Wow, Are You Serious?

Well, since penises are banned they need something to replace them, don't they?

Ya know, I would've taken this as just some weird "sex sells" sort of thing, but then David reminded me of Japan's obsession with creepy tentacle porn. The cover is definitely a little weirder now.

It is kinda weird..... but as David said "Sex Sells" so it may be weird here, but it's probably in some odd way selling in Japan.

It's because monsters are easier to draw than two humans. You can get a better view of the parts if there's no body in a way.

Basically, tentacles are just the product of lazy artists who didn't know what would be a good view for sex between a man and a woman.

Oh come on David, at 28 is it really THAT bad to go after an 18 year old?

Oh god, not tentacle porn..

Pff, I never really understood why they make things like tentacle rape.
But hey, look at the up-side, thanks to that, someone made a soda called Tentacle Grape...!

....yeah you can go ahead and kill me.

You could argue that it's just an artistic, stylistic fascination the folks of Japan has, but really, we all know what it is. This is good ol' fucked up fetishism. If you know even a little bit about fetishes you'll know people get turned on my the craziest shit, from balloons to scat to Volkswagens. So it's not that suprising really to see how slimy tentacles on a female body gives men boners.

What could be argued is how high on the sexual factor it is. We have plenty of magazines with female breasts and rears all over the place, but to some Eastern European country that could be seen to be as bad as necropedophilia on the cover. So we could argue how atrocious of a cover that is, but at the end of the day, they have their culture and we have ours.

I do agree that the whole tentacle fascination is a bit weird, and that Japan has many strange fetishes, but I don't think that's necessarily bad or wrong. Sex sells in America too, despite more than half of its populace being prudish (it seems). I think this cover is pretty tame. The girl doesn't look too young.

Hey David,

There is actually a reason for this.

When the United States took control of Japan after WWII and started rebuilding it we instituded a number of decency laws within the country. Within those laws was one which said that it would be illegal to show public hair or any male pubic region. Later, to get around this, the Hentai practice of using non-male genitalia in sex acts became a popular way of getting around the law. This is also the reason why in much pornography shot in japan the males are pixelated out while everything else is left intact.

Why tenticals became vogue for this...I have no idea. But thats a little background on why it happened in the first place.

-jc-

Poor Momohime... yikes.

Huh, didn't know that piece of information, ChristRogue. It does make sense as, even to this day, a majority of their hetero hentai has censoring of the male organs moreso than the females pictured, if I'm correct.

Ah well, all cultures have their extreme fetishisms, I suppose. They have an abundance of tentacles... while we have furries? Lol.

Bah. Considering the fact this is Atlus and Muramasa, there are a MILLION other pictures Play magazine could've chosen to use. The artwork for Atlus's games is always gorgeous, and that fact they had so many other options just makes this look trashy.

Boo.

Man, she has a really big big toe...

Goddamnit, why would they choose that?

from what i remember erotica artwork that looks like this existed way back in 1800s japan. i guess it just caught on with more current erotic works and turned into a horrific fetish. lets not expect that ALL japanese people enjoy this.

but honestly this doesnt even look like official muramasa art. the girl looks entirely different. its just fucking dumb that the magazine would call this awesomely pretty game a classic but then use THIS. bad enough most peoples view on japan is narrow minded.

Dear lord! I wish you hadn't shown me that cover.

I don't even want to *imagine* life before Master Chief.

it turned me one.

on*

nice, i mean erm... eugh tentacle rape! this game looks terrible to me as well

I understand how David feels, I love Japan as well. It's where I've spent the last 3 summers in a row. And yeah, as awesome as they are, there are definately some super duper weird stuff over there as well.

The cosplay Cafes and Maid cafes were quite something. At one place, rent a costume and the girl will wear it for you as she serves you.

Oh the stuff I've seen, some of it I wish I could erase from my memory, but it's burned in there now.

If you look at it just as an artwork and free your mind of any dirty thoughts it's rather beautiful. I mean, look at the colours and the general style of it all.

As for the tentacle fetish, it's rather similar to the phenomenon of gang bang porn in the west. It isn't that different really. Oddly enough, my girlfriend is really into tentacle porn.

Katsushika Hokusai, the artist who created the "Great Wave off Kanagawa" print back in the 1820s, also created a piece depicting an octopus getting intimate with a woman. I'm not sure if this was the first in Japanese tenticular erotica, but it dates back pretty far.

But as for the magazine cover... O.O As of right now, I don't know what that game is about, and that picture does not make me want to buy the magazine and find out. And people wonder why more women don't play videogames...

Really? Is it that bad to you all? I mean, I can understand not liking tentacle rape and all that, but this is nothing more than suggestion; she's obviously battling the squid (not getting raped), it's a clever homage to the classic 'The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife', it was conceived completely new for PLAY magazine (the game's artist was given complete creative freedom, and made this of his own choice), and, seriously, the image is gorgeous. So it's sexy, and resembles a common scene in hentai, so what? If there's one thing you need to learn about Japan, it's that they're extremely comfortable with not only sexuality in general, but making fun of it. That's why games like DOA Volleyball get mocked and ridiculed in the US as being lowbrow, when in Japan they're just treated as silly lighthearted fun.

David, as a self-proclaimed fan of most things Japanese, I'd have thought that you'd know all this by now.