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11/28/2024 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/10.1080/23268743.2024.2418000
The hentai streaming platform wars
Aurélie PETIT
ABSTRACT
This article investigates the digital conflicts that occur between different Japanese
pornographic animated media (here referred to as ‘hentai anime’) platforms on the
anglophone internet. Drawing on the ‘hentai streaming platform wars’ metaphor to
illustrate the growth of a hybrid streaming ecology of pirated and licensed animated
releases, the article offers a framework to investigate what happens to animation
during the platformization of porn, and to pornography during the platformization of
animation. By providing a detailed history of the American hentai anime market, from
its arrival through fan- distributed video networks up to its current challenges on both
legal and pirate streaming platforms, the article demonstrates that the historical
conflicts within the hentai streaming ecosystem do not call for tech-solutionist
approaches (tracking and deplatforming content). Rather, the article will ask for the
pornographic industry as a whole to reevaluate how it considers animated
productions during porn platformization.
Introduction
In July 2019, a public conflict emerged between FAKKU, an American platform for
Japanese pornographic animation and comics (here, referred to as hentai anime and
manga), and Papa HH, the owner of Hentai Haven, another popular hentai anime
platform. Papa HH accused FAKKU’s founder, Jacob Grady, of deceitfully acquiring
his company back in December 2018 and then neglecting communication for several
months afterwards. Grady later confessed in an interview (D’Anastasio 2019) that his
original intention, despite claiming otherwise initially, had always been to eliminate a
strong pirate competitor in the hentai streaming market.
Unlike FAKKU, Hentai Haven was a pirate platform that relied on unlicensed
distribution; because of this, Grady considered its growing popularity as an obstacle
1
to FAKKU’s dominance in becoming the ‘Crunchyroll of hentai’ (Orsini 2015), hence
a mainstream pornographic anime platform.
This conflict between FAKKU and Hentai Haven’s owners introduces the concept of
the ‘hentai streaming platform wars’. But instead of solely summarizing known piracy
practices around Japanese porn anime, this metaphor of hentai anime platforms
‘fighting’ each other over content distribution acts as a stepping stone to frame the
contemporary landscape of platforming porn animation on the anglophone internet.
Beneath the surface of copyright disputes between hentai streaming platforms’
owners lies the struggle for all animated pornography to be seen as a legitimate
cultural and economic industry of adult content (Petit 2019; Saunders 2019).
Regardless of its animated nature, porn animation is a sexual medium subjected to
platform governance, meaning producers and distributors also face deplatformization
(Blunt et al. 2021) and shadowbanning (Are 2021; Blunt and Stardust 2021).
However, porn animation challenges the application of traditional approaches that
centre live-action content, such as emphasis on sex-worker rights and in-person
productions. Hence, it calls for theoretical frameworks that intentionally medialize
animation. Opposed to live-action pornography, porn animation remains largely
overlooked in academia, both within porn studies (with the notable exception of
articles by Paasonen 2019; Petit 2019; Saunders 2019; Freibert 2020; Galbraith
2023) and animation studies – with the notable exception of the research from
animation historian Bruno Edera (Petit 2024).
Hence, although this article takes as its prime example the popular genre of hentai
anime (from which it also borrows its title), it argues that it must not be conceptually
framed as an isolated case from the rest of online pornographic animation –among
which also exist CGI porn, explicit machinima, and 2D adult cartoons. To isolate
hentai anime from the rest of pornographic animated media entertains an
exceptionalism narrative that does not reflect the reality in which these genres not
only coexist online, but also face similar concerns.
By exploring this ‘hentai streaming platform wars’ metaphor, we can then identify two
key concepts faced by all porn animation: exclusion from the mainstream porn
industry conversation; and lack of recognition of its creative labour force. Situating
2
hentai anime within broader discussions concerning the platform governance of
pornographic animation, this article contributes a rare additional exploration into this
realm.
To do so, this study asks for a multidisciplinary methodology. This article first
investigates the platformization of hentai anime within the anglophone internet
through comparative media histories analysis of Japanese porn animation
distribution and of the contemporary platforming of adult animated content. Then,
drawing from platform studies theoretical frameworks, the article employs interface,
content and governance analysis to identify the major players and stakeholders in
the hentai streaming ecosystem. Finally, using available information from legally
incorporated companies, alongside first-hand accounts shared by pirate website
owners, the article offers a portrait of what exactly is at stake in the ‘hentai streaming
platform wars’. Because animation is excluded from the mainstream porn industry,
animated porn productions are disregarded as copy-righted media, and their labour
force is overlooked as porn workers. Understanding this is fundamental in moving
beyond tech-solutionist approaches to track pirated content that are inefficient within
hybrid, unregulated platform ecosystems.
