Last Modified: February 19th, 2006
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Many people see Cartoon Pornography and Hentai as one and the same, which is incorrect. To analyse the huge differences between these two art forms, we must define each of the terms and understand what they mean. In this context, Hentai refers to animated or drawn pornographic content produced in Japan. Cartoon Pornography refers primarily to the same type of material, but produced outside of Japan (most commonly America and Europe). There are two main types of 'Carton Pornography', those that try to replicate the authentic Japanese material and those that take their own style.
Arguably the main reason for people thinking of these two being the same has been the growth of the internet, and more so, internet pornography. It is very easy to see site banners offering 'cartoon porn' and 'hentai' on the same site, usually these sites only have American produced copies of hentai, or bootlegged Japanese material that they have no permission from the original producers in Japan to use. The internet effect on these terms is something that will be explored in this essay.
The main difference between the two except from the way in which characters are drawn is which characters are used. Hentai will usually contain characters from anime, manga or popular video games (an example of this being Ayu Tsukimiya, a character from the eroge Kanon making more appearances outside of her original game than any other character). This principle remains largely the same for Cartoon Pornography, although the characters are most usually from cartoons or films produced in America (such as Disney toon characters, or The Simpsons).
Cartoon Pornography can also feature Japanese characters, as it did during the height of popularity of the Pokemon franchise in the late nineties. Western cartoonists were producing pornography featuring the Japanese characters, but were producing it in the western style. Dojin (Japanese fan art/pornography) of the same characters was also produced. Many lawsuits have been raised in relation to the use of trademarked characters such as The Simpsons and The Flintstones being used in cartoon pornography, something that does not happen when Japanese artist's do the same thing to popular characters in their country. This could reflect the litigous nature of the Western world, where imitating or adapting someone's work is seen as copying it to discredit them or benefit yourself.
There are also a large amount of original character designs made, in both hentai and cartoon pornography. Although in the latter the original characters are usually the artist's attempt at producing something that consumers will believe is originally Japanese, which is reflected in the production of Cartoon shows on American and European television, with many American produced shows using designs to make viewers think that they were originally Japanese.
It was very much due to internet pornography that the mistake of thinking hentai and cartoon pornography were one and the same, the operators of porn sites that contain both, or even just one of these knew that by using both words they could capture more clicks on their banners that they used to advertise with, so they decided to start using both of the words to describe one thing, which sometimes wasn't even either of them (an example being a site containing 3D computer generated pornography labelled as hentai in it's banners).
Cartoon pornography has often pushed the limits of reality and taste, with furry characters being common and many websites set up dedicated to extreme and unusual types of pornography. Content that is typically illegal, but legal when drawn is not usually accepted on the web and no porn sites are set up due to the rules that Credit Card processers and card companies themselves have in order to stop people profiting from indecent material. Although there are many parody cartoons showing popular characters (usually Bart and Lisa from The Simpsons) nude circulating the internet.
The self policing of some sites is beginning to have an effect, with consumers acknowledging which sites have authentic and properly licensed content and which sites use content in a copied style, or bootlegged content in general. This is beginning to show through to the developers of the sites themselves and they are having to adapt in order to keep their market shares high on the net, which generally means licensing real content, which in turn supports the original producer and increases the amount of original content being produced, which can only be a good thing for the niche in general, both on and off the internet.
Due to the growing popularity of hentai itself, lines are starting to be drawn between Japanese produced content and Western produced content. The new wave of fans know what is authentic and what is not which means that people trying to fool others by drawing in a different style are fighting a losing battle. The upside of this is that the market for Western produced Cartoon Pornography is also growing, even though there is higher demand for popular and therefore trademarked characters to be included in the material. One of the main problems with this growth of the market of educated consumers is that now people are demanding authentic content, it is hard for companies to gain the licenses to use the material outside of Japan (mainly due to language barriers, but also due to Japanese companies not fully understanding what the content is to be used for once it is licensed) and due to this being hard, it is much easier for Western companies to pirate the content, as it is hard for the original producers to bring legal action against them.
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