several different types of sex. I don't need to expand on this... use your imagination! Pretty much anything you think of has probably appeared in hentai before. While it may not be in any hentai anime or manga, looking among people's artwork will probably give you a picture or two of the fetish or scenario.
Different hentai have different numbers of sex scenes. Some have only one scene-per episode, while others basically jump from one sex scene to another to another.
Some hentai has almost all plot with only one softcore sex scene in a 30-minute episode, and some hentai has almost nothing else going on except sex.
As you can see, ero anime is not just mindless pornography with limited appeal. There is a wide variety of it out there for a wide variety of people who are seeking a wide variety of things in these anime.
Myth: Hentai is just for people who can't get live-action porn.
Fact: There are a lot of things which live-action porn does not offer which hentai does.
1) More variety of people. In live-action porn, especially if it's only from one country, you tend to see the same women doing the same things video after video. It gets boring. Hentai has many different-looking girls. It's also a turn-off for some people that the people in live-action porn have been with all sorts of people. In hentai, there are always characters new to sex, there are always virgins, and it is easy to find new faces.
2) Hentai covers ground a lot of live-action porn either does not or can not. What if someone is interested in seeing a woman with penises as nipples? In live-action porn, that isn't going to happen, but with hentai, all they have to do is request someone to draw it. Also, there are many fetishes which someone may have which are illegal, or which are things they would never want to try in real life, such as vivisection and rape. These fetishes can safely be portrayed without hurting anyone in hentai.
3) Some people are uneasy with live-action porn or dislike it. Not everyone wants to see real people having sex in front of them on a TV screen. There is an awkwardness which some people feel comes with it. Hentai is a way these people can experience porn, yet not feel the awkwardness they do with live-action material.
There are also people who watch both hentai and live-action porn.
I've watched a good enough amount of live-action porn to say that 98% of it fails on most levels to give me what I consider "great adult entertainment".
Myth: Creators of regular anime find erotic images, erotic fanfiction, and erotic doujinshi of their works disgusting and disgraceful. They would sue if the could.
Fact: No, no, no. Most creators of anime and manga are more happy to see hentai based off of their works being made than they are disgusted and angry. It shows that people care about their work, and that the fandom is active. Fanwork of any kind keeps an anime/manga series alive. Anime/Manga and video games which finished in Japan a long time ago, yet still have fandoms which are strong and noticible probably owe a lot more to fanwork than the average person would assume. Remember that Japan views sex differently than our culture does.
It is also pretty common for manga writers and illustrators to start out doing hentai manga and doujinshi. An excellent example of a group of popular manga artists who got their start with hentai manga/doujinshi is CLAMP. It is not uncommon for people who have worked on "regular" anime to have worked on hentai anime, either. Many of the popular seiyuu and directors we know and love have done work in the adult anime industry.
Also, many anime/manga do have some trace of sexuality in them, without being explict. I'll use
Sailormoon here as an example. Although we obviously never see the characters having sex in either the manga or the anime, there is official art (drawn by the creator, Naoko Takeuchi) of Usagi and Mamoru naked in bed together. The art is not explicit, but you can tell what is going on. They also discuss having a baby shortly after. Draw your own conclusions.
There are exceptions to this, of course. There are some scenarios that manga writers and anime writers have stated they personally find distasteful, and some manga writers and anime writers who've stated they find any hentai involving their series distasteful.
Myth: There is never any normal sex in hentai. It is always tentacles and other weird stuff.
Fact: Tentacle sex was used a lot in some popular older hentai such as
Urotsukidoji and
La Blue Girl. However, in recent years, we are seeing far more "human-on-human" sex than "tentacle monster-on-human".
Tentacles seem to be a phenomenon of sorts, since so many people automatically associate hentai with tentacle sex, despite the fact that tentacles are becoming less common in anime and manga as years go by. It certainly is still made because there is a demand for it, but along side it, there is more human/human sex.
It appears that the original reason for tentacles was to get around Japanese censorship laws which no longer exist, or have become looser. A great deal of tentacles in hentai bear a very obvious resemblance to penises. These days, almost any hentai that you didn't get from a distributor in a country with other laws, such as Kitty Media or Anime18, will have what we call "mosiac-censoring". While what is going on is still very clear, genitalia is blurred as a result of censorship laws. There is also a lot of old Japanese art and drawings featuring tentacles.
Annually, only 10-20% of all hentai anime made is tentacle action. That is not that much at all. If you think that all hentai is tentacle action, you are very much mistaken.