From ‘japornimation’ to hentai anime
In Japan in the 1980s, the growing popularity of the Comiket (the Tokyo fanzine
market) fostered a robust independent publishing tradition of amateur erotic manga
(Lent 1999; Nagayama 2020; Rito 2021), while the advent of home video played a
pivotal role in distributing anime pornography. This led to the formation of significant
fandom cultures that
propelled the proliferation of fan-targeted original video animation, the original
medium for animated pornographic content in Japan. As Shiokawa (1999, 112–114)
explains, these videos initially featured cute heroines drawn in the anime style,
characterized by childlike round faces and fully developed bodies, and placed in
increasingly explicit and often violent sexual scenarios, including rape. In 1997, out
of the 162 original video animations released in Japan that year, 62 were erotic titles
(Patten 1998), with the number significantly growing over the years.
3
In the late 1980s, Japanese pornographic animation videos began to make their way
to the USA concurrently with non-pornographic anime. Initially, these two genres
existed within separate distribution networks, as hentai anime videos were either
brought in by anime fans via pirated copies or marketed in sex shops as ‘X-rated
cartoons’ by distribution companies unrelated to anime.1In the late 1980s,
pornographic film distributor Excalibur Films released dubbed versions of one of the
earliest hentai original video animation series, Cream Lemon (1984–1987), edited
under multiple stories as part of Excalibur’s three-volumes VHS series Brothers
Grime Adult Cartoon (1987–1989), now renamed Gonad the Barbarian,Search for
Uranus,Offenders of the Universe, and Star Trap. In addition to the English dub,
these new versions were edited to remove the original pixels on genitals (albeit not
necessarily redrawn), in order to be more compliant with Western pornography
standards.
As the American anime fandom grew significantly throughout the 1980s and 1990s,
fans became aware of imported materials from Japan and initiated a networked
circula- tion of bootleg videos featuring Japanese animation. Because of this,
although the Broth- ers Grime Adult Cartoon series was not marketed explicitly as
‘hentai anime’ or even as Japanese animation, the American anime fandom still
perceived it as such, and the series was frequently mentioned on the popular anime
newsgroup rec.arts.anime. Fans knew that Brothers Grime Adult Cartoon was an
‘anime’ beyond what its distributor originally decided.
However, even within the fan community, there was a period when Japanese
pornographic animation lacked a definitive name in English. Terms such as ‘hentai’,
‘hanime’, ‘sukebe’ (‘erotic’ or ‘pervert’ in Japanese), ‘chikan’ (‘groper’ in Japanese,
although rarely used), ‘etchi’ or ‘ecchi’ (‘erotic’ in Japanese), and ‘pornime’ (a
portmanteau term for ‘porn’ and ‘anime’) emerged, reflecting internal tensions within
fandom discussions surrounding hentai distribution. While the term ‘japornimation’
drew criticism from fans for its association with a racial slur (‘Jap’),2it did appear
occasionally in US media other than anime-related publications. For instance, on 13
August 1995, Newsweek mentions ‘japornimation’ as ‘disdained in Japan, [but] hot
sellers [in the USA]’.3
4
This challenge among American anime fans and the public to agree on a definitive
name for Japanese pornographic animation hinted at the precariousness of its early
distributors, foreshadowing hentai anime’s struggle to be recognized as a legitimate
porn genre. The early 1990s marked a transitional phase in which the terminology
surrounding hentai anime was in flux, reflecting the evolving landscape of both the
industry and its reception by audiences.
Encouraged by this early fan-networked distribution of Japanese pornographic
animation, anime enthusiasts began creating both offline and online spaces for
consuming and sharing subtitled hentai anime pirate videos (‘fan-subbed’). These
spaces included convention viewing parties and discussion panels, like the ‘H the
Hentai Panel’ held during Anime Expo 1993, as well as screenings at university
clubs. Additionally, various Usenet newsgroups dedicated to erotic anime emerged,
such as alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.anime, alt.binaries.hentai, and
alt.binaries.multimedia.erotica.anime. This growing inclusion of Japanese
pornographic animation into the American anime fandom signalled to distributors
wanting to invest that the American audience was not only consuming anime, but
also anime porn.
