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Answerman - How Much Of The Doujinshi Scene Is Porn?


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I_Drive_DSM



Joined: 11 Feb 2008
Posts: 217
PostPosted: Wed Aug 14, 2019 1:14 pm Reply with quote
While doujin is relatively harmless, I remember a very good example of Konami coming down really hard on Tokimeki Memorial doujin artists, which is why even in 2019 you don't see many examples of old-school TokiMemo works having doujins. Basically for those that weren't around or don't remember in the mid 1990s TokiMemo was a HUGE franchise. Not only did the games sell very well but TokiMemo was thrown on everything that it could be possibly thrown on. It put a lot of modern series that push otherly genre'd good to shame. I bought my first TokiMemo title in 1997; the full-voiced Saturn port that was still selling for good money back then.

Around that time a small animation group - doujin animation was a small subset of doujin works back in the 1990s - created an adult animated short featuring the 'heroine' Shiori Fujisaki. Fujisaki was seen as a relatively pure character during that time, and factoring in how big TokiMemo was Konami dropped a big hammer on every person and group that created TokiMemo doujin works. There are examples out there, however they're either really under the radar works or were made prior to Konami's interventions.
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Kougeru



Joined: 13 May 2008
Posts: 5526
PostPosted: Wed Aug 14, 2019 1:57 pm Reply with quote
Someone on a discord channel I'm in posted an image t hat shows Comiket 96's 18+ "Doujin Ratio" for popular franchises https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/413817843335954432/609934415770157081/67788585_529867667756899_7840316001160790016_n.png I can't say how accurate this is, but it's pretty different from the last one I saw. It doesn't answer the question of how much of ALL doujin are porn, but it definitely shows that a large % of popular franchise's doujin was porn.
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Megiddo



Joined: 24 Aug 2005
Posts: 8360
Location: IL
PostPosted: Wed Aug 14, 2019 2:09 pm Reply with quote
Using the database at Doujinshi.org I've run through various queries myself as I've pondered this question before as well. I've discovered that around 40 to 45 percent of doujinshi is R-18/adult/porn.
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Blanchimont



Joined: 25 Feb 2012
Posts: 3445
Location: Finland
PostPosted: Wed Aug 14, 2019 2:37 pm Reply with quote
Megiddo wrote:
Using the database at Doujinshi.org I've run through various queries myself as I've pondered this question before as well. I've discovered that around 40 to 45 percent of doujinshi is R-18/adult/porn.

That seems...little.
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Super_M



Joined: 08 May 2018
Posts: 201
PostPosted: Wed Aug 14, 2019 2:59 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
Of course, nobody actively tracks what is porn and what isn't. That said, they do track what franchises are having doujinshi made of them. The last two years have been dominated by the Fate franchise, and most recently, Kantai Collection, The Idolmaster, Touhou Project and Touken Ranbu have been the top hits. Fujoshi favorites Yuri!!! on Ice, Kuroko's Basketball and Tiger and Bunny have also cropped up a lot in recent years.


Mobage usually have good characters design and many characters to choose from, so I'm not surprise that this type of media get most doujinshi. Mobile games are not famous for good plot so I wonder if most artist care about character personality or draw solely for her/his desgin.
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Punch Drunk Marc



Joined: 04 Oct 2013
Posts: 1742
PostPosted: Wed Aug 14, 2019 3:40 pm Reply with quote
Super_M wrote:
Quote:
Of course, nobody actively tracks what is porn and what isn't. That said, they do track what franchises are having doujinshi made of them. The last two years have been dominated by the Fate franchise, and most recently, Kantai Collection, The Idolmaster, Touhou Project and Touken Ranbu have been the top hits. Fujoshi favorites Yuri!!! on Ice, Kuroko's Basketball and Tiger and Bunny have also cropped up a lot in recent years.


