All Anime Is Naughty Tentacles

This trope as lampooned by a T-shirt.

"I think I love you more
Than the Japanese love tentacle porn
And we should dance, dance, dance, d-d-d-d-dance
To these stereotypes!"

— Your Favorite Martian, "The Stereotype Song"

A specific exception to the Animation Age Ghetto, and a form of Public Medium Ignorance: the belief that all anime (or in some cases, every work of fiction from Japan) features/consists of sexually explicit material, grotesque sexual fetishes, and illegal pornographic material such as child pornography and bestiality. Since the recess of the Ghetto, this continues to be a relatively common belief these days, along with the idea that all Western adult animation is Animated Shock Comedy.

This trope began in the early '90s, on account of the western release of anime such as AKIRA, Legend of the Overfiend, and various works by Yoshiaki Kawajiri and Sho Aikawa. Since most purveyors of imported media back then were either undersexed, nerdy collectors specifically seeking out "mature" fare, or huckster distributors looking to make a fast buck on said collectors, the more "shocking" examples of the medium tended to be the ones that got priority for localization. Glorified rape stories are easily the most visible, and due to Values Dissonance, lesbian porn is actually quite rare and generally featured alongside straight sex... or rape. There are some cases where this idea wasn't brought about by ignorance, and instead was also a way to slander the growing medium as a whole by reducing it to creepy fetish material.

By the Turn of the Millennium, however, this trope had largely died down, as anime had become more prevalent in the mainstream, largely thanks to the success of family-friendly franchises such as Pokémon. However, it never truly became a Forgotten Trope, as it is still quite common for one to assume that a good chunk of modern anime is still dirty tentacle porn, or at least heavily sexualized. More recent variants on the trope are "All Anime is Lolicon and Shotacon" or "All Modern Anime is Moe".

Outside of works in the yaoi or bara genre, most hentai is actually ordinary heterosexual porn. Naughty Tentacles were mostly a fad around the end of The '80s and early in The '90s, and currently they're at best a throwaway joke on some Fanservice shows. Even hentai that plays the Naughty Tentacles straight usually takes place in a fantasy setting, so the cliche "he was a squid, she was a schoolgirl, can I make it any more obvious?" setup is actually extremely rare. Somewhat related, even among anime fans, there's a misconception that all Doujinshi are pornographic, even though a good chunk of doujinshi made are all ages works, and some are even in mediums that can't even possibly be pornographic, such as instrumental music. Visual Novels have a similar reputation of all being eroge, or at least always being dating sims.

See also Hentai. Contrast Phonýmon and Sailor Senshi Send-Up — if a Western anime parody isn't based on hentai, it's usually going to be based on Pokemon, Sailor Moon, or other Merchandise-Driven children's series instead.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• A Discussed Trope in Osamu Tezuka's introduction to the Astro Boy story Count Bat in the collected edition of the classic manga. Tezuka describes his difficulties with censors both in Japan and overseas and how Japan and the Western world's differing attitudes toward cartoon violence has shaped these cultures' opinions of each other.
• The infamous hentai series Urotsukidōji: Legend of the Overfiend is the posterboy for this trope, as it is considered not only THE quisessential tentacle hentai^note Granted, tentacles weren't actually featured all that much, but for also giving a lot unsuspecting Americans the wrong impression of what anime is, due to having sexually explicit content and ultraviolence.

Comic Books

• Asterix: Uderzo clearly believed this to be the case, and expressed his dislike for anime by making the villains of Asterix and the Falling Sky a race of animesque (and racist) Yellow Peril aliens. It is one of the main reasons this particular issue is considered the worst entry in the series, and fans would rather pretend it doesn't exist.
• The MAD feature "If Truth in Advertising Laws Applied to Comic Books" described a Japanese imported series as "something to do with a boy who fights a giant squid." The illustration showed a boy with an enormous grin standing in front of a bunch of girls, all with panties exposed due to being grasped by tentacles.
• One of the stories from Wonder Woman #600 has the Amazonian princess, Power Girl, and Batgirl against a tentacle-mustached Chang Tsu (AKA Egg Fu). The battle is won, and Power Girl compares Fu’s look to disgusting “manga monster appendages”. Diana is confused and asks Power Girl what a manga monster is.

