So it would seem these days that a certain Japanese online shop that starts with the letter M. has not had much in the way of Kaiju for a big part of '06. I am hoping that '07 brings us more than the glut of Hentai they seem so bent on selling. I alway's thought it was kind of a strange combo to have toys and basically porn so mixed together on shopping pages.I'm just curious what other board members think ! I have got some decent deals here in the past but those seemed to have really dried up. Need more Kaiju in '07 !

Their Nakano store is loaded with vinyl, both old and new, so I guess it's just not making its way to the web site.

People must be buying it if they keep throwing it out on the website. I've given up on M for the most part.

While it's not Hentai, I never understood the appeal of all the girl statues released at the festivals. Some almost childlike. Creepy.

I wonder how they get most of their older stuff once in awhile... I'm guessing it's people selling their collections to them? or do they have a bunch stashed away in the back room waiting to surface? maybe the well has just run dry on the new kaiju stuff

Basically, it's for people that have trouble interacting with the real thing, so they gravitate towards a miniature plastic simulation.

Yes, I do sometimes tire of browsing through 200 entries of little pornographic comics and crappy anime toys.

If you filter the search on the front page, they do a good job of removing all of the hentai without filtering out anything worthwhile.

Hentai is basically child porn isn't it? As a father it is pretty offensive and wouldn't they go to jail here in the USA for that crap?

IKe

Hentai is just perverted manga/anime content in general...

Yes Hentai is basically just porn in magazine form or anime, I just always thought it rather strange to have it mixed in with toys. And yes Tex, I think here in the states you would be off to the slammer for offering the ones that amount to child porn. I guess things are a little different in other parts of the world. So don't let your kids shop at M. !

I do not think they sell kiddie porn in japan (if it was legal there, I'm sure human rights activists would be all over that)... however, I do see magazines (also mentioned in an episode of Japanorama which i downloaded after people pointing out interesting episodes) having 12 year olds being models in bikinis... which I think to our society, is pretty disturbing.

"Hentai" literally means "perverted," so it doesn't just apply to printed or animated material, it can also apply to the people who buy the material. ;p

I remembered reading something about this, so I Googled and found a reference in Wikipedia that said photographs of childrens' genitalia was legal in Japan until fairly recently (1999) which is really disturbing and kind of confusing, because portraying genitalia of adults has always been forbidden (hence the mosaic in Japanese porn flicks).

Would it be illegal to produce or sell drawn or animated situations of sex with minors in the USA? I don't know, nor do I want to find out, but I seem to remember that there was recently a Supreme Court case regarding the whole "virtual" aspect of what can be produced these days. I'm pretty sure all that stuff is illegal in Canada.

This aspect of the culture is something I'll probably never get over, and it's especially frustrating when I send someone to a site like http://www.yamatotoysusa.com/ to check out a cool VOTOMS toy, and then get their reaction to all of the little frilly maid lolita crap.

If I want to see Japanese erotica, I'll stick with the old-fashioned stuff: 1820s woodcut tentacle porn. ;p

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dream_ ... n%27s_Wife

My interview with Merzbow at http://www.esoterra.org/merzbow.htm
has some interesting discussion on Japanese sexuality that might help.

Good interview. Especially fascinating was the fact that he considers the US to be the reason for the AIDS crisis. I'd be interested to hear him elaborate on that.

I don't really think it's that odd to have it mixed with toys.

Mandarake is a store that sells all kinds of otaku/nerd related items that people lust after. why should that not include adult oriented stuff?

I think they started as more of an anime/manga store to begin with, no? like specializing in animation cels and statuary and all that? I never thought that toys were their main stock by any means.

anyway, you can go into domestic comic book stores and find comics and toys but also find adult comics and straight up porn mags, too. so I don't think it's any different.

I've never been in any American comic store where porno mags were sold. Adult comics, rarely, but the Comic Book Guys I've known would never carry Hustler or even Playboy in their store.

Mandarake can sell whatever they want, and I realize that it's a company run by a UFO cultist who has his office modeled after Shocker headquarters and it's the product of a culture other than my own.

