Futaba Channel (ふたば☆ちゃんねる), or Futaba for short, is a popular, anonymous bulletin board system based in Japan. It is related to the heavily popular Japanese mega-BBS 2ch. (If you know how they are related, please write it here.)
Futaba is best known for its image boards, where anyone in Japan can anonymously post a picture for the world to see. These image boards usually do not distingush between pornographic and "clean" content, but there is a strict barrier between two-dimensional (drawn) and three-dimensional (CG and photographic) pictures that is heavily enforced and debated.
Futaba has a culture of its own, including:
- Waha, Musu and Choia, three cute-looking girls featured in the erotic game "Suigetsu" which were embraced and reinvented by Futabaites.
- Yaranaika? Literally means "shall we do it?" As it does in English, in Japanese this phrase can have an erotic subtext. It was used in a homosexual erotic comic book which was endlessly parodied by Futabaites.
- Heika, a strange-looking man with a pointed hat on of unknown origin, is featured as a sort of master pimp on Futaba.