The Place for Purging Porn and Pedo-Pandering (AKA P5 flag evaluations)

@lu - you're not wrong, but Gratuitous Japanese just adds an additional layer of obfuscation and subjectivity. "It's not softcore porn, it's ecchi!" And so on.

edited 25th Apr '12 10:33:17 AM by Martello

Ecchi is really a broad term for anything Fanservice heavy but not labeled 18+ aka Hentai / Porn. It can range from something that does a lot of Panty Shot s and Clothing Damage without any hints of sex to actual romance with softcore sex. The limits of said softcore sex are kinda close to HBO standards, no crotches can be shown, limits to how much sex can be shown in a chapter etc. As a rule though even the most extreme Ecchi is Plot With Porn.

H-Game is something different though it is just any game that can have sex in it, no matter what kind or how explicit. Most outside of flat out porn games you can skip the sex by checking a box in the options menu.

Let's seriously not get into that. Other fandoms use terms too, try explaining Alien Space Bats and tell me that is not misleading. Fandoms and people latch onto terms.

edited 25th Apr '12 10:47:42 AM by Raso

I just think we need to drop all terms that aren't Exactly What It Says on the Tin. Not so drastic maybe, but stuff like "hentai" or the like needs to go.

Right, let's not get into it, by...not using untranslated and gratuitous Japanese terms. Perfect, we agree.

edited 25th Apr '12 10:47:04 AM by Martello

While "Japanese Cartoon Porn" doesn't sound nearly as concise, I don't mind if you want to avoid the term hentai.

edited 25th Apr '12 10:47:14 AM by encrypted12345

The ecchi/hentai distinction is Serious Business in Japan, because there's a legally-enforced adults-only rating for manga; stuff that falls on the actually-porn side of the line has to be shelved separately, can't be sold to minors, etc. Over here it doesn't matter that much, it's more important where the ecchi stuff falls on the "heavy fanservice" through "just barely squeaked under the porn line" spectrum. It's worth noting that almost none of the porn-for-women goes into "adults only" territory, except for cellphone manga; there's a strong presumption that women won't buy stuff they have to be carded for except online.

edited 25th Apr '12 10:48:38 AM by lebrel

The thing is that Ecchi can be so many things from a Jiggle Show to Skinmax. Although, remember in the early 00s when there was a lot of advertisement for UNRATED cuts of movies? And basically, it was stuff like American Pie but now you could see the Foreign Exchange Student 's boobs? Like that, but more moe

Jiggle corrected!

edited 25th Apr '12 10:57:12 AM by animeg3282

Very much disagree, these terms are used heavily on both sides of the pond and you really can not stop their usage.

People should add detail on what is objectionable and what is not though not just a blanket argument of "its X".

That is Jiggle Show.

@Martello: Try not to put words in my mouth.... Let's just agree to disagree, please.

edited 25th Apr '12 10:56:32 AM by Raso

This is not true. H-Game is used to describe a wide variety of things from pure blatant porn like, say, Virgin Roster (going with something that was already cut and no one has defended) to something that uses romance and sex only incidentally and to get more purchasers like Fate Stay Night. However, even FSN does not give you the option to turn the sex scenes off, sadly.

edited 25th Apr '12 10:57:06 AM by Arha

I think that the thing with the Japanese terms is that they're on Japanese media pages as the official classifications from the publisher. As such, they're hard to keep off.

It also means that people see publishing terms on the pages, and misconstrue what they mean. For instance, Hentai as a publishing term doesn't mean Japanese Cartoon Porn, it means Japanese Cartoons aimed at an adult audience and ranges from Porn to South Park equivalents.

What we need is definitions of the publishing terms, because getting official terminology off the pages is hard. Especially when they're terms used even by Western publishers.

Ahh ok, every H-Game I have played has had that option. (like Katawa Shoujo.)

Sorry.

edited 25th Apr '12 10:58:44 AM by Raso

Further point of order: Hentai is a term used in the Western fandom. It's not used as such in Japan. Ero-manga is a marketing category, seijin (adult) manga is a legal term, but hentai just means "weird" or "perverse". The general usage of Hentai in the West is "cartoon porn", usually specifically cartoon porn for straight(-ish) men. When it's used by US companies as a marketing category, it's usually restricted to porn-y stuff, including some of the pornier ecchi.

I agree that we should try to keep those terms out of the discussion as much as possible, but it is pretty vital we understand what the terms mean, because we're going to be running across them while researching works.