The first hentai anime officially distributed in the USA was AD Vision’s Devil Hunter
Yohko (Katsuhisa Yamada 1990), released in December 1992 (John 2008). A year
prior in 1991, the now-defunct company Central Park Media (CPM) attempted to
release I Give My All (Osamu Uemura and Yoshihide Kuriyama, 1987), an erotic
comedy portraying a teenage girl’s coming-of-age story, through its US Manga Corps
division (USMC). Unfortunately, due to negative press coverage in the LA Times and
attacks from Focus on the Family, a Colorado Springs-based Christian media
watchdog group, USMC decided to cancel the distribution of I Give My All (Philips
1991). Even Ralph Bakshi, director of the first X-rated cartoon Fritz the Cat (1972),
denied support to CPM despite receiving attacks from similar family groups in the
1970s, stating to the LA Times: ‘The Japanese carry something obscene for every
age group and they seem to have no problem marketing the stuff over there. But I
can’t imagine who [CPM] plans to sell a soft-core animated film to or what retailers
will carry it over here’ (Philips 1991). Despite this original false start, it did not stop
hentai anime distribution from gaining popularity, notably after the release of cult
5
hentai anime Urotsukidōji (Hideki Tayama and Shinegori Kageyama 1987) by CPM
in 1993.
The film known for its tentacle porn and extreme violence premiered theatrically as a
35-mm copy in London in October 1992, drawing sold-out crowds each time. First
screened in Canada under the title Legend of the Overfiend (other titles include
Wandering Child or Wandering Kid) at the Toronto International Film Festival in 1989,
it was then shown in New York in 1993 at the Angelika Theater before embarking on
a national tour across festivals throughout the summer. Urotsukidōji received its
official dubbed VHS release by CPM in 1993, as five episodes on VHS and laserdisc
under its distribution division Anime18 (A18 Corporation). Urotsukidōji sparked
controversy within the anime fandom due to its graphic depiction of gendered
violence and pornographic gore, that simultaneously garnered it an enduring
popularity which some fans felt eclipsed other non-pornographic anime productions.4
Despite this polarizing reception, Urotsukidōji played a crucial role in introducing
Japanese pornographic animation to a wider audience beyond fan distribution
networks. Additionally, it demonstrated to investors that hentai anime could be a
commercially successful genre and led to numerous requests from anime fans for
similar content, prompting CPM to further invest in its Anime18 hentai cat- alogue
(Patten, 1998, 29).
Parallel to CPM, the company AD Vision launched its SoftCel Pictures label to
officially distribute adult-targeted animation. Its first release, The Legend of Lyon:
Flar (Yorihisa Uchida 1986), debuted in November 1994. Shortly after the
establishment of the SoftCel label, Star Anime Enterprises released one of its only
titles, the erotic anime Homeroom Affairs (Osamu Sekita 1994), on two VHS copies
in October and December 1994. Although SoftCel initially released a few hentai
anime titles, its distribution gradually declined by June 1996. As explained in a July
1998 interview by Janice Williams, AD Vision’s production coordinator: ‘AD Vision
made a tremendous investment in mid-1996 to license a great quantity of general
anime titles. We are currently working through a big production backlog getting them
onto the market before we can produce new SoftCel releases’ (Patten, 1998, 28).
Similarly, Media Blasters’ Kitty Media pornographic brand, founded by John
Sirabella, was started with the intention of funding the distribution of general titles
6
through the benefits of adult animation; while its first American release, Rei-Lan:
Orchid Emblem (1996), debuted in May 1997, he later explained:
The potential American market was very good, but the existing anime distributors
were only putting out a few releases. They had solid general release catalogues, and
they were nervous about the repercussions of getting into the adult market in a major
way. So, I started Kitty Media to be the best and biggest company in the adult anime
market. Now that we have a solid backlist of over a dozen titles, we are expanding
Media Blasters beyond the Kitty Media label. (Patten, 1998, 28-29)
During a discussion on Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.anime, Sirabella himself admitted
to not being ‘the biggest fan of hentai videos’.5Likewise, it appeared that other
distributors, such as Right Stuff’s Critical Mass – its label for violent and
pornographic anime – entered the realm of hentai anime without a porn-focus
distribution strategy: following the initial release of Weather Report Girl (Kunihiko
Yuyama 1994) in September 1996, no formal distribution for hentai anime was put in
place.
