Marui Maru

Marui Maru has made a career out of one very specific groove: giant piles of girls with cute faces and hourglass figures who really, really want to get pregnant. He’s produced three full tankoubons on the theme: MuchiMuchi ♥ Cream Pie, Fuwataro ♥ Jusei Chuudoku, and Shita no Okuchi de Chu ♥ Chu ♥ Shiyo. It’s interesting to watch his rendering evolve over time into almost a parody of itself, as the faces get rounder, the torsos get shorter, and the hips get wider. I feel like this particular rendering of the female form is strongly influenced by the foreshortening effect produced when looking from behind at a woman on hands and knees, which, probably not coincidentally, is a favored perspective in Marui Maru’s work.

As for the impregnation fetish, it seems to be less about pregnancy and childbirth per se (Marui Maru rarely draws pregnant women or babies) and more about the same desire for the forbidden that informs other fetish themes in Japanes porn, like sweat smells and free-flying semen. Japan’s birth rate at the moment is notoriously low: with the economy in an ongoing funk and little availability of childcare, women are electing to stay employed and child-free instead of giving up a career and the associated income to become stay-at-home mothers. I expect Japanese men are frequently being told to wear a condom, not to come inside, and above all not to do anything to risk a pregnancy - and enough of them are frustrated by this to seek out in pornography what they can’t get in reality. This fetish includes an entire subgenre of science-fictional premises involving radical policy innovations by the Japanese government to elevate the birth rate (notably excluding the simple expedient of offering more and better-subsidized child care and pregnancy leave).

This also presents an interesting contrast to Western pornography, where the risk of pregnancy and its associated responsibilities is generally elided entirely. Perhaps the Japanese assumption is that a woman who is willing to get pregnant is also willing to take on all the childcare duties. Good luck with that, guys.