To me, it's always been kind of jarring to see cool robots and monsters mixed in with the girly items, and this goes all the way back to the 1980s when Hobby Japan would run those ads for the bondage figurines in the back. (Of course, Murphy's Law being what it is, if you gave someone a copy of Hobby Japan to flip through, this would be the first thing they would open it to and then give you a weird look. A weirder look than when you originally handed the magazine to them and said, "check out the cool robots.")

The end result seems to be that whatever "credibility" the material has (and I realize I'm talking about anime and tokusatsu here) gets washed away when this stuff is presented along with it.

I don't have any problems with the existence of pornography, hard or soft. I've even watched a few minutes of it. ;p

I don't care if it involves real people, animated characters, or figures made out of pipe cleaners. What does surprise and disturb me slightly is the tendency for consumers of this material to gravitate so strongly towards something that is so highly idealized and artificial (small plastic figures and cartoons) rather than something closer to the real thing, like real pornography (forget the mosaic'ed genitals for the time being, and I'm going to avoid discussing the various issues with Japanese porn for now or I'll be typing all day).

And yes, I realize that any culture's pornography doesn't really offer a realistic representation of the subject matter, but the plastic figures and comics are so much further away on the spectrum, but it seems to fill the same need for the consumers.

(I also realize that these people could go one step further and actually attempt to interact with other live human girls, but that's a whole 'nother ball of wax. ;p)

So you have a large demographic of men in a relatively free society that allows them to see pictures and movies of mostly naked real women, having sex or not, and instead they're spending their time, money, and apartment space on pursuing plastic simulacra. I don't get it. I can understand a family in Tokyo getting an Aibo instead of a real dog because real dogs are really expensive. I can't understand this.

It's just one of those cultural divides, I guess, and I'm sure what I'm espousing is going to be seen as a puritan attitude, but it really isn't.

Something to think about: almost everybody I talk to about the Mandarake in Santa Monica mentions the hentai section with sort of a snicker, and I would put money down that devoting so much floor space to it in an American store was one of the main reasons why the location failed.

(BTW, Skylar, the next time I come to Philly for one of those anime gatherings I can introduce you to a guy who's been filling an entire house with hentai stuff since the 1970s, and will even have some stuff for you to peruse. Bring some bleach for your eyeballs. ;p)

really? many that I have been in do. in fact, when I owned my store, I wanted to carry it, for strictly monetary reasons. it helps pay the bills. but we were across from an elementary school and therefore local zoning laws permitted us from becoming smut dealers. otherwise I'd probably still be in business.



I didn't know any of this. I think I like Mandarake infinitely more than I originally did now.



I'll look forward to this, I guess? I don't know whether I should be excited or afraid.

Growing up in Northern New Jersey, I can't remember one comic store that did or does, and I've been to almost all of them. I don't remember porn being sold at St. Mark's comics or Forbidden Planet in NYC, and when I was living in Pennsylvania (Reading and Pottsville), fugeddaboutit. I remember there was a store in Lancaster that was being threatened with closure just because they sold Dungeons and Dragons. I guess Philly comic fans dig the pink.Be afraid. Be very afraid. (and bring some Purell)

Up here in Boston, you will still find some comic book stores that include adult magazines and books. European titles, Taschen, Playboy, Eros comics etc.

One that I frequented actually sold an amateur comic called "Boiled Angel" that was significantly more disturbing (in my opinion) than adult books or magazines. That said, I did collect some issues over the years, why, I really can't say cause I'm not drawn to things like rotten.com etc. Possibly as a piece of history.

Mike Diana, the underground cartoonist, was the first artist ever to be convicted of obscenity in the United States.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiled_Angel

I definitely got the impression that this hobby is much nerdier in Japan than it is here. The toy stores in NYC are full of hipsters but in Tokyo its all otaku and most stores had the vinyl mixed in with the other otaku hobbies. Mandarake is pretty much a one stop nerd heaven, all kinds of videogames/comics/porn/toys/scifi.

Even worse, they have hipster otaku over there. Too much to take.