Fan Works

• White Sheep (RWBY): Mistral (the Asia equivalent) is infamous for tentacle hentai, and most of the characters act like it's the only thing the country produces at all. It doesn't help that there's a Grimm creature running around with Combat Tentacles, which everyone mistakes for Naughty Tentacles, and no one will tell Jaune or Ruby what tentacle hentai is.

Films — Live-Action

• Unbreakable: Or rather, All Manga Is Hentai. In the comic book store scene where a despondent Elijah causes a ruckus with his wheelchair, one of the clerk's first lines when he notices that Elijah has been hiding in the back for a while is "You better not be jacking off to the Japanese comics, I swear to God". When he later reappears in Glass, he's still quick to accuse someone of it with zero prompting, echoing himself almost word for word outside of an example of what he considers lurid Japanese smut; Freakin' Hello Kitty.
• Cyber Seduction: His Secret Life: If you look closely, there's at least one piece of anime art in Justin's collection. Thankfully, this being a world where porn only constitutes to Fully-Clothed Nudity, we don't see anything too messed up.

Live-Action TV

• The Daily Show with Jon Stewart described the mission patch of the NROL-39 spy satellite (which depicts a giant octopus over the Earth) as "one terrified schoolgirl away from being a very popular comic in Tokyo."
• Mystery Science Theater 3000 has made endless jokes with this trope, including to seedy gas stations having "Violent Animated Asian Porn" videos for rent a few times. The jokes really ramped up when they'd get their hands on a Japanese movie: "Oh no, so is this gonna be a super-violent porn cartoon?" "Heh, they're swinging in for some violent porn comics." The episode featuring Invasion of the Neptune Men has a joke where Crow suggests Japan stop being represented by "blonde, gun-toting, big-eyed pre-pubescent girls" with Mike calling Sailor Moon that. The Netflix era really veers away from this trope.
  • This has filtered into spiritual successor RiffTrax.
• In Yes, Dear, when Greg's father becomes a comic book fan, the normally prudish Kim asked, "Normal comics like for kids? Or those Japanese porno comics like Overfiend, where young women are taken against their will by demonic monsters?" Later in the episode, it's stated he should hide his Japanese porn better.
• Parodied in The Big Bang Theory and Two and a Half Men with the Show Within a Show Oshikuru: Demon Samurai, which is implied to be this despite its deceitfully cheery opening.
  • Keep in mind, Charlie wrote that opening song, without having ever read the source manga. When Jake, who is a fan of the series, berates him for the Soundtrack Dissonance, he actually checks it out and writes a more serious and appropriate replacement, but the network prefers his first submission and runs it anyway.
• While it predates anime by several decades, Crabtree's reaction to an unseen item of Japanese erotica in the Murdoch Mysteries episode "Virtue and Vice" is "What this woman and this octopus are trying to achieve, I have no idea."

Video Games

• There are two parody anime trailers on the radio in Grand Theft Auto IV; one is Humongous Mecha, the other, Princess Robot Bubblegum is this. However the full episode of the later, which is viewable in the Ballad of Gay Tony DLC, is more of a general parody of shoujo and seinen shows. It does have lots of innuendo, but this is typical of pretty much all TV shows in the Grand Theft Auto universe.
• In Comic Jumper: The Adventures of Captain Smiley, the manga-themed world of "Cutie Cutie Kid Cupids" takes place at a high school called "Hent High", whose school team is called the Tentacles.
• In Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines after helping a Japanese demon hunter girl kill a Hengeyōkai, you have to option of quipping "I'll bet you're glad that thing didn't have tentacles, huh?"
• One of the Bewitchments in Bayonetta is "Naughty Tentacles", and considering the game's sense of humor is almost certainly a reference to this trope.
• Summertime Saga: When Iwanka hangs out with MC and his best friend Erik, she'll insist on seeing one of Erik's hentai films, about a fisherman's daughter who has sex with an octopus. Then she gets so turned on that she gives MC a blowjob.

