Bad Omens Under Fire For Controversial T-Shirt Design

Modern metalcore titans Bad Omens have recently come under fire for releasing a controversial new T-shirt designs.

Earlier this week on August 28, Bad Omens announced they were dropping a new merch collection.

Usually, this wouldn’t constitute news, however, fans and online commenters have gotten pretty angry at one of the shirt designs in the drop, of which is being described as “hentai” inspired.

READ MORE: What Is Baddiecore? Let Us Explain

What is hentai?

For the unfamiliar: hentai is pornographic anime or manga. Hentai mostly translates to English as “pervert” or “perverted” and has become a catch-all for any kind of pornographic anime in the West.

The shirt itself doesn’t actually depict any real sex acts and at best is a suggestive shirt. The anime woman illustrated has her tongue out, with a bead of saliva dripping from her tongue and a sort of lusty look in her eyes. But hey, maybe she’s just drooling, or took a bite out of something sticky and has a hanger on her tongue. How are we supposed to know what her deal is?

What Are Fans Saying About Bad Omens’ Hentai Shirts? 

Pretty quickly, opinions were split on the shirt design. One user on X wrote “Call me a prude or whatever, but this shirt is tacky. Like, really? You really can’t come up with any original designs, so you’re resorting to vampire hentai from circa 2001?” (That post has limitations on who can view it and is not embedded below.)

Another user pointed out the similarities in reaction to Ghost’s merch, that both have committed the insane crime of “being bands with adult content in their music and making sometimes slightly more adult merchandise that people then act scandalized over.”

It is a little funny that the band credited with making “baddiecore” a thing is now getting heat for continuing those things that gave them that descriptor to begin with, namely including more sexual content in their music and merch than other contemporaries.

It seems like there’s an extreme divide in culture right now between hypersexuality and conservatism, so to see that play out in the battlefield of what’s acceptable to wear on a T-shirt isn’t too surprising. At least it’s not a full-on ahegao face.

See the reaction below, and if it’s something you want to rock, check out Bad Omens’ merch store here.