Romero, also known as Mr. Alien, loves tentacles. And insects. And supernatural orifices. And an ever-mutating kaleidoscope of perversely imaginative cosmic-horror-meets-pornography.
So do his loyal aficionado fans, who are happy to share their wildest scenarios with him and subscribe to his unholy trinity of sites: the XXX anime-inspired Hentaied, the mind-controlling-creature-themed Parasited and time-stopping, have-your-way Freeze.com.
Skirting the very edges of sanity and good taste, Romero has carved out a gooey, outlandish and otherworldly dreamscape with monstrously seductive allure — while giving Lucasfilm a run for its money in the practical effects department with elaborately constructed sets, lighting and… ahem… prosthetics. There’s a reason why Romero has monthly calls with the credit card companies about compliance.
Romero first got the idea for his Romero-verse of content in 2019, after writing down a list of trends he had observed. Noting that popular content centered on clean, amateur, beautiful and realistic sex, he decided to go instead with an “anti-pop approach” featuring sex that is dirty, hyperprofessional, not "beautiful" and as fake as possible.
Now, take a trip to a trippy realm of zany content in this company profile highlighting a triumvirate of sensual torment.
XBIZ: Take us back to the genesis of Hentaied, your first site. What inspired it?
ROMERO: I saw that Pornhub had three major searches trending, which were lesbians, Asians and hentai. I knew I could do the first two, but how could I do the third? As a fan of horror movies, anime and Japanese subcultures, the idea struck me. And with the first tentacle toy we introduced in a scene, people started to go crazy, so I knew I was headed in the right direction. Thus, Hentaied was born!
XBIZ: Talk about your process for crafting prosthetics and helping performers interact with them effectively to produce a compelling scene.
ROMERO: I usually ask myself how a prop can help me make something unique. Beds with giant mouths that can eat people, fake bodies with penetrable holes, egg depositors, bondage tentacle tools, plants and bizarre new shapes of tentacles allow me to expand my horizons in what I can do.
Then I call in our close collaborator, Amirah Adara. She has seen a lot and knows things, so I can trust her judgment on whether the props are good or not. Sometimes we mold them based on the actress we’re working with, depending on their preferences. Each scene is organized differently, as each interaction is really different.
XBIZ: How do you innovate to come up with new unique scenarios?
ROMERO: To think of a scenario, I think of a fetish and how to put it together with the right actress, developing it into an idea we can explore. We are trying different ideas to understand more and more what customers might be into. I’m the one who crafts ideas like having girls being eaten by giant insects after being wrapped in a huge web, or having tentacle egg depositors putting eggs into her.
And then there’s Ricky Greenwood, who became a close collaborator of ours. He just produced a scene about ninja samurais, inspired by live-action anime, with stunt fights and girls throwing ninja stars out of their pussies.
Hentaied gives us a lot of thematic space to explore, and as a creative, it’s incredible. If we receive positive feedback on an idea, we move forward with an entire production exploring the topic. Stay tuned for the first vegan porn, titled “PlantsVsCunts”!
XBIZ: How does the content and production process for Parasited compare and contrast with Hentaied?
ROMERO: Parasited is a way easier project to shoot, as Hentaied has so many limitations due to the tentacle props. Hentaied is insanity to shoot, requiring a lot of patience and time. To give you an idea, I just came off a set after four days of production that produced a 20-minute video. Parasited is more similar to a mainstream scene, with a more alternative scenario. The moods are pretty identical in the two productions, so they integrate well and speak to a similar audience.
XBIZ: Discuss your approach to gauging audience preferences, seeking feedback and leveraging analytics to better deliver punchy content.
ROMERO: We use a lot of tools to get feedback. I personally live-chat in my Discord group, where we have thousands of fans. All ideas are discussed there. I’m lucky to have such supportive fans to share and perfect ideas before bringing them to life.
A popular thing we were doing was all-the-way-through penetration, literally from ass to mouth. With the girls who don’t do anal, we changed that to going from pussy to mouth. To my surprise, we had an enraged group of users calling it out. They thought it was too unrealistic! I would have never imagined that would be their opinion, to be honest.
XBIZ: Talk about your newer site, Freeze.xxx, and how fans have responded to it.
ROMERO: Freeze is about having a tool to stop time for the people around you. It’s about confrontational or tense moments that are being broken by sexual excitement in a way you’ve never seen. We’ve featured our closest collaborators: Jia Lissa, Emiri Momota, Veronica Leal and Tiffany Tatum, and we featured Kazumi earlier this month.
I want to create some hilarious scenarios with this project. Imagine a hateful boss eating his wife out. An employee who hates him freezes time and cums inside of her, so the boss gets creampied on his face when time restarts.
The fans loved the project, and the launch was incredible, though they are asking to go more extreme with these situations, to explore the types of things that the credit cards would not allow me to do for obvious reasons.
XBIZ: Speaking of the credit card companies, how do you navigate issues with them as your content pushes boundaries in novel ways?
ROMERO: I have various calls with Mastercard and Visa agents monthly to understand what I can or cannot do. Sometimes I hear, “Romero, are you crazy?!” When we opened Somegore.com, directed by Ricky Greenwood, we had a rain of blood coming down on two characters having sex after a massive killing of zombies. The credit card companies don’t like blood at all.
XBIZ: Tell us how you handle the setting of your scenes, which are often darkly atmospheric or otherworldly in nature. What goes into the videography and stagecraft?
ROMERO: It takes a lot of work. We have a scout who looks for locations and deals with the owners. He lets them know we want to shoot porn at the location. If they ask what kind of porn, we tell them, "That’s kind of a long story" and that we need to build the set inside of the location, then the props and then try to make the magic happen.
For Hentaied’s “Shadow in the Room,” we built a forest inside of a studio, as shooting in a forest on the ground is just not doable. Then we did a lot more building to light everything. On top of that, we needed to choose the right lenses and tools to achieve the look that matched the scene best. It’s a long process with a big team of people.
XBIZ: Across your brands, which themes and stars are driving the highest traffic?
ROMERO: A big difference between us and most mainstream porn sites is that we don’t get much traffic from stars themselves, though we do send a lot of traffic to them. That’s because what attracts people to our sites are mostly the ideas behind the scenes. Being high-budget and different from anything around, usually, the scenes draw that click.
XBIZ: Discuss your future plans for your trifecta of sites, and any upcoming scenes or features you would like to tease.
ROMERO: We always have a lot of plans. We just signed Emiri Momota as an exclusive actress for one year and made a big Hentaied scene with her as a mafia boss. This week, we will release a crazy demon samurai scene from Ricky Greenwood, starring Kimmy Kimm and Tommy Pistol. Before the end of the month, PlantsVsCunts will be live with five new vegan porn scenes. And that’s just the beginning. We have five other productions coming soon, so stay tuned for some crazy stuff!
