This Week in Anime - Porn From Before We Were Born

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What was anime porn like back in ye olde dayes? Sylvia and Chris check out Cream Lemon to find out!

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the participants in this chatlog are not the views of Anime News Network.
Spoiler Warning for discussion of the series ahead.

Content Warning: Sexual Imagery

Sylvia
Hey, Chris! This week, Lynzee wants us to investigate the recipe for something called "Cream Lemon." Can't say I'm much of a baker, but I think if we hit the books, we can crack this nut together.

Chris
Oh boy, a cooking anime! I love series on subjects like this. And while you know I enjoyed Food Wars!, it might be fun to see something less salacious than that one got—WHOA!

© フェアリーダスト	© フェアリーダスト
© フェアリーダスト	© フェアリーダスト

Admittedly, this being an OceanVeil upload ought to have tipped me off, but in my defense, they have been trying to branch out lately.

True! Did you know they've got Scum's Wish on there? This has literally nothing to do with the column, but you should watch Scum's Wish if you haven't. It's very good.

But anyway, we're here to discuss and commemorate what some consider to be the hentai OVA urtext, from which all manner of smut, porn, and lasciviousness has descended. It's the legendary Cream Lemon, available to watch in the States for the first time in an age.

In other words, this is historically significant sister-fucking.

It's amazing to see how integral incest and BDSM have been with hentai from the virtual beginning.

The notoriety of Cream Lemon makes it a pretty astonishing get, and one that OceanVeil was uniquely positioned to pull off. The Sony corporate overlords would almost certainly never allow Crunchyroll to host this level of straight-up smut, no matter how historically important. Similarly, for HIDIVE, even if they went all-in on the uncut version of Gushing Over Magical Girls. I could maybe see Discotek doing discs for it. They released Urotsukidoji after all.

Nevertheless, OceanVeil is here to give Cream Lemon a home for anyone to stream it! For their rather premium subscription price, but hey.

You can't put a price on history. Don't think about it as paying for pornography. Think about it as paying for cartoon renditions of mid-80s stereo systems.

As far as I'm concerned, that is a type of pornography.

I am looking at it and imagining the tactile sensation of pressing one of those buttons, with the smooth plastic and the bit of resistance before the mechanism gives with a satisfyingly chunky click. And you know, having just written that, I am kinda getting hot and bothered, so point taken.

A lot of sensual button-pressing of all sorts is going on in these episodes.

And lots of WD-40, by the looks of it. So what is Cream Lemon, for those of you who might not be aware? That's a complicated question. Most basically, it's one of the very first hentai OVA series, with its brand spanning from 1984 to 2006. I could not tell you when and where I first heard about Cream Lemon, but it's a name that would invariably pop up when the topic of animated hentai would arise. It's also renowned for the pedigree of certain staff members who worked on it, some of whom would go on to make and contribute to the most important series in the entire medium.

Oh, did I say staff members? I meant stuff members. As in, there is also a lot of member stuffing in Cream Lemon.

Extremely funny that this is the total of the stuff members credited at the end of Cream Lemon's first episode. I mean, A.P.P.P. is well-known enough as a studio, but otherwise it seems there might've been some consternation about being credited on something so explicit.

I say "so explicit," but "Be My Baby," as befitting entry-grade erotica, is on the same level as the sort of step-sibling fantasy that Ted Cruz once memorialized 9/11 with.

As with so many of these things, it eventually escalates.

We all start somewhere. And I think Cream Lemon's siscon beginnings are, at the very least, anthropologically and literarily interesting. It's fun to see all the tropes in one place: step-siblings, the parents on a business trip, walking in on the other in the bathroom, and so on. I'm sure much of this had already been codified in hentai manga at that point, but you can really peer into the code behind the scenes here.

It also showcases the point that Cream Lemon is still aiming to be an entertaining series with some plot to it before people get down and dirty. This is a good place to bring up how all eight of the episodes OceanVeil has available so far focus on female protagonists, which feels notable as a series ostensibly targeting horny dudes. So there's a lot of interiority to Ami, her complex feelings for her brother, and her own burgeoning sexuality.

These are complexities that still bear out by watching an extended scene of Ami masturbating in the shower, but hey, look, that's the fabled plot-relevant porny scene!

There's something very psychologically interesting going on there that's beyond the scope of this column, but the result is that I was actually pretty invested in the story parts of Cream Lemon. Ami, for example, gets a sequel where she's been separated from her brother after their mom walked in on them, and her attempts to cope with that sadness take her into dangerous yet dramatically compelling territory. It's a surprisingly sophisticated iteration on the first part.