Webcomics

• Dork Tower once had Ken ranting to Igor and Carson about how most anime is absolutely terrible and he has no idea why it sells...at which point he was enlightened by the phrases "let's all take our clothes off now" and "where did all these tentacles come from?" emerging from the TV.
• Parodied in Ménage à 3, where Yuki starts as a fanatical man-hater (even though she's bisexual), because her father drew hentai manga and shot pornographic films for a living, and was less than thorough about keeping his work away from her. This led to a psychosis wherein the mere sight of a penis (even a cartoon one) causes her to imagine Naughty Tentacles sprouting from the guy's body, prompting a Groin Attack reflex. She eventually undergoes Character Development in regards to this, though.
• Something*Positive once showed Jhim and Peejee watching hentai:
  Jhim: Why is it, in hentai, the tentacle monsters only rape barely legal schoolgirls and never men?
  Peejee: Better question; why are we watching a cartoon about a squid sexually assaulting anyone? It's like that nightmare I had where Iron Chef added sex scenes.

Web Original

• Gaia Online has played this for laughs numerous times. One print ad for the website featured avatars dressed up like schoolgirls being chased by avatars dressed up as squids, with the squids being chased by avatars dressed up like chefs. The ill-fated short-lived adults-only sister site was also called Tentacl. Keep in mind that this is an Animesque site, and these ads were ran in anime magazines.
• The Onion on the topic.
  • Another snide little comment from The Onion, this time in their Princess Mononoke review, contends that Miyazaki is the only Japanese animator who has avoided the "unsavory excesses of his anime counterparts." Notable in that, while the other examples listed here are typical of the publication's nothing-is-sacred, pull-no-punches brand of humor, this review comes from its AV Club site, which generally strives to be a bit more serious.
  • And yet another one (skip to the very end).
  • Even the TV Show got in on it (Skip to 2:02).
• AskMen.com's Top 10 Perverted Behaviors to Stop, #3: Being open about your love of anime and cosplay:
  "Your love of anime is less an appreciation of art and more a display of your love for massively chested women and the possibility those cartoon cuties might get it on at any minute."
• Cracked:
  • This article tells us that Japan "has long had a, let's be charitable and say, "obsession" for the trappings of youth and innocence, what with their schoolgirl anime (read: porn)". Accompanying this sentence is a picture of Haruhi Suzumiya. Not... quite, Cracked.
  • Cracked's contest 18 Classic Movies, If They'd Been Made in Japan had dozens of submission that featured tentacle porn. And they did have one of them featured in the winner's circle.
• CollegeHumor:
  • In the "His Netflix is F*cked Up" Sketch, the girl discovers that the guy watches anime, commenting that all anime looks pervy to her. Also Invoked since the anime section in the sketch is filled with Hentai. Though keep in mind that the website itself is NOT anti-anime, since they also produced some anime-themed sketches such as "If Miyazaki Movies were like other anime".
  • In "Tumblr CEO: No More Porn", the disgruntled CEO comes across animated octopus porn when searching under the cartoons tag.
• The Stereotypes Song says in the chorus the Japanese all Love Tentacle Porn.
• The Honest Trailers for Pirates of the Caribbean referred to the kraken as "a Japanese porn star" when they listed the "stars" of the films.
• RiffTrax:
  • In its parody track of The Twilight Saga had the Asian guy greeting Bella as she entered her new school that they had everything, including, in the riffed version, "Tentacle Hentai".
  • In their take on Terminator: Salvation, Kevin mishears "enemy movements" as "anime movements." "Like tentacles and stuff?"
  • And in the Fast and Furious riff, when one character mentions heading for Japan to check out some really wild stuff, Mike is quick to quip "Tentacles like you wouldn't believe, man."
  • And again in their treatment of Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen, a satellite is being taken over by tentacle like entities causing the riff, "Hide your anime girls!".
• I've Seen Enough Hentai To Know Where This Is Going is a common expression on the internet that is used in images that include tentacles or something reminding of tentacles.
• At times, Bogleech seems to be under the assumption that every anime that is not made for kids and/or features young girls (and even then...) as main characters is automatically sleazy and/or made just to appeal to horny male nerds. Not even widely acclaimed series such as Made in Abyss and DEVILMAN crybaby are spared from these accusations.
  • It should be noted that he only has an issue with sexualized underage characters and has praised and even considers himself a fan of quite a few adult-oriented manga and anime, though they're mostly vintage titles. He's also gone on record saying that most anime fans are NOT horny male nerds like you'd expect, and if anything, women "own" the subculture.
• Jobby the Hong: Discussed in his review for Figma Guyver II F, where he says that when he calls the Guyver anime he saw as a kid for adults, he doesn't mean tentacles, but that the anime the figure for the review is from does involve tentacles for the main character's Transformation Sequence. He starts to show a clip from the anime where tentacles are about to wrap around the heroine before deciding that he will be demonetized for it, only to remember that the video's opening skit had him thrown his pants off (with his crotch pixelated) at the figure, so he shows a brief snippet (albeit with nothing NSFW being shown off) of her having the tentacles wrap around her.
• Mario Teh Plumber attacks anything with an anime artstyle, most frequently Sonic the Hedgehog's design from Sonic Adventure onwards, as "hentai", taking this trope to what even xenophobic Moral Guardians would consider ludicrous extremes.