What emerges from these early hentai distributions is that, despite being labelled
‘pink anime’ or hentai, these distributors were integral contributors to the US anime
ecosystem, rather than operating as alternative entities, as is now often the case
during platformization, in which ‘hentai anime’ exists as a distinctive structural
category from ‘anime’. While anime companies CPM, SoftCel Pictures, Kitty Media,
and Critical Mass Video continued to distribute hentai anime, often as part of broader
anime distribution strategies, the rise of online piracy significantly hampered their
distribution practices. For fans, it had a positive outcome: as Josephy-Hernández
highlights, fan-subbing in the 2000s provided an alternative distribution route for
pornographic anime ‘not only as a translation provider but also helps the distribution
of material that people might not be able to obtain elsewhere’ (190). Eventually,
piracy came to replace most legal offers and Japanese pornographic animation
primarily shifted to consumption on pirate streaming platforms, setting the scene for
the hentai streaming platform wars.
Platforming anime porn
7
In recent years, the online distribution of Japanese anime has been characterized by
academics and journalists alike as the ‘anime streaming platform wars’ (Petit 2022).
In the 2010s, mainstream streaming platforms benefited from increased efforts by
US federal authorities to combat pirate websites, significantly diminishing the
accessibility of these platforms for non-tech-savvy users. As streaming services
became the normative model for media consumption in the USA, the anime market
underwent similar transformations. Major platforms like Netflix and Amazon gradually
expanded their catalogues to include anime titles (Blair 2017; Clark 2023) and their
growing capital enabled them to invest in popular and award-winning anime
productions, effectively retaining loyal audiences. Parallel to this, pirate platforms
(that up until then represented the main form of anime digital consumption) were
increasingly targeted by legal authorities. Prior to its closure in August 2020 due to
copyright infringements following revisions of Japanese anti-online piracy laws,
pirate anime streaming platform KissAnime launched in 2012 had operated relatively
unnoticed from the authority, despite counting millions of monthly users. Upon the
administrators’ announcement of the platform’s permanent closure, online users
humorously speculated that it should be a cause of celebration for legal streaming
platforms, like anime giants Crunchyroll and Funimation, as these frequently found
their licensed content being shared illegally on KissAnime.
At the time, collaborations between platforms were deemed crucial to the anime
streaming market in America. Anime platforms that started as fan projects (Ristola
2024) relied on these alliances to professionalize, and it was believed that they
should collaboratively thrive ‘not despite of each other, but because of each other’
(Petit 2022, 21). It is not surprising, then, that the presence of independent actors
like KissAnime could be seen as disruptive to this collaborative model. However,
Sony-owned Crunchyroll’s recent acquisition of its main competitors (including
Funimation) suggests that this former model has evolved into a larger battle between
anime streaming platforms for control over media properties and audience revenues,
a conflict now termed the ‘anime streaming platform wars’.
While hentai anime has remained the most notable absentee from the ‘platform wars’
conversation, it is nonetheless influenced by the decisions made within this
landscape. For instance, when Crunchyroll, a major player in the anime industry,
8
acquired the retail website Right Stuff Anime in 2022, it chose not to integrate its
erotic catalogue (Colbert 2022). This decision had ripple effects, as noted by Jacob
Grady, the owner of FAKKU, who tweeted that this move would impact his platform’s
business operations since Right Stuff Anime was significant for his company:
What Crunchyroll quietly left out of this announcement is that they are removing all
hentai/ 18 + anime/manga, in fact they already have. This is a massive blow Right
Stuf was a big account for FAKKU and one of the only retailers that really embraced
18 + anime/manga. (@largehotcoffee, Twitter, 4 August 2022)6
In a later interview with Colbert for Kotaku, Grady expressed doubts that Right Stuff
Anime’s successor, Ero Anime, could match the same reach. As of 2024, Ero Anime
was never put online and was instead replaced with the Buy Anime website that
safeguards adult content behind a button, causing possible confusion for consumers.
The loss of Right Stuff Anime following Crunchyroll’s acquisition had an impact on
the hentai anime market, serving as a reminder that the hentai anime ecosystem is
undeniably fragile and susceptible to external regulations and ideological
disagreements regarding acceptable media content. The attempts to marginalize
pornography from the anime platforming ecosystem, such as Crunchyroll’s removal
of Right Stuff Anime’s erotic catalogue, also require further attention from online porn
governance experts. These need to be understood as similar anti-sex political
decisions, like the ones imposed on platform Tumblr users back in 2018 (Sybert
2021), driven by conservative interests in order to appease shareholders following
US bills FOSTA (Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act) and
SESTA (Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act).