Mobage usually have good characters design and many characters to choose from, so I'm not surprise that this type of media get most doujinshi. Mobile games are not famous for good plot so I wonder if most artist care about character personality or draw solely for her/his desgin.


Well since Fate drops new servants every millisecond it makes sense that people are chomping at the bit to lewd them to. Outside of doujins I have no idea what Touhou Project even is, and Azur Lane is starting to get a lot more doujin as well.
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Яeverse



Joined: 16 Jun 2014
Posts: 1139
Location: Indianapolis
PostPosted: Wed Aug 14, 2019 3:52 pm Reply with quote
feels like the writer is just phoning in it as there was nothing here that one couldnt have easily wrote themselves.

Using kurobas still, why when more recent series of such types could have been used instead.
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RegSuzaku



Joined: 08 Jul 2018
Posts: 267
Location: Ikebukuro
PostPosted: Wed Aug 14, 2019 5:29 pm Reply with quote
Why do you look down on sexual media like that?

There's nothing wrong with it, and it's not something to be afraid of. This article has such a puritanical tone.

The doujin that aren't porn are the ones that are the real waste of time. All doujin that I've seen are basically just two-second romantic scenes between whatever ships they like, so they might as well go all the way. I have yet to see any doujin from Japan that have long, complex plots or AU scenarios - oh, except this one series of doujin about the pairing as a prince and butler in an AU, which, yeah, half the chapters were sex scenes, and the other half were empty mini-interactions. No real overarching plot or character depth...

Recently there's been more of a trend of artists selling fan merchandise instead of just books, like acryl stands and things like that, the way that American cons' artist alleys tend to be. These can be ero too, by the way. I see a lot of Touken Ranbu ones with bondage designs, which are nice.

Also, yeah, your examples are bad. "Female-targeted" (that is, porn of male characters) doujin aren't some super-micro niche anymore.
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Hoppy800



Joined: 09 Aug 2013
Posts: 3331
PostPosted: Wed Aug 14, 2019 5:43 pm Reply with quote
#884745 wrote:
Why do you look down on sexual media like that?

There's nothing wrong with it, and it's not something to be afraid of. This article has such a puritanical tone.

The doujin that aren't porn are the ones that are the real waste of time. All doujin that I've seen are basically just two-second romantic scenes between whatever ships they like, so they might as well go all the way. I have yet to see any doujin from Japan that have long, complex plots or AU scenarios - oh, except this one series of doujin about the pairing as a prince and butler in an AU, which, yeah, half the chapters were sex scenes, and the other half were empty mini-interactions. No real overarching plot or character depth...

Recently there's been more of a trend of artists selling fan merchandise instead of just books, like acryl stands and things like that, the way that American cons' artist alleys tend to be. These can be ero too, by the way. I see a lot of Touken Ranbu ones with bondage designs, which are nice.

Also, yeah, your examples are bad. "Female-targeted" (that is, porn of male characters) doujin aren't some super-micro niche anymore.


I tend to not bother with a lot of non-ero doujinshi these days and as for the merch, that's been happening more and more since 2010. You can easily find fan made dakimakura of popular characters including ones that never get official dakimakura.
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tsog



Joined: 16 Sep 2017
Posts: 223
PostPosted: Wed Aug 14, 2019 8:04 pm Reply with quote
Megiddo wrote:
Using the database at Doujinshi.org I've run through various queries myself as I've pondered this question before as well. I've discovered that around 40 to 45 percent of doujinshi is R-18/adult/porn.

My completely unscientific guess is around 50% based on my years browsing on Pixiv and Twitter, so not too far off from your guess.

#884745 wrote:
Why do you look down on sexual media like that?

There's nothing wrong with it, and it's not something to be afraid of. This article has such a puritanical tone.

The doujin that aren't porn are the ones that are the real waste of time.

For someone complaining about the denigration of sexual media, you sure are bashing the nonsexual side.

