That title might sound weird to a lot of you, but I'm just trying to express something I've been thinking about lately. It began when I read this comment:
Malkuth wrote...
I hate vanilla, that is for chubby chicks, cherry boys, and wizards... it's fiction, not your life, we get so much vanilla IRL, I want to imagine about something totally different... NTR/guro/gangrape/mindbend/etc.
Vanilla is the most popular genre in hentai by a wide margin, and it's what FAKKU mostly focus on. Jacob even used it to show people that hentai is not something to be rejected as
gross. But is it just escapism for virgins? I'm a virgin, unfortunately, and I'm a huge fan of vanilla. So, once I pop my cherry will vanilla cease to be pleasant and just get boring?
There was a time when I like most people thought of hentai as just being weird fetishes and misogyny. So when I discovered vanilla I was very happy. Ever since
Free! came out I had been desperate to find a piece of sexual entertainment for men that could be labeled as
sex-positive. Knowing that there were hentai out there that depicted female characters who had personalities, enjoyed sex, and weren't just victims of fantasy-rapists felt very reassuring. I know people have all sorts of opinions regarding this, but I think I am something of a sex-positive feminist no matter how much I try to deny it. In fact, a sex-positive feminist has said one of my favourite quotes ever:
Sex isn't something a man takes from you, it's something you dive into with gutso and enjoy just as much as he does.
That's the kind of attitude I prefer to see reflected in my hentai. But it doesn't mean I think all hentai should be like that. If you look at the history of erotic literature it becomes clear that a theme in porn is to indulge in taboo. To dive into the parts of our minds that we don't necessarily want people to know about, but that we have a secret desire to indulge. So there's definitely a place for hentai like, for example,
Bestiary 3. This made me wonder if there was a way to combine the two, to have hentai that indulge in taboo and bizarre fantasies but stays sex-positive. Turns out there is, and I think
Witchcraft by Yamatogawa is a good example. Hence why it's my favourite Yamatogawa book.
But now I've begun to notice that a lot of people feel alienated by the huge popularity of vanilla. I've heard phrases like
vanilla-faggot and
vanilla-standard. I've also noticed that if you don't like NTR it's hard to talk about it without getting downvoted. So, does the fact that I support vanilla make others with more niche tastes feel left out or even oppressed?
The response from critics is confusing. On one hand I've heard Jason Thompson talk about how bizarre hentai are the best hentai, but that it's also the reason he doesn't like hentai. Lynzee Loveridge commented that FAKKU's releases felt formulaic and that there needed to be more variety, which Jacob said there would be. Does variety mean less vanilla or just different art-styles? If it's the latter then does Shoujo Material count as variation? I read this review of
Aqua Bless were the reviewer said it felt refreshing to see a hentai that was sex-positive and free from weird fetishes. In his podcast with Jacob, Zac Bertchy commented that the current stereotype about hentai is that it's nothing but misogyny. A claim which Justin Sevakis backed up with an Answerman were he revealed that there are men in Japan who think women are fine with rape, possibly as a result of reading too much hardcore hentai. If so, then the popularity of vanilla would be the best news you can get.
Speaking for myself, I'm not even sure if I can call myself a vanilla-aficionado. There are hentai I enjoy not because they turn me on but because but because I find them interesting/fun. Kito Sakeru & Henreader for example, so far they haven't turned me on but I still love their work. Even so, I lean largely towards vanilla because I want to be happy when I think about sex. To me sex and intimacy is something beautiful, meaningful, heart-warming, joyful, and that's what I want to feel when I read hentai. It may seem like hypocrisy since I'm a virgin, but that's just how I feel about sexuality. Of course it doesn't happen all the time FAKKU publishes a hentai that makes me feel this way, but it sure happens more often than something with tentacles in it. If I were to say I'm an aficionado of anything it would be stories were young male characters get fucked by an older female character. That's my fetish, and it turns me on regardless if it's vanilla or not. Still, when it is vanilla it really, Really, REALLY turns me on.
I just don't think I buy this idea that vanilla is boring and just for virgins. If that's the case, then doesn't that mean sex in general is boring and meaningless unless it's extreme. So is vanilla popular because only virgins read hentai or is it because people want erotica they can relate to/makes them happy/is not to niche but just
normal? Speaking for myself as a virgin, I find that reading hentai is not an escape from real sex. On the contrary, it increases my desire for real sex. A drawing works well as a fantasy, but in the end it can't beat flesh and blood. Which is why I don't like live-action porn, because then it actually does feel like an escape. Watching people have sex instead of having sex myself doesn't feel right, with hentai the fact that it's a drawing allows for a level of abstraction that makes it work exclusively as a fantasy. It also allows for satisfaction that isn't sexual: you can also enjoy the great art and storytelling (
THIS is what amateur-porn looks like in hentai).
I'll get my fix of the real thing thanks to Tinder ;)
I know it's different strokes for different folks. Some people need more spice in their rice, as I like to say, and it would be absurd to say that vanilla is being crapped upon considering its huge popularity. But I just wanted to explain how I feel about vanilla and ask these questions I've been thinking about for some time now. So any thoughts? Is the popularity of vanilla a good thing or a bad thing?