Re: Is hentai dying/dead?
Na, hentai has just hit the point of diminishing (business) returns. You have to remember three things.
1. The cost (and quality) of producing hentai has gone WAYYYYYYY up. Go watch a hentai made in the late-80s/early-90s and the video quality alone can be pretty laughable.
2. The hentai industry hasn't been able to (yet?) make the leap to 3D and thats really hurting them. (Wanna know why Nintendo makes all the new Mario games in 3D even though they're still 2D platformers? Cause its CHEAPER THAT WAY!)
3. Lack of/unwillingness to accept new ideas. When all is said and done, Japan is a VERY traditional country and that makes it VERY hard to make changes, even for business purposes. Even though monsters/monster girls are rising in popularity (the Monster Musume manga is CRAZY successful...) you don't see the manga/anime/hentai industry really capitalizing on that. (Oh sure, you see things like orcs, pigmen and tons of "giant inhuman monsters with human dicks" but they basically have vanilla human sex which defeats the whole purposes.)
1) I don't know about number 1. The art in hentai nowadays is usually a lot better than in the old days (though some old hentai like New Angel still has better art than a lot of new hentais), but I imagine new technology has also made things cheaper. That's, on a general level, is how business usually works when they improve their goods.
2) I don't really agree with number 2. What makes hentai hentai is because it's 2-D and not 3-D, or rather the design that 2-D is capable of. If I wanted 3-D I would just watch regular porn, granted most chicks in regular porn are butt ugly. Its seems pretty hard to transition the anime-like design to 3-D without being weird or even scary. To my knowledge, only one company has been really successful in 3-D hentai and that's Illusion Soft. Not sure if its cuz they have more money or something but most 3-D groups other than Illusion have really ugly girls, some don't even have the anime-ish look so I don't even consider them hentai.
Nintendo makes 3-D because their games are normal games targeted towards the mainstream. To the mainstream, 3-D is automatically better 2-D; many, if not most, will not even touch a game if it doesn't meet their bare minimal standards for graphics.
3) Maybe its just me but I thought most people actually LIKE "vanilla human-style sex." Tentacles is just a fetish, one that I got over a long time ago. Talking about "accepting new ideas," if Japan is not gonna do it, nobody is gonna do it. Japan is "traditional" on the mainstream level (though that is changing with the newer generations) and hentai is DEFINITELY NOT mainstream Japanese culture. Again, if the hentai business isn't gonna "accept" and cater to your unusual fetishes, then no one is.
I don't know how popular this monster girl manga you're talking is but I can assure you that there are a dillion number of mangas with normal girls that are more popular. Many many many popular manga/anime nowadays are just "female characters marketing" series, if this monster girl manga can actually compete with those then the chances of more monster girl hentai being made would greatly increase. By "popular" I mean popular in Japan, not popular among a little niche in the western world.