If you’re reading this site, it’s probably because you enjoy reading hentai manga on some level. But where does it come from? No, it doesn’t grow on trees, unless there’s some sort of Forest of Filth in some secluded valley in Japan that no one knows about. In fact, the vast majority of it comes from magazines.

Ripped off from Danny Choo

I should clarify now that I’m talking about professionally-published stuff here – what’s known as “doujinshi” is an entirely separate topic which I won’t go into in this article. I’ve done most of my research based on Japanese Wikipedia and publisher web sites, but if you find any inaccurate information then please let me know. This is a big article, so click on through for the full thing:

Japan’s print media industry is absolutely massive. There’s magazines on every subject you can think of, and competing magazines, at that. This includes a ton of magazines devoted to publishing manga. The magazines themselves are usually printed on pretty cheap paper and sold for the equivalent of maybe $4-7 US. They’re often enormous – they can easily be 4 or 500 pages and as physically big and thick as phone books. The idea is that they’re sort of disposable entertainment. You pick up this week’s or this month’s magazine, read the latest chapters in whatever series you’re following, maybe read a few other things that look good, and then put the magazine out with the trash after you’re done with it. If a reader really likes a series, they can pick up the volumes when they come out to keep it on higher-quality paper that won’t degrade so quickly. Just about all of the manga genres have a ton of competing magazines, and hentai is no exception.

The magazines are put out by publishing corporations. After all, someone has to spend the money to organize the magazine, make the layout, stamp out hundreds of thousands of copies, and distribute it all over Japan. They also pay a manuscript fee to each artist for producing their work so they can publish it. Like other publishing industries, they try to find new talent, promote what they publish as much as they can, and try to adjust to any changes that happen in the marketplace.

Hentai manga, as a sub-genre of manga publishing, is a little harder to define than you might think. As a general rule, a hentai magazine will outright require that every work it runs has to have a sex scene in it. That’s why sex scenes might seem a little shoe-horned in when you’re following a series – it’s a rule the artist has to follow to get published in that particular magazine. It’s down to the skill of the artist to make that requirement into a natural part of the story instead of a weird hang-up. Sometimes you’ll see sex scenes in more mainstream manga magazines, but they’re fairly rare, on the whole. The biggest Japanese publishers don’t seem to dip their toes into hentai very often, so h-manga usually comes from small or medium-sized publishers. They’ll often put out a couple magazines at the same time, possibly to aim at different sub-sections of the market. With that in mind, I’ll break these magazines down by publisher:

Takeshobo

Definitely one of the most “mainstream” h-manga publishers. They run a variety of magazines of different genres, including somewhat low-brow subjects like pachinko, mahjong, and gravure photography. They tend to publish longer, multi-volume series, and unlike most of these other publishers, you can often find their material at normal book stores in Japan. They have a strict censorship policy – the dreaded “lightsaber” effect, where showing anything resembling genitals is disallowed. But this policy is probably what allows them to achieve the level of distribution that they have. They publish two hentai magazines:

Comic VITAMAN – A monthly magazine which focuses on romantic series. This is the magazine that published Velvet Kiss and Koi wo Suru/Love on the Job. They also run a lot of other similar series which you might have heard of, like Virgin na Kankei, Glass no Megami, and How to Go Steady With a Nurse. If your byline is “Hey, I read it for the plot!” then this is your magazine. In general, its series have a bit of a romance theme, but are still focused on male readers for the most part.

Comic Namaiki! – A sister publication which seems to be a little less focused on ongoing series than Vitaman. However, this is where a lot of Manabe Joji series were published, like Ring x Mama and Makunouchi Deluxe. While also fairly vanilla in sexual content, perhaps a bit more focused on the sex itself instead of the plot. There used to be a third comic called “Comic Doki!” which, in my limited experience, didn’t seem to be much different from Namaiki. It seems to have quietly folded a few months ago and some of the regular artists were assimilated into Namaiki.

Wani Magazine Co.

Wani (which means “alligator” in Japanese) focuses almost entirely on hentai, with a few gravure magazines as well. Note that there’s a company named “Wani Books” which is entirely unrelated. Their censorship policy is less overbearing than Takeshobo’s. The outline of the genitals can be drawn, but the offending organs themselves must be covered in solid white. This rule is relaxed in printed volumes, where most of the throbbing members in question can be shown, just with some thin black bars over them. You won’t find their volumes in normal book stores, though, because they have often have more sexually explicit artwork on the covers. Consequently, even in a book store that wants to sell their books, they have to be sold behind a separate curtained-off “Adults Only” section.

Comic Kairakuten – One of the titans of the industry. Has been running since 1994, when it was called “Manga Erotopia.” Consists almost entirely of one-offs, although occasionally a short series makes it through. Home to some really big names in the industry like ReDrop, Naruko Hanaharu, Bosshi, and LINDA. Japanese Wikipedia claims that it has sales on par with some more mainstream seinen magazines, but the site it links to no longer carries the data, so it’s hard to be sure. The content is generally not considered too extreme. Just guys and gals gettin’ it on, with nothing outright non-consensual. It’s easy to find in convenience stores.

Comic Kairakuten BEAST, Comic Shitsurakuten, Comic Hana-man – Sister publications to Kairakuten. Same censorship policy, same general content, and same distribution methods. I suppose they just have enough content every month to put out 4 full magazines of hentai. There doesn’t appear to be a unique theme to any of the magazines, but maybe I’m not looking hard enough.

