ようこそう, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the degeneracy files. Tonight we’re gonna take a look at a series of strange doujinshi I came across that are all centered around, you guessed it, women’s menstrual products. All these doujins come from the artist Kirishima Ayu (Although there seems to be various guest artists that feature as well) and are based off of Brave Witches, Yuuki Yuuna wa Yuusha de Aru, Girls und Panzer, and Senki Zesshou Symphogear. As of right now, the Symphogear doujin is the only one that has an English translation.
Now I’m not gonna bother looking through each individual doujinshi page by page, because they’re all pretty much the same thing. Just headcannons about what specific menstrual products female characters use, how much each girl bleeds during her period, and other details a fan of each series might be curious about. Interspersed between these headcannon pages are full page artwork, goofy little comics centered around periods, and basic explanations about feminine hygiene products.
Now this is all pretty strange on it’s own, but what if I told you that the menstrual products showcased in these doujins are in fact, real? Because I checked online, and yes, they’re real. Understanding that real menstrual products are being showcased in these doujins completely changed how I viewed these doujins. When I first came across these doujins, I had merely thought “Holy shit autistic period fetish porn. Haha, that’s amazing.” but now I have to wonder if these doujins were part of some weird advertisement campaign for female menstrual products.
Now don’t get me wrong, these doujins are explicit in that they show things like the insertion of tampons/menstrual cups and pad wings sticking out of underwear, but by the standards of erotic doujinshi centered around bodily fluids, they feel rather tame. I mean, there’s barely any period blood shown at all, which is an odd choice to make for your supposed period fetish porn. Furthermore, browsing through her works on nhentai shows that Kirishima Ayu hasn’t dabbled in period stuff outside of these specific doujins.
Which then leads to the advertisement campaign theory. Was Kirishima Ayu paid by someone to advertise menstrual products in her doujinshi? It would explain why she never bothered dabbling in the subject matter again and why real menstrual products are featured in these doujins. But that still doesn’t make sense considering:
A: Why would a Japanese feminine hygiene product manufacturer hire a random doujinshi artist to advertise their products via 18+ erotic doujinshi when there are far less convoluted ways to do it?
B: All the anime featured here have majority male audiences. That’s not to say there aren’t any female fans of any of these franchises, but it seems like a bad idea to use anime targeted towards men to advertise menstrual products.
C: While I didn’t go through the effort to confirm it, it wouldn’t shock me if the menstrual products featured in these doujins came from multiple different manufacturers. Surely rival companies would have a problem being advertised together, no?
I ultimately have no fucking clue why this series of doujinshi exist, but I’m glad they exist regardless. I enjoy weird shit, and a series of doujinshi detailing period headcannons for the female characters is exactly the kind of weird shit that intrigues me. That’s all for now, I’m off to NovelAI to physically assault artists and commit art genocide. Until next time!
