Osamu Tezuka tried to create a popular acceptance of animation in 1969 with One Thousand and One Nights which contained all the erotic innuendo of the original Persian tales. © Tezuka Productions.

Anime's Beginnings
Asian attitudes towards eroticism have always been more open than those of the West. One of the earliest Japanese TV cartoon series was Sennin Buraku (Hermits' Village), a fifteen-minute late-night erotic humor anthology roughly equivalent to "Playboy's Ribald Classics" which aired from 11:40 to 11:55 p.m. for two months in 1963. Osamu Tezuka (1928-1989) is revered as the father of both Japan's comic book and animation industries, writing and illustrating the series known in America as Astro Boy and Kimba, the White Lion. It is less well known that Tezuka also tried to create a popular acceptance of animation with intellectually artistic mature themes. In November 1966, he produced Pictures at an Exhibition, a Fantasia-like transformation of Mussorgsky's famous composition into a modern political cartoon, presenting the musical "pictures" as satirical portraits of ruthless corporate bosses, affectedly aesthetic artists, scandal-mongering journalists, rebellious teens, vapid TV personalities and the like. In June 1969, he released One Thousand and One Nights, a 128-minute adult adaptation of The Arabian Nights full of adventure, Rabelaisian humor, and all the erotic innuendo of the original Persian tales. This was a major theatrical release, intended by Tezuka to be comparable to Western live-action movie adaptations of such adult literary classics as Lady Chatterley's Lover and Lolita.

Japanese animated explicitly adult cartoons developed along with the general animated direct-to-video market. The first Japanese Original Animated Video (OAV) title was a science-fiction drama, Dallos, released in December 1983. The third OAV release, on February 21, 1984, was Lolita Anime I: Yuki no Kurenai Kesho * Shojo Bara Kei (freely translated, Crimson Cosmetic on the Snow * Young Girls' Rose Punishment). This half-hour video, first in the short-lived Wonder Kids erotic anime series, consisted of two 15-minute dramas of rape and sadistic sexual torture/murder of schoolgirls, whose spirits exact a gruesome supernatural vengeance. Of the seventeen OAVs released during 1984, six were "general" and eleven were pornographic. In 1985, after the viability of the direct-video market for action-adventure anime had been established, the total was 28 action-adventure titles to just another eleven porno titles. The Japanese domestic OAV market has grown accordingly, over the past decade, with 1997's output of 162 "general" titles and 62 erotic titles (including some multiple volumes of series) being about the average ratio.

Adult-themed or explicit anime releases in the U.S. are usually accompanied by warning labels. Samples shown here are courtesy of Streamline Pictures, Manga Entertainment and Central Park Media.

The Anime Porn Players
There are differences of opinion as to what constitutes "anime porn," but four anime specialty video producers have special labels for their releases which primarily emphasize nudity and explicit adult sexual situations. These are A.D. Vision's SoftCel Pictures series, Central Park Media's Anime 18 series, Media Blasters' Kitty Media series, and The Right Stuf International's Critical Mass series.

The other anime specialty producers state that they are not interested in getting into the video erotica market. However, most of them have at least one adult feature in their catalogues which includes a brief but intense "shocker" scene such as a graphic rape. For some sensibilities, this is enough to establish the movie as pornography.

Two such companies, Manga Entertainment (ME) and Streamline Pictures, feel that their video box art makes it clear to the public that their anime titles are adult action-adventure rather than eroticism. Chicago-based Manga Entertainment's media relations representative, Danielle Opyt, says, "Due to the basic nature of anime, all of our videos bear a distinctive sticker showing our Manga Man cartoon spokesman and our flaming Manga Entertainment logo, with the warning, "Manga Man Says Parental Discretion Advised." This covers everything from strong language to brief nudity and graphic violence." Carl Macek, president of Streamline Pictures in Los Angeles, says, "We have always presented anime for a wide range of tastes, from child-friendly to movies whose main characters are engaged in such obviously mature activities as smoking and drinking cocktails. Those which contain brief but intense adult situations carry an appropriate warning notice. In 1994 we arranged with Orion Home Video to distribute most of our titles, and Orion created a "Not For Kids" sticker which it has automatically put on all the Streamline video boxes. This includes the whole range from PG-level content to R-level content."