Because hentai anime is excluded from mainstream anime streaming platforms, it
must exist on its own. Unlike in Japan where hentai anime can rely on an industrial
structure that offsets production costs through collaborative ecosystems involving
related adult
video games and visual novels (referred to as the ‘media mix’ by Steinberg 2012),
such strategies are traditionally overlooked during hentai’s importation. On streaming
platforms, hentai anime is treated as a singular film object rather than existing within
a broader multi-product ecosystem. Consequently, during the platform era, hentai
9
anime is decontextualized from its own economy, and complicates foreign
companies’ willingness to invest in importing and distributing already marginalized
content for an uncertain and undefined market. This lack of regulation led to the
‘hentai streaming platform wars’, a highly competitive and hybrid ecosystem in which
legal and pirate platforms owners openly confront each other to attempt securing
intellectual properties.
The platform wars
The metaphor of the ‘streaming wars’ has been criticized by media scholars Lobato
and Lotz (2021) for its perceived oversimplification of complex dynamics and
intertwined interests between giant streaming platforms that actually share investors,
like Netflix and Disney Plus. But in the context of the unregulated hentai anime
streaming landscape dominated by pirate actors, this metaphor remains relevant as
it successfully captures the overt antagonism (the ‘wars’) between these platforms.
In the hentai anime streaming ecosystem, a legal and subscription-based platform
such as FAKKU is a rare case. While another popular anime streaming platform
HiDive does offer uncensored versions of mature content as part of its premium
service, it does not prominently feature hentai anime, and neither does it market its
activities as pornographic; in addition, HiDive requires users to manually activate this
premium function, not unlike the aforementioned Buy Anime website. In contrast,
platforms like FAKKU prioritize hentai (manga and anime) as a central aspect of their
brand identity and business model, although they may also offer non-pornographic
content to sustain their activities.
FAKKU was founded in December 2006 by Jacob Grady while he was still a
Computer Science student at Worcester State University. Initially, it began as a pirate
hentai manga platform, a common starting point for many legal anime platforms
including, but not limited to, giant Crunchyroll. However, in July 2011, Grady
announced FAKKU had entered a streaming licensing deal with Kitty Media, the
adult label owned by Media Blasters, to offer licensed hentai anime titles for free.
Over time, FAKKU transitioned to a subscription-based model, and by the end of
2015 had deleted all unlicensed fan translations from the platform. In November
2017, FAKKU further expanded its offer by acquiring Kitty Media for digital
10
distribution, incorporating its catalogue of hentai anime on the platform at no
additional cost to users. By 2018, FAKKU’s established position as an anime and
manga porn platform in the USA made its acquisition of Hentai Haven a logical next
step.
Hentai Haven used to be a popular pirate, advertising-supported streaming platform,
launched in July 2014, specializing in hentai anime content. The website gained
prominence for providing both subbed and ‘raw’ (untranslated) content through
embedded videos and for fostering a community-based culture known for
popularizing hentai tag memes. In the year leading up to its shutdown, Hentai Haven
ranked among the top 1000 most visited websites in the USA, attracting an average
of 2.5 million daily users (D’Anastasio 2019).
On 19 December 2018, Hentai Haven platform went dark, with only a message on
the homepage from its owner, Papa HH. It reads that with the abundance of options
available for hentai anime streaming, Hentai Haven no longer had a reason to exist.7
Following the announcement, the anime online community took to social media to
express sadness over Hentai Haven’s closure,8and questions arose regarding the
true reasons behind its shutdown. Some speculated that the presence of illegally
licensed anime, and particularly of lolicon – a controversial genre featuring child-like
female characters – may have forcibly contributed to the platform’s closure.
On 26 December 2018, the official Hentai Haven X account (formerly Twitter) posted
a meme image depicting an armed guard (FAKKU) protecting a princess (Hentai
Haven) from the crowd (the FBI). This tweet garnered significant engagement from
the anime community, quickly amassing more than 2000 retweets and 12,000 likes
(Figure 1).
The meme effectively established a flattering branding narrative for both platforms:
Hentai Haven, formerly a pirate website, was portrayed as a vulnerable entity in
need of protection, and FAKKU, a legal subscription service, was positioned as its
saviour. Additionally, the meme propagated the notion of a common enemy – the
FBI, a policing institution – allegedly responsible for the platform’s shutdown,
towards which both FAKKU and Hentai Haven directed their fanbase’s frustration. At
the time, neither platform felt the need to clarify whether the original Hentai Haven
11
shutdown was prompted by Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) notices, or if it
had been due to concerns over the presence of unlawful content on the platform.
The post served as a public announcement of FAKKU’s takeover of Hentai Haven,
portraying the legal commercial path as the most effective solution to threats of
closure by federal laws.
