Tentacle Grape Soda

I was sent this link by a well-meaning friend. I'm not certain, but I think he's hitting on me.

Either way, I prefer consensual tentacle sex. And that only with sexy tentacles, not like the poorly drawn specimens featured in the ad.

Writing about hentai sex-anything is difficult, because I have to affect an air of incredulity while pretending that I've never heard of it before. "What? This 'hentai' you speak of consists of sexual drawings of anime type characters? And there's a whole genre of hentai about women being sexually molested by tentacles? Well I never."

Well I never.

This crap does bring up an issue about "collectable" sodas, as this stuff purports to be. It also brings up a question about exactly what flavor is tentacle semen. Sadly, no one seems to bring up any questions about representations of rape, especially within the realm of school girl hentai type porn.

Clearly the novelty soda maker here is trading on a cultural gimmick, something that represents the worst of a particular genre. I'm sure that the maker is not promoting rape, but is so totally accustomed to the term "tentacle rape" that they are immune to any critical thought about it. It's a tongue-in-cheek appeal to the self mocking sense of sarcasm that kids today love.

But man, why does the soda maker have to pick something so incredibly offensive? And the sad thing is that it isn't really funny, it's just a "You remember Transformers?" type joke, just pointing at something that a certain group of people know about and therefore making everyone feel like more of a group through the pointing. "We all know about tentacle rape porn and laugh at the people who look at it."

I dunno. The soda maker'll sell it. The 18-35 crowd will buy it and give it to their friends as joke presents. None of it will get drank but it will instead sit on a shelf next to the ol' anime DVD collection and a half-painted figurine or two. The soda maker'll make some money but not enough to make it worth while, will probably try to branch out into "Lolicon Lolzberry" and etc and be disappointed by the sales.

I'm writing about this in a critical tone, but just the other day I laughed at "rape seed" on an ingredients list. What a dick.