Let's take a work I know absolutely nothing about, Amaenaideyo. Let's assume someone saw the page image (which appears to have an underage girl on it), saw it was listed under Ecchi, and submitted it with no further information/research. Which has been happening a lot, although we've been handing out forum time-outs for repeat offenders.

In the course of investigating this series, it would be very helpful to know that "ecchi" does not (necessarily?) mean "porn".

edited 25th Apr '12 11:06:51 AM by ccoa

Two useful references for things that don't have Wikipedia pages are www.mangaupdates.com (where you can find out where a series was published) and comipedia.com (where you can find out a bit about the magazine). For instance, here we see that Amaenaideyo!! was published in Comic Gum, and here we see that Comic Gum is classified as seinen rather than seijin, so it's probably not an explicit series.

What ccoa said.

It's one thing to avoid using those terms in discussions within ourselves when possible (that's good), it's another to understand them because they're used by people outside the cleanup and are relevant to the process.

I'm amazed we had a page for the Otokonoko Genre. Or that there was a name for it. Well, it is a common fetish if Ancient Mythology is any indication.

More importantly, Hentai refers to anything that shows off genitals. Characters can have explicit sex in some heavy Ecchi manga (Love Celeb (or maybe it was some other Mayu Shinjo work) comes to mind), but the genitals aren't shown and if it's not overly graphic, then it doesn't qualify for Hentai.

edited 25th Apr '12 11:21:06 AM by encrypted12345

Disagree. Hentai as used in the US primarily means porn for straight men. Genitals (usually censored to some degree) can show up in Ecchi, the smuttier Boys' Love, and "ladies' comics" (smutty josei). None of the above are usually grouped under Hentai.

That makes things more confusing... So, how useful are those terms in helping distinguish porn from otherwise?

Also, when I see "seijin" I think "alien" instead of "adult". I know both are pronounced the same in Japan but still confusing when from a Romanization standpoint.

edited 25th Apr '12 11:37:15 AM by ThatHuman

Not very. Some Japanese terms often have a correlation with porn having a higher chance of being porn, but there's no one to one relationship of Japanese genre, and is porn. The reality, they're pretty much useless.

On the other hand, there is a one to one ratio of several other Japanese terms and "is not porn" so that's slightly more useful.

If a US company is marketing something as "hentai", it's probably too porny for this site. If something is categorized in Japan as seijin, it's probably too porny for this site. If a fan has labelled something as "hentai", it may mean one of the first two things, or it may not. So basically I would put a lot of weight on the official publisher's classification, and considerably less on fan usages.

edited 25th Apr '12 11:46:15 AM by lebrel

If something is labelled as hentai by a publisher, there's an 80% chance of porn. It's the equivalent of an NC-17 rating. Not an X. The same is true of seijin. They're both warning signs, but should not be taken as any statement of face. A large chunk of what publishers put under both those terms is South Park level content.

If a fan labels something hentai, it's down to about a 40% chance, and it's not the same 40%. More often with fans they seem to use it as "contains sex." H-Game is even worse with only about 25% being actual porn, and most being works that are really more the video game equivalent of romance novels.

edited 25th Apr '12 11:50:23 AM by shimaspawn

To confuse things further, I've heard eechi translated as "pervert" in dialogue. The example I remember was one of the Sailor Moon movie when a possessed guy grabs Minako's ankle and she high-kicks him off yelling (translated) "You pervert!", I don't remember the spoken dialogue exactly (I only know otaku-level Japanese) but it sounded like it ended in a squeeled "eechiiiii!"

Yes. I said probably, not definitely. I own a couple of Japanese manga that got the seijin classification for, as far as I can tell, just plain rude humor (very very rude, though).

Yes, "you lech!" seems to be the original use of the word ecchi, dating back to at least the 1960s.

edited 25th Apr '12 11:52:31 AM by lebrel

I think a more literal translation would be "You Sex-fiend". In Japan, Ecchi is a term that refers to anything sexual including sex itself while Hentai just means pervert. Ironically, in US anime fan speak, Hentai is worse than Ecchi. It's more or less hopelessly confusing.

edited 25th Apr '12 11:52:36 AM by encrypted12345

^^^"Hentai" is also used to accuse somebody of being a pervert in actual Japanese.

edited 25th Apr '12 11:53:02 AM by Adannor