Many facts about eromanga, or erotic manga, are surprisingly not well known. For example, the fact that over 80 magazines a month were massproduced during the boom of so-called “third-rate gekiga,” or erotic gekiga, in the 1970s. Or that over 100 new trade paperbacks were released onto the market each month during the boom of bishōjo-style eromanga in the 1980s. That since the mid-1990s the number of female artists has increased, and over half the contributors to some eromanga magazines are women. That eromanga encompasses endless genres and subgenres. That countless art styles are competing for supremacy. That many popular manga artists have experience producing eromanga. That eromanga magazines have been a platform for publishing avant-garde and experimental work. That it is one of the epicenters of “moe.” That it vividly reflects disruptions of machismo and heterosexism. That it expresses any kind of eroticism and sexuality that one can think of. That eromanga is connected by open pipelines to zines, boys love manga and general manga magazines. In short, that the content categorized as eromanga is broader, deeper and far more intriguing than readers who have never encountered it might anticipate. I do not intend to push readers with absolutely no interest, but to those who identify as manga enthusiasts, those who had the curiosity to pick up this book and of course those whose inquisitiveness extends to eroticism in all its diversity, to those readers I declare that you are missing out by not knowing eromanga.

Why has this content been overlooked until now? A number of reasons come to mind. For starters, in the massive manga industry, which accounts for nearly half the printed publications in Japan, eromanga is of modest scale. Mid- and small-sized publishers are the majority, and the average print run for a trade paperback, while still large, is only 10,000 copies. Popular artists might get a print run of 50,000. Eromanga titles cannot be sold at every bookstore in the country, as are mainstream manga. If they do make it in, their place on the shelf is limited, and the cycle of receiving new books and returning them to publishers as unsold is short. To be sure to get a copy, one must follow information about new releases and order them online or go to a manga specialty store in a large city. Further, historical developments have systematically made eromanga difficult to see.