But it was soon afterwards reported that the deal between Grady and Papa HH had
actually been planned for months ahead of the official closure of Hentai Haven. This
acquisition was strategically orchestrated rather than an unexpected turn of events:
in the exchange of Hentai Haven and all of its associated Discord and X accounts,
Grady offered to absolve Papa HH from all legal responsibility related to Hentai
Haven, particularly concerning DMCA infringements. Given that most of Hentai
Haven’s content
Figure 1. The image posted on the Hentai Haven official Twitter account on 26
December 2018.
consisted of pirated media, the deal provided Papa HH with a straightforward exit
strategy in case of legal scrutiny. However, six months later, Papa HH then stated on
X that Grady had exploited the spectre of potential legal issues to expedite the
acquisition process.9‘HEAVILY exaggerated’ (D’Anastasio 2019), and removed it
from online searches. By acquiring Hentai Haven, Grady not only aimed to establish
himself as the ‘Crunchyroll of hentai’, but also to strategically eliminate a pirate
competitor.
However, FAKKU’s attempt to dominate the platforming of hentai anime faced public
disapproval due to perceptions from fans that he had profited off the precarity of a
pirate platform, despite Grady’s assertion that no profit has been made since the
acquisition.10 Four years later, FAKKU hosted only 25 hentai anime titles, all
sources from Kitty Media, a small number in comparison to its extensive catalogue of
hentai manga. This back-and-forth between FAKKU and Hentai Haven, moving from
‘allies’ to ‘enemies’, exemplifies the hentai streaming platform wars between legal
and pirate platforms.
Following Hentai Haven’s closure and FAKKU’s apparent disinterest in expanding its
hentai anime offer, new players entered the hentai streaming arena, capitalizing on
12
this unstable situation. Owing to both platforms’ popularity, FAKKU’s dispute with
Hentai Haven garnered significant media coverage in specialized publications
(D’Anastasio 2019; Martinez 2019; Peters 2019), while most other streaming
platforms focused on Japanese pornographic animation do not receive this level of
attention from the press. Hence, conflicts within the hentai anime streaming
ecosystem largely remain unnoticed, beyond the awareness of its own consumers
on social media. As a result, enumerating the many informal and formal movements
that occur during the platformization of hentai anime would be exceedingly
challenging at best, and, given the few numbers of legally incorporated streaming
companies, most likely unfeasible.
Nowadays, one notable pirate platform in this space is Hanime.tv, launched in 2015
under the name freeanimehentai.net before rebranding in 2016, as documented on
the Wayback Machine. The platform offers both free, advertising-supported viewing
and paid premium accounts, and its logo features the black silhouette of character
Aya Shameimaru from the popular Japanese game series Touhou Project
(1996–present).
Opposed to FAKKU and Hentai Haven, data regarding the administration of
Hanime.tv is scarce, not uncommon with ‘black box’ platforms. However, despite the
challenges posed by the opacity of informal distribution platforms, it is crucial not to
perceive them as inherently impenetrable. Instead, it asks us to rely on alternative
methodologies. Epistemological examples of this resistance can be found in recent
studies, such as Paasonen’s (2022) policy analysis of platform Pornhub and
Stegeman and Jokubauskaitė’s (2022) autoethnographic examination of
non-user-generated content pornographic websites. In both cases, the absence of
data shared by private companies, or of data proven to be verifiable beyond
branding strategies, hindered these researchers from relying on traditional platform
analysis methods that commonly utilize publicly available information from
companies listed on the stock exchange. In the case of Hanime.tv, it is necessary to
critically engage with the lack of available data and to see it as generative, instead of
limiting. For example, it is common for users to present themselves as CEOs of
Hanime.tv, taking advantage of the opacity associated with hentai streaming
platforms. On Crunchbase, one user named ‘T. Okazaki’ (sometimes ‘Maria Chan’) is
13
listed as the CEO of Hanime.tv under ‘Hanime LLC’, a company said to have closed
back on 11 January 2011.11
Using both non-participant observation and digital ethnography, what can be learned
about hentai streaming platforms by critically engaging with what is and is not
available? As of January 2024, Hanime.tv hosts almost 3000 hentai anime videos
and attracts an average of 135.7 million monthly visits,12 establishing itself as the
leading hentai anime platform in the USA – Nhentai.net could be considered a strong
competitor with its 231 million monthly visits, but it exclusively focuses on distributing
hentai manga; in contrast, fellow pirate website Hentaihaven.xxx receives an
average of 84 million monthly visits. Meanwhile, FAKKU stays behind with an
average of 4 million monthly visits.
