Tentacle rape is a concept found in some erotic horror hentai titles, where various tentacled creatures (usually fictional monsters) rape or otherwise impale young women (or, less commonly, men). Much of the genre also consists of domination/humiliation and bondage fetishes, since the 'victim' is typically restrained by the appendages.

Toshio Maeda, whose anime Urotsukidoji pioneered the concept of tentacle porn, explained that he invented the practice to get around strict Japanese censorship regulations. These regulations prohibit the depiction of the penis but apparently do not prohibit showing sexual penetration by a tentacle or similar (often robotic) appendage.

Examples include:

• The Urotsukidoji Saga - Starting in 1987 the Overfiend series is the most well-known title in the genre.
• La Blue Girl - a series of films that moved from animation to live action.
• Injukyoshi ("Obscene Beast Teacher") - a live action film.
• Shokushu High School - an online "intercatove" site where you can chose your route through the school all of which usually rapidly turn into alien tentacles attacks on the schoolgirls.

At times, the genre also seems to exploit the more controversial realms of bodice ripper genre, particularly rape fantasies, with the "safety" that the scenes being depicted are so absurd or fanciful they do not have parallels in the real world.

Some fans see it as the extreme of bodice ripper stories, although the rape fantasy genre is seen more critically in the West than native Japan. The genre is, semi-euphismistically, sometimes called "Tentacle Sex" or "Monster Sex" if the depiction is at all consensual.

Tentacled creatures have appeared in Japanese erotica long before animated pornography appeared; among the most famous of the early instances (and perhaps the first) is a Hokusai (the original creator of manga) woodcut called The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife, depicting a woman entwined and sexually molested by a pair of octopuses. This woodcut arose in the Edo period in Japan when Shinto was making a resurgence and the resulting Animism and a more playful attitude to sexuality combined powerfully in Hokusai's piece. It is a celebrated example of shunga and has been reworked by a number of artists including:

• Victorian artist David Laity reworked the woodcut into a painting of the same name.
• Masami Teraoka brought the image up to date with his 2001 work "Sarah and Octopus/Seventh Heaven (http://www.lava.net/~artbeat/prints.html) part of his "Waves and Plagues" collection.

The topic is also ripe for parody as shown by such things as:

• alt.sex.cthulhu (http://www.cthulhu.org/smut/) and a range of other Cthulhu-related web pages
• hentai (http://www.weebl.jolt.co.uk/hentai.htm) an episode of Weebl and Bob
• It is a recurring theme in Ghastly's Ghastly Comic.

References

• Japan SAQ (http://www3.tky.3web.ne.jp/~edjacob/saq.html) - seldom asked questions about Japan
• Manga Artist Interview Series (http://www.bigempire.com/sake/manga1.html) Part I, Sake-Drenched Postcards - interview with Toshio Maeda.

External links

• Tentacle Porn (http://www.the-emperor.org/wiki/tentacle_porn/) - a look at the origins, history and recent incarnations.
• Kracken Power! Getting Jiggity with Cephalopods (http://www.section12.com/users/debrahyde/tentaclesteam.htm) - one woman's description of why she finds such things erotic.