I also might be going crazy, but these shots in particular screamed at me with how much they evoked the Utena episode "The Prince Who Runs Through the Night." The situation is pretty much the same, too, with an older man in a sports car trying to take advantage of a young girl's supposed innocence.

I have no evidence of this, of course, but if that Utena episode was drafted at least in part with Cream Lemon in mind, I would believe it.

I remain an Utena super virgin as of this column, so the main thing I caught was that Ami's friend is probably excited for that Messiah trailer.

Same, girl.

The two Ami episodes do really show the growth inherent across Cream Lemon though. The first one had its directorial flourishes, but the second one cranks up the atmospheric sauce in things like that driving scene or the vibes of the interiors.

That psychology you mentioned gets more complex, too. As with many of these episodes, I wound up pretty invested in these characters and where their story might go!

I love that this notoriously perverted Holy Grail of Hentai does get most of its sauce from the narrative, context, and atmosphere surrounding the sex scenes. Every one of them possesses an artistic flair of some kind. I am, of course, partial to the Catholic schoolgirl yuri BDSM two-parter, and the mood is impeccable. Longing gazes. Stained glass. Classical piano. Shibari. It's a vibe.

© フェアリーダスト	© フェアリーダスト
© フェアリーダスト	© フェアリーダスト

This is me shocked, SHOCKED, that you enjoy something that lets you type "Catholic schoolgirl yuri BDSM." Dear Brother really does escalate quickly!

I love the look the predatory onee-sama gets in her sparkly shoujo eyes as she imagines tormenting the naïve protagonist at the beginning. After the first Ami episode beat around the bush somewhat, the pussycat was already out of the bag for this one, so it could be very straight-up about its intentions. Well, not straight, but you know.

It's definitely a simpler story than Ami's, but depending on who you are, the lesbian floor makeouts in front of an altar might make up the difference.

And seriously, the line from Cream Lemon to Dear Brother to Utena is as straight as they come (in every sense but sexually).

© フェアリーダスト	© NHK / NEP / Ikeda Riyoko Productions /Tezuka Productions
© 1997 BE-PAPAS/CHIHO SAITO/SHGAKUKAN/SHOKAKU/TV TOKYO.	© BanG Dream! Project

Whoops, don't know how Sakiko got in there, tee hee.

The second episode of this storyline is titled "Forbidden Sonata" and climaxes with the leading corporate heiress mistress intertwining a gaggle of obsessed girls into her lesbian harem with partial religious undertones.

© フェアリーダスト	© フェアリーダスト
© フェアリーダスト	© フェアリーダスト

Technically, there's less BDSM in Ave Mujica, but only if you're counting literal, on-screen depictions. Of which there are a ton in "Escalation," this is probably the most overtly explicit of the bunch. Especially the second part, even if it's also pretty richly scripted in its depictions of privileged power dynamics and commentary on the supposed "purity" some might regard girls' love with.

I'm just glad the anthology format lets the artists try out a bunch of different stuff. Don't care for incest or lesbian bondage? Well, surely you like Dragon Quest! Just ignore the part where this is 1984, and you have no clue what Dragon Quest is yet.

The shadow of Ultima looms long and hard, it seems. I do love that, only three episodes in, they were getting to fantasy sexytimes with bikini armor and tentacles.

As with the escalations of "Escalation," I gotta wonder how much of this branching out was the A.P.P.P. realizing they weren't constrained by the rules of normal, live-action porn. Meaning this entry can feature a major character who's both a lavishly animated dragon monster and also a scrungly little guy.

It's also where, at least for me, I really started to feel the team seeming like they could want to branch out and animate some cool stuff without the plot-mandated penetration attached, which would become relevant later.

This is a good place to mention that the production of Project A-ko began as a part of the Cream Lemon series before the A.P.P.P. staff decided to turn it into its own film.

So chalk that up as another thing we can (technically) thank Cream Lemon for.

You can absolutely feel the free-wheeling A-Ko approach taking shape in "Ultra-Dimension Legend Rall," with its irreverence for its characters and Calvinball handling of lore.

Like if the previous episodes were notable simply for being animated hentai (admittedly smartly conceived and directed animated hentai) in an era where that really wasn't much of a thing yet, this episode feels like Cream Lemon hitting the stride it was known for of being often fun, surprisingly creative, often out-there porn cartoons.