I've had someone argue with me before that because all of the really popular hentai have tentacle action in them, it's safe to assume all hentai does. This is not even close to the truth. As I have explained or will explain, since tentacle sex is so different and unknown, a lot of people are interested in seeing it and will talk about. People won't mention ordinary heterosexual sex scenes because everyone knows how the average heterosexual couple has sex.
Myth: Yaoi is not, and never was, porn.
Fact: This is somewhat true. In some cases, that may be so. In other cases, that is very much not so.
Some yaoi is written to be porn, and some isn't. Even for the stuff that isn't, there are fans that will still use it as such.
As it is with many Japanese terms used by Westerners, the original meaning of the word "yaoi" has been distorted.
The term "yaoi" was originally used to describe purely sexual relationships between men in fan manga. It is an acronym derived from "
yama nashi,
ochi nashi,
imi nashi", which means "no climax, no resolution, no meaning". In other words, meaningless or nearly meaningless sex. Some people often joke about an alternative phrase it is an acronym of, which is "
yamette,
oshiri
ita" (meaning "Stop! My a** hurts!" ). I think that it is obvious why that phrase would be used to describe adult anime/manga/doujinshi/game material with hardcore male/male sexual content. (source:
http://www.fact-index.com/y/ya/yaoi.html). There was also a rule that yaoi had to have penetration. Most material here that is considered "yaoi" would be better classified as either "BL" or as a series which has a male/male relationship in it.
Here in North America, some people stick to the original definition, while it seems like more people just use it to mean general relationships of a romantic and/or sexual relationship between males. Yaoi has become the fastest growing anime/manga trend among females in North America, and it seems that a lot prefer to say they like "yaoi" manga and "yaoi" fanfics because it is faster to say than "manga with guys who like each other" and "fanfics with guys who like each other". A lot of people are just ignorant about what yaoi actually is. If many people proclaiming themselves as "yaoi" fans saw what yaoi is considered in Japan, they'd say "ewwww" and run.
Myth: Hentai is seen as a disgrace to Japanese culture.
Fact: Again, no. Japnese culture views sex differently than we do. Sex is seen as a normal part of pretty much everyone's life, and a part of life that is enjoyed. It is viewed like eating and sleeping. We are talking about a culture that holds fertility festivals and has "love hotels" (these are hotels where couples mainly pay for rooms just in order to... you guessed it).
Myth: All hentai is about rape.
Fact: I am not going to deny that there is a large percentage of hentai dedicated to non-consensual sex. However, to say all hentai is about rape is very inaccurate. There is plenty of hentai in existence where all parties agree to the sex and enjoy the sex. There are sweet, romantic, and fluffy stories in existence. There are stories in which the sex is agreed to by all involved parties, but not for fluffy romantic reasons. You just need to know where to look.
What you see in anime is a reflection of Japanese culture. Hentai is, obviously, a reflection of Japan's views on sex. North American anime fans seem to make Japan out to be a flawless paradise, when it is far from it ("grass is always greener on the other side", I guess). Women are still often seen as inferior to men and as the other, "weaker" sex which is intended to serve them. Some people connect the rise is hentai focused on rape, extreme degradation, and lolicon to the fact that, these days, many more Japanese women are getting into good universities, getting well-paying jobs, and are choosing to go against the traditional "stay at home housewife/mom" role.
Rape fetish is not just something a few perverts thought up and began writing anime, manga, and games about. Rape and sexism are actual visible problems in Japan which seriously need to be dealt with.
Myth: Hentai is an excuse to get porn to minors.
Fact: As silly as I find this myth, I have seen people use it as an argument against hentai in many places, so I will address it.
All hentai DVDs, VHSs, manga, doujinshi, and so forth that I have seen on sale here in North America have some sort of "adults only" warning on them. The items are also often up too high for a young person to reach or not in plain view (i.e. you have to ask to see them). With this in mind, it is up to the person or people selling them to make sure that only customers who are of legal age purchase or rent it. If a minor gets ahold of it, it is the fault of the person/people selling the item, not the item itself. As a retailer, they should have known better, used better morals, or both.
I am ashamed to say that myself and others I know have come across retailers who "don't care" as long as they get our money for the product they are selling. It's sad, but, again, it is not the fault of the entire genre of anime. It is the fault of the retailer for disregarding warning labels and not using good moral judgment.
As for Japan, adult material is easily accessible to minors, but due to the tradition Japanese "honor system", a child is very unlikely to pick something up that they are not old enough to view because they know that doing so is wrong. Since they know that they are not supposed to do it, they don't.
