In search of the perfect man
Posted on | April 5, 2009 | 5 Comments |
After going back on topic last week with a yuri post, this blog deviates from the theme yet again with a post on (gasp) the male side of hentai.
By male, I mean of course, the male protagonist. Men in pornography in general occupy a difficult role. On one hand, they must have something in common with their audience so that there is some empathy between them and on the other, they must be somewhat superior to their counterparts in the trouser compartment. The reasons for this are complex, suffice to say – “That pornstar screaming ecstatically on the end of it wouldn’t be half as impressed if he was hung like common people”.
So in “real life” porn pornstars should ideally look fairly normal and boy-next doory but be hung like a marine mammal. However, most companies decide to completely ignore their demographic and go for buff enormous bodybuildery types that also happen to be hung like marine mammals. Why they do this? No one knows…but it might serve to elevate the level of male pornstar still further above the level of any other mere male.
Or it could be that men don’t actually look at anything else while the screwing is going on, so they don’t notice.
The situation in hentai
However, in the world of Japanese hentai, things are accordingly more complex. Obviously, they couldn’t just stick with one kind of male lead role, they had to have loads of different types. And to me, they’re all annoying in their own little way. In this post, I’ll be describing the major stereotypes as they come to mind and exactly why each of them get my proverbial goat.
1. The faceless rapist / Disembodied Penis syndrome
Probably my favourite stereotype, this appears a lot in eromanga and doujinshi – usually when the lead female who is drawn in immaculate detail is being raped by loads of men who the mangaka cannot be bothered to draw separately, so they are either drawn as lower bodies sporting never-ending wood or even just disembodied penises – frighteningly remeniscent of the legacy of some serial emasculator.
Advantages – I think what the mangaka is trying to do is “draw the attention away from the men” and toward the girl being raped silly and in this way, men reading it won’t be distracted by silly feelings of jealousy toward made up men having their way with their desired fictional girlfriend and can instead concentrate on jerking off to her being doused in a wave of seminal fluids.
Disadvantages – Think of the marketing opportunities that there people have missed: Want a threesome, but afraid you might get jealous? Hire a faceless man! He won’t speak and he’ll pork your girlfriend like crazy! Pay 10000 yen extra and he comes with a detachable penis for extra fun!
2. The wet and annoyingly lucky guy
The most annoying out of all of the stereotypes – the guy who is pretty much a loser in every other respect – he’s a bit of a geek, he doesn’t have many friends, he’s never really been good with girls – in fact, he’s pretty much a model for a great proportion of the fanbase who avidly snap up each of the new hentai releases (myself included, of course). But suddenly, he’s dragged into a world of carnal pleasures when four girls decide that they find the way he h4XX0rs his way through a game of Counterstrike is really sexy… or something. Yeah, like that would ever happen. (T_T)
Advantages: Well, we’re pretty much hitting the “audience empathy” nail on the head so hard you’ll never pull it out of the proverbial wall again with this one. If you can get the hordes of seething girlfriendless otaku to believe that if they just bide their time, then girls will come at them like starving Tyrannosaurs to a fresh Stegosaurus carcass you’ll be raking it in.
Disadvantages: God they’re annoying. Stop being such wet saps and just have a fivesome with all of them at the same time already.
3. The overconfident twatface
Probably beaten into second place by the wet annoying guy is this one – probably the closest you can get to the real life pornstar stereotype I mentioned earlier. In this case, you’ve got the overconfident male type who blags his way through the bedsheets of various girls only to cast them aside like the bastard he is or just rapes them violently to make up for his premature ejaculation issues. Think back to the school disco in your secondary (high) school. Think of how awkward it was, with most of the boys and girls standing in two very separate pools, while the popular guys danced with the pretty girls? You know what they did afterwards? Nurture that resentment…
Advantages: Err…none, probably. I don’t think the “elevating the male lead” excuse works outside of beefy muscular pornstars.
Disadvantages: You just want to punch the computer screen, but skilfully avoid it because you know that the resultant electric shock would probably be best used by putting said male protagonist’s head through said computer screen.
4. The dirty ugly male groper
Pretty much unique to the Japanese psyche, this class of guy stems from the great Japanese pastime of Chikan koui (see my Hentai dictionary for details) – otherwise known as groping girls on trains. So in a fantasy world of these gropers, girls forego the traditional slap to the face or calling the police for ecstatic yells and then letting them have their way with them on public trains while the rest of the public go about their daily business completely oblivious. Probably happens in Japan.
Advantages: Well, it must bring in the Train groper demographic. And probably the “Like having sex in public” demographic. And the Voyeur demographic. And don’t forget the “I’m ugly but I just want to be loved” demographic.
Disadvantages: Do we really, really want to see pretty girls being raped by ugly old men? I guess ugly old men want to see that, but besides that. Are we really that bad that watching ugly men getting it on with beautiful women increases our self esteem? The answer? Probably.
5. The hypnotist
Yeah, I’ve done this one before. But really? Hypnotism? Surely there must be a better and more plausible storyline – like using GHB or other mind-altering drugs, whipping them, S&M style until they break or good old fashioned blackmail? Anything’s better than the aforementioned ugly old man with his pocketwatch getting pretty girls to slaver over his withered old boomstick until he spews his paste onto her blank features. Haven’t we flogged that poor storyline enough?
Advantages: You can make any kind of sex act, including the really really silly ones “consensual” for those of use that don’t really like the whole rape thing.
Disadvantages: Hypnotism? Really??
Conclusion
So what exactly can we conclude from all this? Well, I set out to find out what the perfect male hentai lead character was and all I’ve discovered is that all of them are stupid and flawed and I wouldn’t have them within a mile of my perfect 2D girlfriend (if I had one, of course).
So what would be the perfect man then? Obviously someone who was not too buff, not too confident, not too ugly, not too geeky, not too annoying and hung like the proverbial marine mammal. A bit like me, then.
Apart from the last bit of course.
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5 Responses to “In search of the perfect man”
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April 6th, 2009 @ 1:38 am
Who’s “man4″ or is it just random art? It looks suspiciously like a scene from Baccano!
April 6th, 2009 @ 1:40 am
You forgot one of my favorites, the weak-willed sex toy that usually ends with him finding his true love or in my favorite case, Copipe, ends up as a futanari.
April 7th, 2009 @ 1:26 pm
There isn’t a perfect man to search for, because they don’t exist…
But if you must, then at least let him be invisible or a useless nerd. That’s okay as long as the girl is nerdy too – pretty otaku _do_ exist!
The only merit of ugly dudes is the humiliation aspect: seeing a girl shamed beyond belief is a turn on for some.
April 7th, 2009 @ 1:28 pm
Sorry for the double-post: thought you might find this view on porn by Clive James interesting. It’s mostly about Jacqui Smith’s husbands screw-up, but then he talks about the porn itself
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7982132.stm
December 17th, 2009 @ 3:22 am
My own conclusion I can come up with is that Japan is a country full of sexual deviants who are also conveniently misogynists; this is probably a reaction to how lots of stuffed changed over there after WWII, and how Women’s Rights was introduced (but from seeing all the anime and manga, there’s a slight chance it’s not enforced well).
Oh, and there have, of course, been (only to my knowledge) many stories of rape going unreported to the police, or the police being lenient towards the culprits.
If I could find that one article that talks about a schoolgirl being molested by a teacher and then that girl gets mocked and tormented by her peers for it, I’d post it right now.
I heartily agree with Hayao Miyazaki’s feminist and anti-moe views, even though I’m a hypocrite for viewing hentai(minus rape, scat, and lolicon).