Beyond the curious cover, the first chapters furnish a history of erotica in anime (cartoons) from its beginning in manga (comics) which goes back to before the start of world war 2 through Shojo(girls comics) to Shonen Ai. This is a category of story where the main romantically involved characters are all male, this category does make up a large portion of the market, in Japan at least, where its audience consists of girls from high school age to maturity.

A chapter is devoted to the reasoning behind the almost constant appearance of tentacles or the peculiar erotic power that underwear seems to posses, not as I believed it to be some part of Japanese cultural background but has actually evolved out of ways to get round Japan’s censorship laws.

Also covered are particular titles that have made an impact on the market e.g. the Cream Lemon stories and the infamous Overfiend saga, and the work of well known creators such as Go Nagi. The section about how anime has been treated by the censorship system and the publishers was most informative. A chapter has also been devoted to video game Erotica due to the merchandising possibilities the computer media provides.

The final third of the book is taken up with a filmography of all the titles mentioned in the book and a few that aren’t.

Helen McCarthy and Jonathan Clements have produced a well written informative book that should broaden the mind of any reader, I would recommend this book to anyone, for the insight and analysis of this particular area of anime. For further reading the final pages are taken up by a sizeable bibliography.