Lemon is a term used in reference to anime and manga, especially fanfiction, to describe material with explicit sexual content, such as hentai, yaoi, and yuri. A scene from Cowboy Bebop (1998) Anime (アニメ) is a style of animation originating in Japan. ... A page from the Marmalade Boy manga, volume 1 (Japanese version) Manga (漫画) is the Japanese word for comics and/or cartoons (not necessarily animated, this includes print cartoons); outside of Japan, it usually refers specifically to Japanese comics. ... Fan fiction (also spelled fanfiction and commonly abbreviated to fanfic) is fiction written by people who enjoy a film, novel, television show or other media work, using the characters and situations developed in it and developing new plots in which to use these characters. ... Hentai (変態), a Japanese word meaning strange is used in many western countries to refer to anime, manga, and computer games with explicit sexual or pornographic content (see Japanese pornography). ... Cover of Fake by Sanami Matoh as published by TokyoPop. ... Utena and Anthy from Revolutionary Girl Utena, a popular shōjo-ai couple. ...

Some have elaborated this into a string of different terms involving citrus to describe the "rating" of a particular piece; a hint of citrus indicates subtle innuendo, etc. The most common derivative is lime, which denotes sexual content that is not quite explicit. A rarer tongue-in-cheek term is pineapple (deriving from Japanese animation studio Pink Pineapple) to refer to a story with various bizarre kinks. The use of this term (and its derivatives) is increasing in non-anime fanfiction communities. Also rarely used is orange for m-preg stories. A lime is a fan fiction story that stops short of full, explicit descriptions of sexual activity. ... Binomial name Ananas comosus (L.) Merr. ... Look up orange in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

The term is derived from the anime video series Cream Lemon, a historically important sexually explicit anime (though not quite the first). Look up Video in Wiktionary, the free dictionary Video is the technology of capturing, recording, processing, transmitting, and reconstructing moving pictures, typically using celluloid film, electronic signals, or digital media. ... The first Cream Lemon OVA was released in 1984. ...

It should not be confused with the use of 'lemon as a slang term for Lesbian in some English speaking cultures.