Western Animation

• Robot Chicken:
  • Parodied. When Speed Racer joins NASCAR, he's sponsored by the creators of Japan's number one anime series, translated as The Many Tentacled Rapists From Hell Conquer the Innocence of Schoolgirls, with his car getting a very smutty (and censored) ad for the show.
  • There is also a skit where a Tentacle Monster phones up a Japanese Schoolgirl he apparently had... uh... relations with. He messed up his chance for a 2nd date by jumping the gun a little bit.
• One episode of Sealab 2021 has Sparks flipping through certain Japanese movie titles on his monitor, each one more and more vulgar while referencing tentacle porn. The last movie is called "Seriously Japan, What the Hell!?"
• Archer lampshades this with Krieger's anime collection, which includes such titles as Fisherman’s Wife and Fisherman’s Wife II: The Retentacling. It is also worth noting that Krieger has a holographic girlfriend designed in anime style.
  • Genius Bonus, this is actually a reference to the infamous 19th-century woodblock print The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife, a genuine piece of early Hentai, tentacles and all.
• Family Guy episode "The Blind Side" (s10e11).
  Hey, you want to see a movie?
  No, we're Japanese, let's watch a schoolgirl bang an octopus.
• Ling-Ling, from Drawn Together, manages to be a case of both this and Phonýmon. On the one hand, he's cute. On the other hand, he's the most depraved and excessively violent of the main characters (and considering he shares the show with Captain Hero, that's saying a lot). In other words, he embodies both of the ways anime is seen by Americans—as Merchandise-Driven kiddie fluff and as raunchy adult material filled with violence and sex.

Other

• Microsoft Word Processor's dictionary definition of anime: "a Japanese style of animated cartoon, often with violent or sexually explicit content." And their definition of manga: "a Japanese style of comic books or animated cartoons, often very violent or erotic."
• Tentacle Grape is a novelty brand of grape soda often found at anime conventions. Take a wild guess as to what's on the label.
• When was asked to the director of the Brazilian children's TV channel Gloob why the channel doesn't broadcast anime, he said "we don't broadcast violent animation". And later they used to broadcast various anime-influenced series like Miraculous Ladybug, but never an actual anime.
• Author Kurt Eichenwald posted a screenshot where the URL to a Hentai manga was accidentally visible. When the expected roasting by the internet and media outlets started, Eichenwald stated he was showing his family how easy it was to find tentacle porn on the internet. Fox News, of all people, pointed out that the particular hentai in question did not contain tentacle porn and clarified that most hentai is not tentacle porn.
• In Russia, anime is often jokingly referred to as "kitayskie pornomultiki" (Chinese porn cartoons).
• Parental control software Net Nanny has a content filter for 14 categories, one of them being anime; alongside things like drugs, death/gore, gambling, suicide, and pornography.

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