Yes, in our continent, it is very common for teenage anime fans to look at hentai. After all, drives in that age group are strong, and they need to relieve that tension somehow. However, on the whole, teenagers look at live-action material more than anything else. Most of us out there did look at adult material of some sort when we were 11-17, even if we don't want to admit it. We're all sexual beings, and need release. Think of it this way. Would you rather have a 14 year-old looking at porn, or a 14 year-old getting pregnant?
I am an adult. Most of the other hentai fans I talk to are adults. I'm done with this.
Myth: Hentai is bad because it gives anime a bad reputation and too many people think that anime is all pornographic.
Fact: This is half true. A lot of people do think that all anime is sexually explicit. How this started, I am not certain. Perhaps people see a picture somewhere of an anime character who wears really skimpy clothing and has large breasts and think "porn!".
It is our job to educate ignorant people and tell them otherwise. Again, this is not the fault of this particular anime genre. It is the fault of people somehow being misinformed.
Myth: No hentai is "normal", anyway.
Fact: So sex isn't normal? Enjoying sex isn't normal? It's been stated that the only abnormal sexual desire is having no sexual desire at all. If sex is abnormal, I wonder why the population continues growing...
I suppose this is related to the myth that all hentai involves tentacles and catgirls with 2-foot long penises, when, in truth, only some do.
Myth: People who watch hentai have no limits, and are not turned off by anything. They all like the same things.
Fact: This couldn't be more wrong.
All hentai fans have their own tastes and their own kinks, as well as their own preferences towards the types of stories they want to see. Most hentai fans I know actually prefer simple consensual sex between either a male and female or two females.
Myth: Making straight characters gay/bisexual in fanwork is wrong because they put anime characters in positions they weren't meant to be in!
Fact: Yes, this is an opinion. However, I always hear whining about straight characters becoming gay/bisexual, but never gay characters suddenly becoming straight/bisexual. Characters can also be paired off with someone else who is out of character for them without any change to their sexual orientation. To me, it seems misdirected to just say that making a straight character gay/bisexual for a fanfic is wrong while disregarding all of the other fanfiction out there which is horrible for being out-of-character and ignoring canon. I've read just as much bad straight fanfiction as I have gay fanfiction. It can very easily be argued that all fanwork, including G-rated stuff appropriate for all ages, is wrong because it's not what the original artist(s) intended.
Myth: Hentai is most commonly obtained by people who are too young to view real naked people.
Fact: I saw this posted in an anti-hentai thread. I laughed.
Take off your clothes and look in the mirror. There. Now you know what a naked body looks like ^_^.
Most teenagers do know what naked people look like. Those that don't have a pretty clear idea, or can easily go and find out. I've only ever come across one teenager (he was actually 22) in my life who said he didn't know what a naked woman actually looked like, and he was a rather sheltered individual who believed that seeing a naked woman would give him sexual desire and would tempt him to engage in premarital relations and masturbate. Oh well. His life, I guess.
Even if these sheltered children and teenagers haven't seen naked people in their lives, there's the Internet. By typing certain words in on a search engine and turning of net nannies, one can come across more naked people than they ever knew existed. Let's not even get into how easy it is to find partial nudity online, which you see all the time without actually having looked for it. Then, there are movies. Naked breasts are no big deal in movies these days at the cinema. Late-night digital TV can certainly help in this respect, too.
Now, I'm onto my second point. The majority of dedicated fans of adult anime/manga/game material I have met are adults themselves. Those who are not, more often than not, show extreme maturity about sex and sexual issues for their age. As stated before, the idea that h-fans are just desperate is easy for an anti-hentai person to throw as an insult at hentai fans, but it bears very little actual truth. Oh yeah, you know those adults I spoke of? Many of them were in active sexual relationships. Some were having the typical "adventurous" college/university lives. Some of them lived with their boyfriend/girlfriend. Some of them were married. None of them showed any dissatisfaction with their private lives.
Myth: Yaoi is intended to be an accurate depiction of real-life homosexuality and a lot of gay men like it.
Fact: Absolutely not. Yaoi is written by women and is for women. It was never intended to be realistic at all. In fact, what yaoi is supposed to be actually involves a depiction of a heterosexual relationship, with the character that would be the woman (the "uke" ) being a man, at least physically. Yaoi is pure fantasy created by women.
There are some male fans of yaoi/BL material in North America, but they are few and far between. You're looking at about 10% or less of the American fandom.
In Japan, male yaoi fans are unheard of. Period. What you've heard about gay men in Japan generally finding yaoi offensive is true.
