All Anime Is Naughty Tentacles

This trope as lampooned by a T-shirt.

A specific inversion of the Animation Age Ghetto, and a form of Public Medium Ignorance: the belief that all Anime (or in some extreme cases, every work of fiction from Japan) features/consists of extreme graphic violence and/or the most depraved sexual acts you can imagine. Since the recess of the Ghetto, this is actually the trend going on these days.

This Trope began in the 80s, on account of the release of Anime such as Akira and Urotsukidouji in the west. 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. Most Hentai is actually vanilla sex, basically heterosexual porn. Glorified rape stories are easily the most visible and due to Japanese chauvinism; lesbian porn is actually quite rare and generally featured alongside straight sex... or rape. Naughty Tentacles were mostly a fad around the end of The Eighties and early Nineties, and currently they're at best a throwaway joke on some Fan Service shows.

See also Hentai.

Examples of All Anime Is Naughty Tentacles include:

Comic Books

• The Mad Magazine 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.
• 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. It does have to be said that this was several years ago.

Film

• Strangely inverted, or maybe an example of Lampshade Hanging, in The Calamari Wrestler, a Japanese live action film about a woman who falls in love and has sex with a guy who is trapped in the form of a squid. I believe he turns back into a man in the end.

Live Action TV

• Mystery Science Theater 3000 has made joking references 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."
• 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.

Video Games

• It's nearly impossible to convince non-fans of Visual Novels—mostly non-Japanese ones—that not all VNs contain sexual content. Or if a VN does, that said content isn't the focus of the game; there are people who classify things like Fate Stay Night as full-blown Hentai and assume that even non-smutty VNs such as Higurashi no Naku Koro ni are essentially Hentai. In short, All Visual Novels Are Hentai. Never mind popular VNs such as Ace Attorney and Hotel Dusk: Room 215.
• 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 shōjo and seinen shows.
• In Comic Jumper, 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.

Web Original

• 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).
• A one-panel parody of The Wotch showed a scene which the Anne Expy described as: "Oh no! She’s being stripped and molested by some kind of slimy, tentacled ... Oh, right, she’s a Japanese schoolgirl. This is normal."
• AskMen.com's Top 10 Perverted Behaviors to Stop, #3: Being open about your love of anime and cosplay:^[1]

"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.com's The 6 Most Horrific Ways Pop Culture has Misused Santa Claus 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 Photoplasty contest 18 Classic Movies, If They'd Been Made in Japan had dozens of submission that featured tentacle porn. One was featured in the winner's circle.
  • Japan being brought up in a Cracked article without any mention of Hentai or tentacles is more the exception than the rule, really. Especially when you consider that, generally speaking, Cracked writers will take any opportunity they can to shove in a sex-related joke.
• The Stereotypes Song says in the chorus the Japanese all Love Tentacle Porn.

Western Animation

• Parodied on Robot Chicken: When Speed Racer joins NASCAR, he's sponsored by the creators of Japan's number one Anime series, which is apparently a Naughty Tentacles Anime (it's censored, so we're to assume it's very smutty) with a Lampshade Hanging for a translation of its name.
  • See also the two Sailor Moon-based shorts.
  • 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!?"

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."
• The American Heritage Dictionary is just a bit better about this, but only just - it defines "Anime" as a Japanese style of animation "characterized by "colorful stylized art" and "futuristic settings" (not every Anime has giant robots or is set in the future, granted, but they at least acknowledged the genre). So far, so good, right? Guess which two characterizations come next. Yep, "violence" and "sex".
• Riff Trax (made by some of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 guys) in its parody track of Twilight had the Asian guy greeting Bella as she entered her new school that they had everything, including, in the rifftrax'd 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 riffing of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, a satellite is being taken over by tentacle like entities causing the riff, "Hide your anime girls!".

1. ↑ warning: reading the entire list may cause you to commit suicide by wallbanging