Core Magazine Co.

Another publisher that focuses almost exclusively on adult content. Censorship appears to differ between magazines, but is generally of the “black bar” variety. They even run some yaoi magazines. Content is pretty similar to Wani’s magazines. Seems to skew a little MILFy but that may just be my unfounded opinion.

Comic MegaMilk – Successor to Comic 0EX. Can’t really find anything unique about this one.

Comic Bangaichi – Japanese Wikipedia says it originally started out with a different name as a magazine that followed Yakuza activities, but under scrutiny, had to change their name. In 1990 it switched to its present format as a hentai magazine.

Comic Megastore – Carries your standard hentai manga, but also features previews of hentai games as well. I may have this a bit confused, but it may be a trimmed-down version of the content in the actual magazine “Megastore,” which focuses on erogames exclusively and doesn’t run comics. Has a sister magazine, “Megastore H,” which appears to be normal hentai fare.

Futubasha

Comparatively, more of a normal publisher. Runs a variety of magazines with themes from fashion to photography. They even publish Crayon Shin-chan, a very popular manga in Japan. Similar to Takeshobo, their hentai material is vanilla enough to enjoy distribution in normal book stores. Censorship seems a bit strict, with a somewhat tamed-down “lightsaber” method employed.

Comic Action Pizazz – Swallowed up the long-running “Comic Men’s Young” when it was suspended early this year. It now runs a lot of reasonably well-known series like Cheers, Offline Game, and a whole lot of stuff from Pon Takahanada. Has a sister publication, Pizazz DX, but I’m not sure how often it’s published or how the content differs, if at all.

Akaneshinsha

Now we’re getting to the edgier side of the market. A small publisher (Japanese Wikipedia says it only has 15 people on staff) with limited distribution, but it has what may be the most limited censorship policy on the market, very small semi-transparent black bars. Runs some loli magazines which I don’t care to go into, so I won’t.

Comic TENMA – Thematically, a little more extreme than what we’ve been talking about so far. The biggest feather in their cap is probably Yamatogawa, one of the most well-regarded hentai artists out there. The censorship is so faint that it may as well not even be there. Its sister publication, Comic Sigma, seems to be more of the same flavor.

Tatsumi Publishing

Like many of these other publishers, Tatsumi runs magazines on a variety of topics from pets to Pachinko. Censorship is of the “solid-colored genitals” variety.

Comic Penguin Club – Oof. Running out of stuff to say at this point. A lot like Kairakuten, only from a different publisher. Mostly one-off based. Has another edition, “Penguin Club Sanzokuban”, and a sister publication, “Comic Bazooka.”

Kill Time Communication

A small publisher, but near and dear to my heart since their non-sexually explicit magazine, Comic Valkyrie, runs Koimoku and Gaiakitan. If you read their twitter, you’ll see that readers have a hard time buying the actual Valkyrie magazines or their printed volumes. Book stores apparently assume that everything KTC puts out is hentai and stuff it behind the curtain.

Comic Unreal – This one is pretty far into fetish country, as the name might imply. Tentacles, gender-bending, and a whole lot of other stuff I’m personally not a fan of so I don’t know quite how deep the rabbit hole goes. Censorship is the absolute bare minimum, just tiny little white bars.

Whew. Believe it or not, this isn’t even a comprehensive list. There’s at least a couple magazines I’m aware of that I didn’t include, and probably many more that I don’t even know about. But even so, try and wrap your head around how every magazine mentioned in this post puts out on the order of 200 pages of content per month (at least). The sheer volume of smutty comics coming out of this little corner of the industry is staggering. It’s probably too much for any one person to keep track of. I’m sure the industry will keep on changing, so this list is just sort of a snapshot of the industry at this point in time.

If you’re reading this, you’re probably thinking, “Gee, I wish I could take a look at some of this stuff and read it.” With the wide variety of content available, there’s certainly something to meet just about any taste. But like any exotic beast, it’s the kind of creature that can only survive in its native habitat. There’s a lot of things about Japan which allow a market like this to thrive, even in 2012 – the widespread cultural acceptance of manga in general, the country’s voracious appetite for printed material, the established distribution and printing network, the willingness of society to allow magazines like this in convenience stores, and the existence of many talented artists who are willing to work in this genre.

Even with a sub-optimal system like scanlation, the majority of this material is likely to stay in its home country, perhaps quickly buried under the astonishing volume of new material that comes out every month. Currently, only the cream of the crop can be given a real, proper English adaptation. Even with a large staff of localizers, thousands of pages of material every month would be a staggering burden to bear, and it’s a much smaller niche outside of Japan. As accustomed as people outside Japan are to seeing this material just pop up for free, it has to make money to be given any real professional attention, and that’s not a sure bet.

Maybe that isn’t a bad thing. Not every hentai manga is a home run. The cliches are well-known, and I get the impression that once an artist retires, they’re not especially concerned about whether their work remains relevant. Maybe a system like J-Comi will help preserve this material when it’s no longer commercially relevant but becomes academically interesting. In any case, I hope I’ve been able to give you some small clue of how this fascinating but almost hidden industry works. It’s my goal to have more articles in this vein in the future. Let us know what you think! See you later!

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