Monster Girls

About

Monster Girls are a special type of Gijinka (擬人化) / Humanization where the anthropomorphic character is a mix between a creature (both real and fictional) and a human. Which means some body parts/limbs of a creature has generally been added or switched on a human body.
The human is usually a female, though some rare male examples exist. Monster Girls can also refer to moe versions of already existing monsters, such as vampires or trolls. Fetishism of monster girls is referred to as teraphilia, and is a common form of internet paraphilia.

Definition

Since monster girl is such a broad and vague term, creators and fans often argues about its clear definition.
The general consensus is that a monster girl is a mix between a human being and a monster or an animal.
Most of them are an human torso on the top of a monster bottom body. One of the general rule is to keep the face and torso area human, with exception of cyclops and something spider, who get either only one eye or more of them.
Also, independent and more mainstream genre like Succubus and Cat Girls are sometime excluded.

The umbrella terminology of monster girl can include certain types of personifications of monsters from video games, movies, books and so forth. Mythological creatures such as fox girls or other types of humanoid creatures are often included and so forth. However while succubus and nekomimi/cat girls are mainstream it is common for succubus and cat girls to be included.

History

While the origins of the modern Monster Girl can be debated the idea of non-human seductresses can be traced back to antiquity. Many ancient cultures, such as the Greeks, have tales of men (and women) being seduced by mythical and mystical creatures, such as the sirens from Homer's Odyssey. Even in the eastern hemisphere there are mythological stories about would be considered monster girls seducing individuals. Examples include beings such as the Kumiho and Jorōgumo. The former is a fox who lore wise lived to a thousand years and gained the ability to shape shift into human form. It can become human by not killing humans for a thousand days or other means. The Jorōgumo is a spider that is 400 years old that similarly gains magic powers, including shape shifting. Legends about it often portray it turning into a seductive women to marry a samurai.

Majors Type of Monster Girls

Although Monster Girls come in many forms these Girls presented have the largest sub-species count and can be seen as the "parent" group. However be aware that these only represent the most popular niches of the monster girl umbrella terminology; there are well over thousands of different types based anywhere from mythology to personification of popular media and so forth.

Harpy

A harpy are a mix of a human and a bird. They usually have bird legs instead of humans legs and wings instead of arms. They almost always lays eggs. They are one of the most famous and representative monster girls, second only to lamia.

Lamia

A lamia is composed of an human torso and the tail of a snake. It may also come with a forked tongue. It is seen as the most popular monster girls and is often used to represent the whole genre, similar to how 'Space Invaders' is representative of video games.

Centaur

A centaur is a human torso implanted on the neck of a horse. They are more commonly seen outside the fandom in mythology.

Slime/Goo Girl

These monster girls are quite an oddball among others as they are not a clear mix of an human and a monster. Instead, they are a regular slime monster shaped like a girl. They are sometime portrayed as stupid kinda akin to slime monster often being weak early game mook.

Arachne

Also know as spider girl, an arachne is a human torso on top of what would be the spider's head or sometimes the abdomen. They sometimes have multiple eyes similar to the many eyes of a real spider. The mandible of a real spider are almost always absent if the torso is on the head.

Alraune

An Alraune is a cross between a human woman and a plant, typically of a flowering variety. Alongside Slimes, Alraunes are one of the major non-animal monster girls.

Mainstream types

These types while not considered to be necessarily exclusive to the monster girl niche these types of monster girls are still monster girls and highly popular whether they are outside the niche or not:

Mermaid

Mermaid are an human upper body on a fish's tail. Much like the centaur, they are much more popular in mainstream media than in the fandom. A similar but less known monster girls is the Scylla, an human torso with tentacle for legs.

Vampire

Vampire lore drastically changes from culture to culture with extensive amounts of stories and such based around them. The concept of vampires has been around since the days of the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Mesopotamian culture. The kitsune of Japanese folklore, a mythical fox quite similar to the Kumiho, can be considered a vampire due to the trait of requiring life force to survive.

"Zombie"

Zombies are by far the most diverse lore type of monsters; they range from the generic horror movie kind to essentially just reanimated people. Trying to pin a singular type as a means of summarizing the lore is impossible. The only similar trait held by all of them is that they are reanimated individuals post mortem.

Works Focused on Monster Girls

Daily Life with Monster Girl

Monster Musume no Iru Nichijou (モンスター娘のいる日常 or Daily Life with Monster Girl), is a Japanese manga created by Takemaru “Okayado” Inui.. The story is set in modern day Japan; Monster girls have recently had their existence revealed to the world and the main character, Kurusu Kimihito, is a "volunteer" for a homestay program to integrate monsters into human society with Miia, a lamia, but over time more and more monster girls come to live with her and they wish to be with him, basically it's a harem comedy.

Monster Girl Encyclopedia

The Monster Girl Encyclopedia is a database about all the Monster Girls (know as Manamo) created by the Japanese artist know as Kenkou Cross. Monster girls profile are posted on his site and are released as books, along with the books describing the setting. The setting is that of a undescript mythological land being taken over by essentially culturally assimilating other nations into it by using monster girls to seduce people; the backstory is that of a fictional documentary writer cataloging the different types of monster girls. In this world monsters and humans have been at war for centuries, to bring an end to this the Demon lord plans to create a unified race where all the women are monsters and the men are incubi.

Monster Girl Quest

Monster Girl Quest is a Japanese erotic visual novel developed by the the dōjin company Torotoro Resistance. It has gained a sizable fandom thanks to its graphic sex scenes and it's non-generic storyline. Monster Girl Quest is said to have been inspired by the aforementioned Monster Girl Encyclopedia and has creator of the latter Kenkou Cross as one of the artists of the series, responsible for the design of Alice Fateburn and several other monsters. The story follows the journey of Luka, a boy who believes in the possibility of coexistence between humans and monsters. Thanks to a certain chain of events, Luka meets Alice, a lamia monster girl. After Luka tells her about his dream, she decides to join him on his journey in where, at the end, they both aim to bring coexistence to the monster world.

Monster girl quest was such a hit that a sequel called "Monster Girl Quest: Paradox" is slated to come out at a later date. The immediate difference is that it no longer will be a visual novel and instead will be a fully fledged game whose gameplay so far is massively resembling of Dragon Quest. A crowdfunded three-dimensional adaptation of Monster Girl Quest titled Hero is being produced by NtelliwareGames with the blessing of Torotoro Resistance, the makers of Monster Girl Quest. The Kickstarter campaign ran from March 7th to April 6th, 2013 and raised $10,068 out of the $5,000 goal.

30 Day Monster Girl Challenge

The 30 Day Monster Girl Challenge is a type of 30 Day Challenge where people illustrate a different monster girl a day for 30 days. These are frequently done on websites such as DeviantArt^[1] and Tumblr.^[2]

Fandom

The fandom largely remains to be a subniche fandom, but is growing in popularity. There's fan songs that have been made, costumes, fan content and so forth. Over the last couple years it has been slowly been moving from a subniche to it's own fandom and has grown fairly large with plenty of content created by individuals.

Cosplay

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References