All Anime Is Naughty Tentacles/Headscratchers

• Honestly, one could say similar things about Western animation (not to diss on it, just making a point):
  • Western animation is just meaningless drivel with dick-and-fart jokes (or in the case of family-friendly shows, just the fart jokes) and recycled plots of two animals playing cat-and-mouse.
    • Neither assumptions are true. Although I don't know which side you're on (either Anime or Western animation/cartoons), I can certainly say that Western animation is not what you stereotype it to be either. Although it may be semi-hard to find, meaningful Western animation does exist, and not all of it is the mindless drivel that you describe. I say this as one who prefers the former over the latter.
      • You're completely missing the point of his post. What he's saying is that there are some Western animated shows that are like that, much like how there are some animes that are total tentacle porn. Therefore, making a statement that all cartoons are like that is as ridiculous as saying that all anime is like that.
        • It's important to note, though, that while tentacle hentai represents an extremely small niche among anime, raunchy comedies really are the vast, vast majority in cartoons, or at least those intended for adults.
      • The fact that this has "sides" like we're fighting a goddamn war bothers me, to be honest.
    • Semi-hard to find? Um... no. It's very easy to find. Even the shows most would consider to be the prime offenders: South Park and Family Guy, both have some meaning. With South Park, I shouldn't have to tell you how Anvilicious it is; it's quite obvious that most episodes have some kind of meaning. There's also plenty of Anvils That Needed to Be Dropped. With Family Guy, it's harder to explain through all the pointlessly Anvilicious Broken Aesops, but Aesops aside, there are intelligent and witty jokes to be found. The thing about Family Guy is, if you take it seriously, you'll most likely hate it. This especially applies to the cutaways. Sure, they're not related to the plot, but deep down... why does that matter in a show like Family Guy that is clearly not plot-driven? Who watches it for the plots?
      • There's plenty of cartoons that don't need plot, the problem with Family Guy is that it's poorly written either way.
      • It's funny because I actually mentioned this point in the Troper Tales page. Really, just take a good look at the Western Animation page for Getting Crap Past the Radar! Some shows have their own pages for it (I'm looking at you, Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy, SpongeBob SquarePants, Time Squad!). How about W.I.T.C.H., which devoted so much attention to the female breasts that it made headline news in the UK! Seriously, why is it that we can accuse Japan of producing nothing but abhorrent smut when we ourselves are hardly a pinnacle of "wholesomeness"?
• Who started this way of thinking? How did regular people find out about this kind of anime?
  • I blame Urotsukidouji and the like. I dunno how it was on the USA, but in my country Uro was actually sold on normal stores at some point. This is 100% true. I assume a similar thing happened over there, and Popcultural Osmosis took care of the rest.
  • Exactly. Overfiend established anime-as-sexually-explicit in the public mind, and Akira was largely responsible for the violence angle.
  • Yep. While Voltron, Hello Kitty, and obviously Transformers were famous in America, many kids had no idea those products were from Japan or if they did, they still considered them American since they could watch the shows with American voice actors, on American TV channels, and go to the local American toystore and buy the figures. Pokemon and Dragon Ball seem to get the same treatment from children, it seems. Akira and Overfiend got notoriety because adult cartoons were unheard of in America at the time and these shows were both very adult. It doesn't help that Akira is really hard to understand unless you read the manga, making it seem like it existed purely to be a Mind Screw, and Overfiend is practically porn. These programs were usually available in certain video stores alongside splatter-horror movies and the like. Because of this, anime was often marketed to fans of horror or porn and it gained more of an underground market. Other anime that had mature themes but were much more tame in terms of content didn't come over or were even more obscure. It gave the impression of Japan producing cartoons that were perverted and violent.
  • Minor point of order, but the original Transformers was not Japanese. the cartoon was developed by Marvel, Sunbow & Hasbro in the USA. Later series, such as Headmasters, Victory, Masterforce, Robots in Disguise, Armada, Energon & Cybertron were originally created in Japan, but the original is pure Western Animation.
    • The original toyline was cobbled together from various Japanese toylines, including Diaclone, Microman, and Macross. At its most basic root, its inception was Japanese, though you're still technically right, since it was the toys, cartoon, and comics that established the brand properly and they originate from the US.
      • I think the point was more, Transformers just actually isn't the same as Voltron or Hello Kitty. AFAIK both of those started out as Japanese fiction which was then imported to the US, while with Transformers, while the initial toys were Japanese, that's all that was carried over and the fiction side (even the toy bios, which were developed by Marvel Comics writers) started out completely western. As such, the original Transformers cartoon is very much fully Western Animation for discussion purposes, good or bad.
  • To add to this, I think the modern stereotype of Japanese people (particularly men) as being perverted feeds into this trope and vice versa.
  • It's an extrapolation of the whole "otherness" thing. The US, Canada, Britain, and Australia all produce their fair share of insane and bizarre stuff, but we're either used to it through exposure or we haven't heard of it due to obscurity. Keeping in mind that stereotypes are used as mental shortcuts, hearing about or seeing tentacle hentai and knowing that the West doesn't really produce anything like that leaves an impression among people who aren't into anime and such. It's not based on any rational thought. That said, in many cases it's exaggerated for the sake of comedy.
  • On a related note, at least in this troper's experience, any time Anime is mentioned people think of anime porn first. Furthermore, the word "hentai" does not equal porn. Hentai means strange (by extension perverse). Not porn.
• Why isn't this "All Anime Is Gay Pretty Boys"? Yaoi seems to be more popular than Hentai in the west. Just look at how many of them are on Kindle compared to regular manga.
  • Because tentacle rape is more shocking and iconic than gay romance, presumably.
  • And that's mostly covered under Yaoi Fangirl, which is basically "All female anime fans only read/write erotica."
• How the hell does this trope coexist with Animation Age Ghetto?
  • Because when people who don't watch anime talk about it, they tend to believe one or the other. Presumably dependent upon whether they've heard of hentai or not.