The success of Hanime.tv can be attributed to its efforts of presenting itself as a
legitimate platform: for instance, the Hanime.tv app has been available in the
Android catalogue since 2016, and the platform offers public statements regarding
issues such as child pornography, software license agreements, terms of use, and
privacy policies. However, as Hanime.tv is not a legally incorporated company, these
statements serve as mere smokescreens for the illegal activities facilitated by the
website and cannot be enforced. Moreover, upon closer examination, it becomes
apparent that Hanime.tv’s privacy statement has been plagiarized from other
platforms. For instance, its introductory sentence ‘If you have general questions
about your account or how to contact Customer Service for assistance, please visit
our Twitter Online Help Center’13 is found on other hentai anime platforms, such as
hentai.tv, yeshentai.club, hentaicore.com, and yeshentai.net, in addition to clearly
being copy-pasted from then-Twitter’s own policy documents. Despite Hanime.tv’s
claim that it allows the uploading of videos, there is also no evidence of
user-generated content on the website aside from playlists and comments.14 While
Hanime.tv is not the only pirate streaming platform to maintain a veneer of legality to
gain users’ trust, it exemplifies the strategies employed to normalized an
unregulated, pirate streaming environment.
Platforming of pirate hentai anime comprises a few major contenders and numerous
smaller entities. If Hanime.tv adopts a branding strategy to present itself as a
legitimate entity, on the other hand, a platform like Hentaihaven.xxx has a different
14
approach, openly advertising against its competitors, both legal and illegal. A
message prominently displayed on its front page asserts:
We proclaim ourselves as the successor of HentaiHaven.org, and by sending
FAKKU to hell, we become HENTAIHAVEN.XXX, the best page to watch free hentai
transmissions. [ ... ] For this to work, we will need your support to send to the trash
can [the other hentai platforms]. (Homepage of Hentaihaven.xxx, accessed 9
November 2024, hentaihaven.xxx)15
By using a name inspired from Hentai Haven, Hentaihaven.xxx seeks to capitalize
off the former website’s popularity to redirect traffic to its own platform.
The diverse forms of platformization in hentai anime is better understood thanks to a
comprehensive classification into two primary categories:
. The first category comprises legally incorporated companies that operate
within the broader anime streaming market and are thus influenced by its
trends and shifts.
. The second category consists of illicit entities that rely on pirated content
and operate outside industry regulations. This category can be further
subdivided into two subcategories:
– Platforms that mimic legitimate websites to deceive viewers into
purchasing premium subscriptions. These platforms often tout the use
of non-traceable crypto- currencies to lure users.
– Platforms that solely aim to generate revenue from advertising
without any concern for building a brand and loyal audience.
As such, given their significant popularity, pirate hentai streaming platforms in all of
their diversity must be included in our understanding of the hentai streaming market
if we are to fully grasp its internal dynamics and ecology. In the context of platforming
hentai anime, the disputes between major players in the industry are arguably less
about industrial strategies than about capturing lucrative viewership. While an
industry player like FAKKU might aim to establish itself as a major legal platform,
most hentai streaming websites show little to no interest in entering the mainstream
15
anime streaming market. Instead, they prefer to operate within an informal
distribution system where pornographic content can circulate without regulatory
constraints from governing bodies, or in need of strategic considerations. On
platforms for which user participation and data are valuable commodities, as is the
case for streaming services, this preference for remaining in the realm of illegality
may be driven by a desire to maintain control over these aspects.
Beyond the platform wars
But beneath this ‘legal versus pirate’ conflict that seems to rhythm the hentai
streaming platform wars, we can draw the contours of a struggling animated
pornography genre during the platform era, as it struggles to stabilize into a
legitimate cultural and economic industry of adult content. Hanime.tv’s content is
frequently erased from Google searches following DCMA claims made by various
stakeholders in the platforming of hentai market, including company Viz Media,
FAKKU, the Japanese Creators Alliance, and the Japanese anime platform
Getchu.16 Since Hanime.tv is not a legally recognized entity, it is nearly impossible
for legal authorities to successfully remove copyrighted content from the platform,
thus leaving stakeholders with only DMCA infringement claims as solutions. This list
provides us with insights into the international stakeholders involved in the ongoing
hentai streaming platforms wars: big media companies, legally incorporated
platforms, and artist-based organizations, and the tools accessible to them against
piracy.
