Sylvia and Chris explore the world of hentai artists who toned it down to break into the mainstream.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the participants in this chatlog are not the views of Anime News Network. Spoiler Warning for discussion of the series ahead.
Sylvia
Yes, as we all know, the industry only pays attention to and rewards the most wholesome of voices, and we can certainly count Student Council Holes' creator, Muchimaro, among them, with their appreciation for raw physicality and the weight of violence.
In fact, Chris, I have it on good authority that they got their start drawing something called "ryona." I don't know what that is, but it's such a pretty name that it can only refer to something just as pretty. I'm sure.
Hey, any artist this dedicated to their craft must consider it a beautiful, inspiring form.
Breaking our customary column-opening kayfabe, "ryona" is, for those not in the know, a fetish based around artful depictions of sexualized violence. Hence, Muchimaro's mascot character for Student Council Holes (who, not to put too fine a point on it, is named "Komaro") has the propensity for getting run over, bleeding, and generally getting messed up.
They do it to other characters like Tan too. They're equal-opportunity.
Very based of them. And more to the point, Muchimaro's example this season allows us to broach a topic we've been kicking around in the idea rooms for quite a while now: porn/hentai/fetish/otherwise-unsavory-content artists who have been able to break into the mainstream with tamer works. It's interesting to analyze an artist's voice and what may make them successful. It's especially interesting to consider as we see more and more crackdowns on the kind of art that's deemed "acceptable" for consumption. I mean, this has nothing to do with anime, but the UK will ban certain kinds of porn this very month.
And some of Muchimaro's "original" works would probably fall into those soon-to-be illegal categories. Yet here they are now enjoying a high-profile adaptation of their manga. And it's one of my favorites from this season!
The most blatant example that comes to mind is Don't Toy with Me, Miss Nagatoro. Mangaka Nanashi (also known as 774) got their start making hentai doujin works of a usually femdom persuasion, which included a series starring the titular Miss Nagatoro and her propensity for teasing. Albeit in a more extreme form.
And in this case, you can still find some of them on Nanashi's pixiv account! I'll refrain from linking directly, but it's really not hidden at all.
Nagatoro was something of a memetic avatar for this kind of fetishy material before the bowdlerized version of her manga hit the stands. Depending on what anime/manga message boards you were on, you knew about her. Forget open secret; this was just open.
What made it even less of a stretch is that when the teen-friendly version of Nagatoro was made, it turned out that experience writing heavily emotionally invested bullying fetish material actually made Nanashi pretty well equipped to explore the relationship, its ins and outs, from a rather respectful angle. It's almost wholesome in its depiction of a couple of kids who quickly realize what they're into and work to navigate along with their romantic feelings.
I remember that. It shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody who paid attention to reading or watching Land of the Lustrous that Ichikawa would have a predilection towards body horror—and horror around bodies in general. Anime Feminist hosts an article by Sinclair August that touches on the more salacious aspects of her previous works and how they tie into her breakout hit.
And to repeat an earlier point, I don't believe you get a work as ambitious and holistic as Land of the Lustrous without pushing those kinds of boundaries and testing what works and what really digs into the flesh of the subject matter. Such works won't be for mass consumption, by design, but that doesn't make them lesser or less important. It certainly doesn't constitute a black mark on the artist's reputation.
Artists are people, and them being both people and artists means that their art is going to be a primary vector for their feelings and indulgences. That's why I like art and the people you can see through it, and it's why I'm compelled by the artists whose more unfiltered excursions are known to be out there for comparison with their other material. Muchimaro is someone with a powerful personal love for cute characters getting wrecked, and also has a spot-on voice for depicting the awkward stages of adolescent growth and attraction.
That's not shameful, that's interesting. Who is this person? I want to know more.
Exactly! Also, this is pure speculation on my part, but a perhaps surprising number of ryona artists happen to be women, and I wouldn't be shocked if Muchimaro was too (which would also explain why Komaro's original name was Muchimaro-chan). On the surface, that might not make sense. Why would a woman be interested in drawing art of women being hurt and abused? But if you think about art (which includes pornography) beyond the surface level, it actually makes a ton of sense as a means of sublimation and processing of the grander societal traumas inflicted on women. Porn is a means of expression that the artist can control, and there's power in that. Even therapeutic power.
It's why there's so much to be frustrated about with that aforementioned legislation against different kinds of saucy content. It's not just clamping down on the kinds of dirty pictures people want to look at—it's restricting the kinds of art people can create. It's such a wrong-headed move, especially since, as Nagatoro demonstrated, it shouldn't be the business of any prying body if someone created something for the "wrong" or "right" reason. Cutting loose has always been part of the process. Even Hokusai did "Dream of the Fisherman's Wife."
Do I have to censor this one? Editors, that's my art-history-relevant tentacle porn.
Given the sorts of topics we've volleyed back and forth here over the years, I would hope they'd be aware of how grown-up we are. No way there are any teens who're discussing Yosuga no Sora.
They got Interspecies Reviewers back on streaming years after the now-defunct Funimation and even a couple of Japanese channels deemed it too saucy to carry! That's a power move in today's environment.
Also the likes of Eiken and Amazing Nurse Nanako, but uh...look, there's value in keeping even the less-good horny art available as well. Rising tides and all that.
Of course! Like we've said, so much of this, as part of the artistic element, is only normal and human. That's why I think it's valuable to have a discussion like this that normalizes the less-innocent indulgences that informed so many fan-favorite authors and resultant anime adaptations. Again, it's practically a meme to mention how many authors got their start in hentai, but it's still one of my favorite notes to bring up: Kiyohiko Azuma drawing characters who really look like Yukari from Azumanga Daioh (or vice versa, really) in compromising positions. Or discover that the guy apparently has a thing for rather pointy nipples.
These predilections aren't as on display in Azuma's comedies as the ones in Student Council Holes, but they're still there and part of informing the artists' work.
Look, Osamu Tezuka, the godfather of all modern manga, drew furry pin-ups. If it's good enough for him, it's good enough for the rest of the medium.
It's nice to know we can draw a straight line from Tezuka's craft to the defining artistry of Student Council Holes (probably with a pit stop at the furry debauchery of Paru Itagaki's BEASTARS).
There are a lot of other examples of faves in this space, from online tights pervert Yom getting multiple anime adaptations, to Hayato Sakamoto being an official Transformers manga artist who previously made his name doing...18+ Transformers doujins. But at this point, the proof of our point about perversion powering artistry is apparent, I hope.
The fact of the matter is that horny is one of the most powerful forces on the planet, and it behooves any artist to learn how to harness their own particular brand of it. There's a wide and beautiful spectrum of horny out there, and I want to see and inspect more of it, within and outside the mainstream.
I encourage all viewers with even a modicum of artistic curiosity to do the same. You never know when you'll find something to make you say, "This is my hole! It was made for me!"
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