Ugh, this reminds me of when dickheads in high school would catch me doodling my anime BS and ask, *loudly*, "IS THAT HENTAI???" Which actually sorta messed up my relationship with my own art. I'm still strictly a SFW artist, but even some of the stuff I draw now would have been a bridge too far
Good HaroYou either weren’t alive in the 90s-00s or weren’t interacting with normal people in a way that tipped them off to your interest in anime if you sincerely think there was never any negative sentiment toward it in the US at the time. The image of all anime as degenerate pornography was very pervasive