in their sex lives, invariably. But I'm not writing for them." Tagame sparingly depicts extreme fetishistic material in work such as coprophilia or graphic violence, noting that the primary purpose of his pornographic works is to inspire sexual excitement and not disgust. While comic art featuring sexualized depictions of masculine men is not unique to Tagame, academic William Armour argues that his works are distinguished from his peers through his interest "in the way in which power relationships between men can be eroticised." His manga have been noted for their aesthetic qualities and psychological complexity, with Armour writing that "while on one level Tagame presents stories as graphic cartoon porn, on another level he weaves into the images and wording a much deeper sense of how homosociality can easily transform into homosexuality, despite his male characters being positioned as examples of hegemonic masculinity." Tagame himself has stated that "what I have tried to do in my erotica is raise that to the level of art and think about it in terms of art being principally to the service of depicting humanity." While the majority of gay manga artists produce works targeting a gay male audience exclusively, Tagame is noted for having a significant heterosexual and female audience. Tagame has stated that he adjusts his style if a work is being published in a format where it will be primarily read by a specific subset of his audience, noting that "when I write for gay men's magazines, it's primarily about the hero's initiative and interiority. When I know that women are also going to be reading it [...] they're more interested in seeing actual relationships and coupling." In considering why Tagame's works attract a diverse audience, Anne Ishii hypothesizes that "something about what Tagame does isn't even about being gay [...] it's about desire and the darker side of desire. It doesn't fit into a sexual category to me." Tagame credits both Japanese and Western artists among his influences, including Caravaggio, Michelangelo, the Marquis de Sade, Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, Go Mishima, Sanshi Funayama, Oda Toshimi, Suehiro Maruo, Kazuichi Hanawa, Hiromi Hiraguchi, and Bill Ward. Nude figures in Hellenistic and Baroque art, initially encountered by Tagame in classic art anthologies he read as a child, heavily influenced his works. In considering his Western and Japanese influences, Tagame notes that Western Christian art has inspired his depictions of nudity and humiliation (such as Caravaggio's