I've got my share of favorited R-18 works, but I also find plenty of great SFW ones. In fact, plenty of god-tier artists draw and sell both, and neither is a waste of time.
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NormanS



Joined: 15 Aug 2014
Posts: 167
PostPosted: Wed Aug 14, 2019 9:47 pm Reply with quote
Comiket also has a very diverse music scene. I look forward to the music from comiket every time. For example i look forward to Wavforme's Back to Summer 3 album

The Touhou music scene is also very fascinating, theres a whole range of genres from metal, rock, trance, disco, funk,etc of the same touhou track.


Last edited by NormanS on Thu Aug 15, 2019 9:59 am; edited 1 time in total
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MiloTheFirst



Joined: 10 Dec 2014
Posts: 429
PostPosted: Wed Aug 14, 2019 10:14 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
While doujinshi are probably illegal by Japanese standards (they are copyright violations, and unlike the USA, Japan doesn't have any legal protections for "fair use"), they are seen as relatively harmless. They don't compete with any original works, and their existence tends to further fan appreciation for whatever franchise they're depicting. The doujinshi scene is such an established part of the otaku scene in Japan that they're something to be expected. Indeed, having a lot of doujinshi being made of your series is a sign of market success. A few attempts to clamp down on it legally have met with fierce fan backlash, such as when Nintendo tried to put a stop to smutty Pokémon doujinshi many years ago.


As far as I am concerned any fan art is by definition a copyright infringement, by default it isn't protected by "fair use" at all not even in the US, it would have to be taken to court in a case by case basis and then it would have to prove to really have been used for commentary purposes or such which 99% of the cases is not. funny thing is that for instance the thumb used for this article falls under fair use because it is used as a support material for presenting the topic being covered in this journalistic piece, but distributing those doujin is absolutely a copyright violation.

as Justin said the main reason companies don't crack down on fan art doujin or else is because it can aggravate the fans and thus hurt the brand, whereas letting them circulate would in most case just result in free publicity. I would add to that the obvious reason that it is ludicrously unpractical to finance prosecuting several private citizens that couldn't really pay them any real indemnification, they would end up paying far more in attorney fees just to potentially turn their fan base against them

I remember this one case with the character Ellen Baker, In which its owner company concluded that keep letting the internet lewd her would hurt their (family friendly educational) brand so their response was to officially discontinue the character. that speaks volumes as to how infeasible trying to stop people from doing fan art would be
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MiloTheFirst



Joined: 10 Dec 2014
Posts: 429
PostPosted: Wed Aug 14, 2019 10:19 pm Reply with quote
#884745 wrote:
Why do you look down on sexual media like that?

There's nothing wrong with it, and it's not something to be afraid of. This article has such a puritanical tone.


I think those might be your own insecurities speaking mate. from my point of view the article was fully neutral, as good professional journalism should be
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Meongantuk



Joined: 03 Jun 2016
Posts: 353
PostPosted: Wed Aug 14, 2019 10:48 pm Reply with quote
Blanchimont wrote:
Megiddo wrote:
Using the database at Doujinshi.org I've run through various queries myself as I've pondered this question before as well. I've discovered that around 40 to 45 percent of doujinshi is R-18/adult/porn.

That seems...little.


The ones that got scanlated are usually just the R-18, after all. That's why people who aren't active in doujin scene (as buyer or creator) have this misconception of doujinshi=porn when in reality is different.

Tutorial and guide book with comic featuring the artist' favorite character is pretty popular sfw example.

Another reason why companies usually ignore doujinsi is because nowadays, the industry is filled by doujin artists (both active and inactive). The non-doujin artist are usually old people or those who lucky enough to make a breakout manga/novel. Unless they like to be called hypocrites, they won't close the path that made them big.
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Jadeliger



Joined: 23 Jul 2016
Posts: 5
PostPosted: Thu Aug 15, 2019 1:31 am Reply with quote
With a large proportion of works available being R18+ is Comiket age restricted?
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