The yaoi/BL genre itself does about as much for gay community as live-action lesbian porn aimed at men helps the gay community. A lot of fanpeople find this statement offensive, but when you think about it, it makes sense.
Myth: Hentai is good for nothing except masturbation.
Fact: There are going to be people who will see anything with sex in it and say it has no other purpose except sexual gratification, and that includes hentai fans. I find this very sad, but there's not much I can do other than try informing people otherwise. Yes, the majority of hentai was made with that purpose in mind. The "majority" does not mean "all", though. Even for hentai that was meant as arousal material, does that automatically mean that the people who wrote it and worked on it had nothing else in mind and didn't put effort in?
Myth: I saw this anime called "____________" and it was hentai, and it was awful! Therefore, all hentai must be like this, and I refuse to try more out!
Fact: You're entitled to that opinion, but that doesn't mean that I do not think you are ignorant and closed-minded. You saw one title out of hundreds, and therefore are ready to dismiss all hentai as bad?
Like I said, hentai is diverse. No anime genre should be totally dismissed just because you saw one anime and thought it sucked.
What was it you hated about it? Chances are, I can find you an h-anime which does give you what you're looking for.
I find it ironic how anime fans are quick to yell at someone who bases their dislike of anime on the one or two anime they've seen, yet many of those same people will quickly dismiss all hentai as bad after eating one bad apple.
Myth: "Hentai" is Japanese for "porn", and is what Japanese people call their porn.
Fact: "Hentai" literally means "strange appearance". "Hentai" meaning "perversion", I can understand. In a way, it does. "Hentai" meaning "porn", however,... no..., just... no. That is misuse. As I said, there does not seem to be a word to describe all sexually explicit anime/manga material in Japan. The closest would be "ero", although "ero" almost seems like a term to refer to titles with fairly "normal" sex.
The term mostly used for live-action porn in Japan is "AV" (stands for "adult video" ). Instead of being called a "porn star", someone would be called "AV idol". Instead of saying "I was in a porno", you'd say "I was in an AV". Some anime/manga have jokes about confusing the term "AV" meaning "audio-visual" with "AV" meaning "adult video".
Myth: Hentai fans are into the same stuff in real-life as they are in anime.
Fact: Truthfully, some are, and some aren't.
Hentai has no boundaries, so some people will use it to explore their darkest, deepest, or sometimes strangest fantasies. Some of these fantasies are things they'd never do in real-life, and may never even feel comfortable seeing real people doing.
Myth: Hentai has better art than other anime, manga, or anime-style games.
Fact: I've seen a lot of people say this, and I have to correct it.
Some hentai has beautiful art, some has average, and some has awful art.
Many hentai anime are made on a very low-budget. This means bad animation and bad art. In fact, if someone were to try and find out what the most horribly animated anime of all-time is, they'd likely end up with a hentai anime.
Some doujinshi art I've seen is absolutely atrocious. Seriously, the cover I saw of a Strawberry Panic doujinshi seriously looked like it was done on MS Paint!
Many people generalize all hentai as being either having beautiful art or really bad art, but really, there's good and there's bad. Most is probably somewhere in-between. There is a lot more gorgeous-looking hentai now than there ever was before, though.
Seriously, if you think all hentai has good art, check out Sailor and the Seven Ballz or Anime Fiction. They are fan-made and very, very badly animated.
Myth: Liking yaoi, yuri, futanari, etc. indicates someone's sexual orientation.
Fact: The majority of yaoi, slash, and BL fans are female. There are plenty of yaoi/slash/BL fans who are lesbian. I've even met a few straight men who like yaoi/slash/BL.
Around 60% of people active in the yuri and femme slash fandom are female. Many yuri stories are aimed at heterosexual girls. Many yuri fans are heterosexual girls. That's right, say what you will, but most of the people who enjoy yuri stories and talk about it are women and girls, not horny men.
Most people who like futanari are heterosexual men.
Also keep in mind that this stuff is all fictional. You aren't watching real men having sex in yaoi. What you're seeing is women's fantasies.
Then, there's the fact that I believe human sexuality is far more complex than three labels.
Myth: Only people in Japan have certain fetishes.
Fact: I've actually seen people claim this quite a bit, especially when it comes to fetishes which are considered taboo here (such as incest, watersports, pregnancy, and scat).
I don't see any reason why only someone from a certain country could be turned on by something. While it's true that Japanese porn has some stuff you rarely or never see in North American porn, it doesn't mean that only Japanese people are interested in that stuff. Consider the fact that some of this stuff is illegal to film here. That means that you aren't going to see much of it, unless you dig far underground. It doesn't change the fact that people are interested in it.
