This article was part of the “Hear Me Roar” section of the old Hentai Neko and is one of those that are deemed still relevant in today’s version of the Otaku Fridge.
–

One lazy Wednesday afternoon, while I was happily Googling, I happened across a couple of forum posts that claimed that I hated hentai. One of them just actually has a huge chip on his shoulder—he’d tear your head off if you didn’t agree with him or if your opinion doesn’t coincide with his. Well, actually, he had a falling out with my super hot cousin Firesenshi and, in his confused state—Firesenshi has that effect on men (^.^)—mistook me for her. The other dude misunderstood my Parade, Parade review and thought that I was dissing it, when I actually gave it an above average rating.

If you do look at the archives, however, you will notice that it’s quite rare that I give a hentai title glowing reviews. Now…I don’t want to cross swords with anyone who doesn’t share my opinion because opinions stem from feelings and feelings are neither right nor wrong. They’re mostly based on your experiences. Am I to say that your experiences and feelings are wrong just because people living in progressive countries have better lives than I do? Heck, no. If you disagree with what I have to say, you can simply visit another site that better suits your taste or write your own alternate review to counter mine. That’s what we’ve been doing in the Otaku Fridge community for the past eight years.

Going back to my ratings, I guess I need to explain myself. I love hentai. My cousin Firesenshi and I happily disagree about it. She can’t tolerate it because she is a devout Christian with certain principles; but I swim in it because I’d like to believe that I’m a very sensual creature. So, why the very low ratings for many of the titles? My first hentai flick was a couple of episodes from the Twin Dolls. After that shocker, I nearly dismissed all H material as scary things with nothing to offer but tentacles and rape.

Years later, I would be exposed to other titles such as The Elven Bride, Tokio Private Police, Cream Lemon, U-Jin Brand and Midnight Panther. Wow, I thought to myself. Hentai isn’t such a bad thing after all! I mean, look at how sweet and romantic those couples are. Plus, I loved the kick-ass uber sexy vixens of Midnight Panther. And that was how my journey as a Hentai Webmistress began. If King Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table went on a quest to find the Holy Grail, I went on a quest to find my kind of hentai. The kind of hentai that would be nice to women. The kind of hentai that didn’t have such idiotic plotlines or ugly male protagonists that couldn’t think beyond their dicks. (It would be years years later that I would wonderfully discover that there’s such a thing as female smut. Unfortunately, they don’t get licensed easily.)

I didn’t really care if I have to go through piles and piles of hentai titles. At least I know who my target readers are. If I praised rape and violence towards women, that would not only make me a sell-out, that would also make people think I tolerated lack of creativity in coming up with h-materials. I don’t. I just have to find the right films that I could watch with my boyfriend so that we’d have something to sigh about. In any case, I think I’ve learned to live with the fact that there will always be mind-numbing H just as there will always be seasonal dandruff. All those years of going through hundreds of worthless junk tends to numb a person, you see. You just develop a stomach for it. You have to, if you want to find what you’re looking for. (In retrospect, I think you should thank me. I go through all the crappy hentai so you don’t have to. Kidding.)

Here is the funny thing. A lot of wholesome websites don’t want anything to do with me because of the word “hentai” in my website name. On the other hand, a lot of hardcore h-fanatics don’t want anything to do with me because I just have to sympathize with the women (newsflash: I’m a girl). In more extreme cases, they hate me because I love yaoi (well, I’m sorry but the gay community just fascinates me so much). It’s a matter of taste and opinion. Wholesome people aren’t my target audience. Hardcore h-fanatics aren’t my target audience either. I just happen to be a simple girl, living a very normal life and looking for readers that could understand where I’m coming from. Bottomline is, if you generally don’t like what you read, then, my friend, this site is just not for you.

So as not to be confused, just remember 2 important factors in mind when you begin to wonder about Hentai Neko’s existence:

1. This site exists to encourage the licensing of underground favorites and well-written female smut such as Yu Asagiri’s Midnight Panther (the manga, which is a whole lot better than the anime, isn’t being distributed in English anymore) and Yuki Yoshihara’s Aisuru Hito. Come to think of it, we all know that statistically speaking, there are more females than males. And when you check fangirl forums discussing titles, the female hentai fans may just outnumber the males. So why then aren’t we licensing titles that could capture this potentially huge market?

2. To categorize the good, the bad, the ugly, and the bizarre for people who have different tastes. Even if I gave a title you like a negative review, you’d then be able to gauge my taste. “Ah! Hentai Neko hates this, so I prolly will like it!” ^_-

If you do notice, I’m not the only reviewer in the site. Many of these reviewers even write opinions that are in complete contrast with mine. It’s normal. It happens. That’s what I love about this site. It started out as something that a semi-feminist built, but now it caters to diverse tastes. I don’t want to be an uberbitch and dictate what you should like or what you shouldn’t like. If you didn’t like nurse-related hentai stories because your mom is a nurse (a member of our forums actually shared this), I wouldn’t be dissing you by saying, “Hey, not all of us have nurses for moms.” Nor would I diss you for saying that you’re Hindu and don’t eat cows just because I happen to love eating beef. I’d like to think my mom taught me better than to be so disrespectful. I just want to say my piece about animation, meaning stating my own personal tastes without personally attacking another for differences in opinions. You’re welcome to say yours and I can even post it, so long as it’s not offensive, disrespectful or illegal.

Now, if you happen to like rape…well, I respect your opinion and tastes but…stay very very far away from me or I will punch a hole in your gut. Heh.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 14th, 2005 at 12:21 pm and is filed under The Otaku Fridge, Animanga, Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.