Ryona [リョナ] refers to gender, sexual complex, or scenes of anime, manga, and other works where female characters are physically, psychologically abused, kicked, abused, or harmed.
Originally, the term was coined because the moan of agony sounded similar to the moan of sexual pleasure, but today it is used in any scenario where a woman is being harmed.
Any scene from a manga or anime where a girl is beaten counts as ryona. Scenes where the heroine is kidnapped and tied up are also called ryona because there is "psychological distress."
I would like to make it clear that I totally disapprove of anyone who has an interest in this type of gender, who feels pleasure in seeing girls catch up or scream in pain. This article is for information purposes only!
Table of Content
What Does Ryona Mean?
The word ryona is not used for real people. It is strictly an internet slang used for fiction, that is, only anime, games, mangas, and novels.
Summarizing in a simple way, as already explained at the beginning of the article, ryona refers to anime scenes where women are physically or psychologically prejudiced.
This is just an internet tour that for some reason has a good amount of monthly searches, which motivated me to write this article.
It is not enough to understand the meaning of the word without understanding its origin and also the different types of Ryona. Are you ready to understand those quirks?
The origin of the Ryona slang
Like most internet slang and memes, it originated in forums like 2chan and 4chan. This word emerged because of a rather strange fetish.
It all started with an NSFW post titled “The Best Games with moe screams that you like”. In this post, members commented on games and game scenes where girls screamed and moaned in pain or discomfort, sounding like something sensual and erotic.
After that post, some others were popping up, revealing people who felt pleasure in seeing girls screaming in pain about to be disturbed. Some games like Resident Evil have been quite prominent in the discussions.
The word Ryouna is a combination of the word ryouki [猟奇] which means a strong interest in strange and unusual things. Along with the verb onaru [オナる] and onanii [オナニー] which means m@sturbation.
It all started on discussion forums when the expressions ryouki onanii and himei onanii began to circulate to refer to people who m@sturbated to scenes of girls being mistreated and their screams of despair.
Different Types of Ryona
There are categories and types of ryona, some may include others such as torture that is present in different types of ryona. Let's try to talk a little about each:
Beat 'em Up - Violent Fights
This term refers to a popular genre of fighting games or street fighting. It is usually counted as ryona when the female character catches up and loses.
Featured scenes are in games like Street Fighter, where he shows an image of the defeated character covered in bruises and blood after the fight. We can also cite the dinners and fatality of Mortal Kombat.
Of course, this type of Ryona does not refer only to the genre of play, but to any kind of wrestling and wrestling involving women.
Generally anime fights are not called ryona because there is hardly a feeling of a character being killed, defeated, distressed by brutality.
In many cases, the bruises are never drawn, despite all the punches. Even in the first games of the Street Fighter series, the only female character appeared uninjured.
It is categorized as ryona when there is such a terrible battle that results in permanent injuries, such as loss of limbs, loss of an eye, teeth being pierced, broken bones, scars, and others.
Harapan - Stomach Punch
The term harapan [腹パン] means punch to the stomach that can also be categorized as a type of ryona. There is this distinction because a punch to the stomach is particularly brutal.
The stomach is unprotected from bones, a blow in that location is quite powerful to the point of making the character bend during the impact, falling into the agony.
Hiropin - Dash of heroin
Hiropin [ヒロピン] means "heroin whistle", they are scenes where women go through trouble, they are cornered and need to be helped by someone.
It can be a tentacle-clad girl, tied to a chair, locked in a dungeon, or any humiliating situation in which she cannot fight or go out alone.
Ryona no kane - Tie to a Bell
Don't ask me why this has been categorized as a type of ryona, but it is quite specific and refers to girls tied in giant bells to be hurt.
In this specific scene, the girl usually gets hit in the stomach with a wooden log about 108 times, referencing the New Year's bell, a Buddhist tradition in Japan where the bell is rung 108 times on New Year's Eve.
Monster Attacks
Many ryona scenes are attacks by monsters, supernatural creatures, aliens and even robots. There are different dinners that can be categorized as ryona:
- Being eaten alive by an animal or monster;
- Getting pregnant with something non-human and giving birth;
- To be part of an experiment of a mad scientist;
- To be dissected alive by aliens;
- Being turned into stone by a medusa;
- Being frozen alive by an ice attack or other element;
These are just a few examples of ryona involving monsters and supernatural creatures.
Other Types of Ryona
- Torture - Goumon [拷問];
- Torture with Drowning - Mizumeme [水責め];
- Wooden Triangular Horse - Sankakumokuba [三角木馬];
- Being swallowed whole by a monster - Marunomi [丸呑み];
- Robots being destroyed - Robotic Destruction
- Parts being torn apart;
Types of Psychological Ryona
In some cases, things like fear, trauma, and grief can cause psychological damage that can be called ryona.
For example, staying in confinement for a long period brings psychological damage. Psychological damage in Japanese is called seishin-teki na dameeji [精神的なダメージ].
When the characters are captured, they sometimes suffer brainwashing, which counts as ryona because brainwashing is psychologically harmful.
Sometimes anime and manga characters can have vacant eyes (虚ろ目), lifeless tuna-like eyes (マグロ目), or even eyes resembling those of a rape victim (レイプ目).
Here are some related Japanese words that can be called ryona:
- Trauma - Torauma [トラウマ];
- Incontinence (peeing out of fear) - Shikkin [失禁];
- Faint - Shisshin [失神];
- Insanity - Kyouki [狂気];
- Brainwashing;
Dinner x Genre Ryona
Ryona dinners can be present in any anime or game, but when we talk about the genre ryona, it most often refers to anime or hentaai games.
The fact that an anime has a ryona scene does not mean that it is an adult anime or that it deals with sensual scenes or even violence. Most of the time it is just a scene, it can be something innocent or a fanservice.
When it comes to the genre ryona, expect erotic anime with girls being tied up, beaten, captured by tentacles, raped, and more.
Ryona x Gore or Guro
Gore ou guro It is a genre of anime involving violent horror scenes, most of which can also be called ryona.
The main difference between ryona and guro is that ryona concentrates on bandits or monsters that inflict damage on female characters, as guro refers to any grotesque thing.
For this reason we can consider that most ryona scenes can be a gore, or vice versa, but they are not the same thing, one of the terms is more specific.
Gyaku-Ryona - Girls Mistreating Men
The term Ryona refers only to girls being hurt, but there is the term gyakuryona [逆リョナ] which means Reverse Ryona referring to men being hurt.
The term is common when you have girls hurting boys, but it can refer to any thing, an animal, another man or an inanimate object hurting a boy.
Of course, this term is not uncommon to be used, perhaps its use applies only to forums or dialogues involving bizarre fetishes.