People may also be afraid to talk about anything unusual that may turn them on due to fear of being rejected, out-casted, or seen as "weird". Some people do go as far as to self-deny, and try to think of themselves as being violently turned off by something when they really aren't.
I think people also want to deny that people who have tastes outside the norm may live fairly close to them.
Myth: People who regularly watch hentai and enjoy it have no knowledge or taste for good anime.
Fact: What is "good anime"? Go on, tell me. No matter what title you name, someone else is going to tell you "it sucks". What makes an anime "good" over "bad" is a matter of personal opinion. Look at any anime forum on the Internet and you will see that different people have very different ideas of what "good" is.
Is it all about animation, plot line, and characters? As I have been trying to establish, some hentai do have good animation, plot line, and characters. Therefore, that logic fails.
Even if hentai anime never delivered any quality, plot, animation, and characters... some people don't care. There are people who care most about being entertained, not about watching the next crowning achievement in Japanese animation.
Myth: Yuri is lesbian porn for guys.
Fact: Yuri, in Japan, is a genre about females in love with other females which is not usually sexual. The majority of it is written by and aimed at women/girls (and no, not usually lesbian/bisexual girls). Fandom in North American of actual yuri (not just girl/girl in hentai) is equally split between male and female.
Not everything with sexual content, nudity, or fanservice is hentai!
I didn't know where to add this. It seems that some people out there are in confusion as to what "hentai" actually is. I've defined it here, but to some people, this definition doesn't tell this enough. So I'm adding this, kids. I'm going to attempt to clear out this "hentai confusion".
1. Sexual implications do not make something "hentai". Sex is seen as a normal, natural function in Japan. Many anime imply, or state outright, that characters are going to have sex or have had sex. This does not mean something is "hentai". It's true that a few regular anime, such as Onegai Teacher, NANA, and KareKano, make it clear that characters had sex, and may even find ways of showing the "before" and "after" events as well as the emotions. They may even show the act somewhat. This does not make them "hentai", though, in any sense of what "hentai" is. The sexual act must be shown in some degree of detail before we can even start to consider whether it's "hentai" or not. It's true that sometimes, showing characters almost engaged in sexual acts can be fanservice, but this does not make something "hentai".
2. Nudity does not make something "hentai". The human body is a natural, beautiful thing. It's not always sexual. We were born without clothes. Get over it. Some anime show nudity, in different degrees of detail. This is not considered a big deal in Japan. While the nudity may be fanservice, fanservice alone does not make a hentai.
3. Fanservice does not make something hentai. Seeing a girl's boobs shake while a guy gets a nosebleed is not "hentai". A boy seeing up a girl's skirt and then getting slapped is not "hentai". Shower scenes are not "hentai", nor are hot springs scenes or bathing suit scenes. Topless men accidentally grasping the breasts of a girl in a bikini is not "hentai". "Fanservice" is made up of two words: "fan" and "service". "Fanservice" is "service" for a "fan". Scenes which play with the viewer's sex drive are "service" for the "fan". If you were watching an anime with shaking boobs and/or panties, what you saw were the creators trying to appeal to male viewers. Boys who are 10-16 and heterosexual generally like seeing breasts, panties, and sex jokes, and they are part of the target audience in Japan for many of these shows. Many shounen series have a trademark "fanservice girl". This does not make them hentai. At most, titles heavy in fanservice would be "ecchi".
4. The presence of a plot does not make something non-hentai. The majority of hentai do have plots. Sometimes, the plots are just ingenius set-ups to get characters in bed and banging, but they are still plots. Also, a title can be extremely perverted and detailed and still have a plot.
5. Titles which has some sort of perversion or obvious sexual ideas behind it are not necessarily hentai. Some people think that if a series, for example, is about a high school girl and a teacher who are married, it's hentai. It's also commonly confused with anime which have the "slave/master" theme. Not even close. In order for a title to be "hentai", it has to have graphic sex in it. Merely having sexual ideas, no matter how unconventional or "weird" they are, does not make something hentai. The writers may have had some sexual fantasy going through their mind as they wrote it, or may have written it for viewers to fantasize about. This still does not make a hentai.
It is true that some titles really push boundaries on what is and isn't "hentai". However, it should be pretty clear. If you think you've seen a hentai anime because you saw something with characters having explicit sex in it, you probably did. If you think something may have been "hentai" because you saw something which either implied sex, had nudity, or had fanservice, but were unsure because it never crossed the line of there being explicit sex, you probably didn't.
boing! boing! boing! ....I mean, bump