It's a kinetic romp through a bunch of sci-fi/fantasy tropes with a dash of tentacle porn for extra flavor. It's good! Trust me, I've seen so much isekai slop at this point. I would much rather watch a full series of these shenanigans than another one of those.

© フェアリーダスト	© フェアリーダスト
© フェアリーダスト	© フェアリーダスト

Even the staff roll is really charming on this one, with the little snippets of epilogue in between.

By the way, you had better continue to take me seriously once I change my full legal name to Sylvia Southern Cross.

That's a name I can only put respect on. How far we've come from simply "STUFF." The team would have to bring in some serious names for the next episode to top those pseudonyms.

...okay, no buried ledes, even if Yasu Sato AKA Norio Wakamoto wasn't in it, "Pop Chaser" would easily, easily be my absolute favorite piece of this pack of pre-90s pornography.

I don't think there's a bad option in this opening salvo of eight episodes, but I 100% agree, "Pop Chaser" is the cream of this Cream Lemon crop. It has it all. The Western setting. Cool mechs. Sailor-uniform-themed saloons. One of the finest lesbian sex scenes I've ever seen animated in anything. And more!

© フェアリーダスト	© フェアリーダスト
© フェアリーダスト	© フェアリーダスト

Cute saloon schoolgirls from New Orleans, thank you very much!

There were touches of it in the third episode, but "Pop Chaser" is where you can really feel the prototyping of that Project A-ko hijinks happening. Not to diminish what this episode does on its own terms. In fact, it succeeds a lot on account of being a porno!

I can leave the lesbian sex scene to your expertise in a minute, but as for the other one: while I gotta confirm a content warning that Cream Lemon is very much a product of hentai and the 80s in how consent is a suggestion most of the time, the flip-around punch-line to Wakamoto's advances on Mai is so goddamned audaciously funny I can't besmirch it.

© フェアリーダスト	© フェアリーダスト
© フェアリーダスト	© フェアリーダスト

Like DARLING in the FRANXX if it was actually any good.

It is like DARLING in the FRANXX if it was good! They figured that shit out 30 years prior. Yet another reason to toss Franxx in the dumpster.

If you'll forgive me for doing the thing where I lightly paraphrase a Bluesky post I already made: "Pop Chaser" seriously blew me away with how well-directed and intricately animated the porn was. It smartly cuts around the genitalia entirely, so the scene doesn't get marred by a censor, and it instead focuses on the full body erogenous minutiae, the complicated articulation of hands and cloth, and the overall intimacy of the act.

© フェアリーダスト	© フェアリーダスト
© フェアリーダスト	© フェアリーダスト

There is real, carefully considered artistry on display here. It's a triumph. And it's hot.

I do want to say I appreciate Cream Lemon's overall commitment to toes as a shorthand (shortfoot?) for arousal.

Not in that way, I mean—uh, nevermind. You're right. It shows how the team on this entry clearly regarded the sex as an integral part of the whole and not just an inserted selling point. They're putting as much work into it as the mecha stuff (which, incidentally, is also a sex scene in parallel). I joked about it earlier, but it is neat how actual pornography can punch a hole through the exhaustingly recurring "sex scenes as essential to the plot" discourse.

And it's funny, too! I love our "girl with no name" protagonist (even though she has a name) rolling into town and immediately meeting its bullshit with confusion and exasperation.

© フェアリーダスト	© フェアリーダスト
© フェアリーダスト	© フェアリーダスト

Rio is one of those characters that some people like to say is "too cool to be stuck in hentai," but the hentai here is so good alongside everything else that she's just too cool.

Furthermore, if you really want your mind blown, go here and look at the list of key animators.

Mahiro Maeda is in there, too! And trust me when I say that this is important. I know "porn vs. art" is a legally and philosophically contested battleground that people continue to wage war on. It's especially relevant now in our current era of online age verification, payment processors as the arbiters of propriety, and legislation that aims to further censor the internet. Cream Lemon is certainly not without its objectionable facets. But I think it's also a way to see that porn and art are not mutually exclusive categories.

Indeed, I think it's more important than ever to be reminded of how culturally integral and important pornography is. 90% of the stuff in Cream Lemon wouldn't fly under SubscribeStar's new regulations. But it's historically vital to the medium and the people that crafted it, and it really speaks to the bold service OceanVeil is doing, putting it on a public platform like this.

And sadly, there's no guarantee it will remain there. We can't take its presence and availability for granted. That's why I also hope Discotek manages to put these on disc at some point, as an act of preservation if nothing else. Because why wouldn't you want to own something called "Super Virgin" on home video?