However, as explained in this example and earlier, the proliferation of pirate hentai
anime streaming platforms within an unregulated ecosystem complicates
techno-solutionist strategies such as tracking down pirated content and
deplatforming illegal platforms. The metaphor of the ‘hentai streaming platform wars’
demonstrates the need for structural changes not only in hentai anime streaming, but
in animated porn streaming altogether. Indeed, this attachment to the distribution of
pirated animated content needs to be contextualized outside mainstream live-action
pornography, and rather as symptomatic of the exclusion of pornographic animation
during the platformization of porn.
16
Because animation is not initially perceived as a legitimate form of visual sexual
culture, as demonstrated by its structural exclusion from mainstream pornography (in
which it always exists at the margins), there are few initiatives in place to invest in it,
to protect it from deplatformization, and to recognize the labour force behind it. In an
interview, Grady expressed his frustration at seeing the popularity of pirate websites,
including Hentai Haven, within search engines, despite his own efforts to establish
FAKKU as the leading legal option for hentai in the USA and to support Japanese
artists. Grady’s decision to remove all unlicensed publications from the FAKKU
website in 2016 was a rare move in favour of creators within an industry that has
typically neglected to support them, which he explained as follows:
It’s heartbreaking to talk with an artist and have them explain that when they Google
their name, they don’t see their website, or their Twitter, or any way to actually
support them. All they see are pirated scans of their work that were uploaded
somewhere without their permission. This isn’t a problem unique to hentai, it’s an
issue with the anime and manga industry at large and the reason why so many
Japanese companies, publishers, and artists, blindly turn their back on their
overseas fans thinking we’re all pirates. Because for so many years that’s all we’ve
been to them, pirates. My goal with FAKKU is to change their perception of us and
removing scanlations (and giving our users a way to support their favourite artists) is
the next step. (Grady 2016)
The question of pirated content inevitably intersects with views over its
copyrightability as a cultural product.17 In her examination of pornography and
ownership, Kluková (2022) explains that this questioning stems from misguided
assumptions that pornography would either lack artistic value, be harmful to society,
or be immoral/obscene. Views over the copyrightability of porn are directly linked to
the categorization of the workers behind it. Over the years, initiatives (unions,
collectives, bills) to recognize the labour of porn workers have emerged across the
industry in order to acknowledge that the labour involved in sex work is ‘work’, an
assimilationism request that nonetheless ‘highlights not vulnerabilities easily
remedied by regulation but risks the state can ameliorate but never full fix (and
sometimes actually manufactures)’ (Berg 2021, 166), a pressing matter as the
stigmatization of sex work has consequences to threaten sexual education, body
17
autonomy, and the well-being of all of those who exist at the margins of
heteronormativity (McCabe and Conger 2019; Blunt and Wolf 2020; Bronstein 2021).
However, pornographic animation still struggles to be included in this discussion as a
copyrighted media; that is, a media whose labour is being recognized, in part
because of the lack of clearly identified (and often stigmatized) ‘porn workers’. On
the platform Pornhub, animated porn content creators are not allowed to join their
exclusivity programme due to concerns about ownership of original characters and
illustrations: ‘Currently we do not offer exclusivity for Animated, Audio, Gameplay, or
Compilations content creators because the original characters and/or illustrations
appearing in the video may not belong to the uploader’ (Pornhub Help 2024). This
means that an initiative made to support content creators on the platform and
increase their revenue share excludes animated media producers, despite the fact
that animation creators still have to submit similar verification videos and biometrics
data to live-action performers in order to be verified. Another example is the
exclusion of animation from the AVN Awards: animated content is no longer awarded
at the AVN Awards for members of the porn industry. The last Best Animated
Release award was handed to Alice in Wonderland: A XXX Animation Parody (2011)
in 2012 at the 29th edition, before the category was eliminated altogether. In the
context of pornographic animation, the issue of recognizing its labour force as
legitimate is twofold: first, it involves acknowledging that the labour involved in sex
work is indeed ‘work’; and, second, it implies recognizing that animated porn content
producers may also need to be considered as porn workers themselves.
The establishment of a healthy hentai anime streaming ecosystem will require that
pornographic animation be integrated into broader discussions about platforming
pornography, including those on governance, anti-sex policies, labour, and not
confined to specialized subcultures summarily fighting about piracy.
Conclusion
The conflict between FAKKU and Hentai Haven summarized under the ‘hentai
streaming platforms wars’ metaphor serves as a gateway to understanding the
broader dynamics of pornographic animation’s platform governance. Using this
figure of speech highlights not only the copyright disputes that have historically been
18
present during the platforming of Japanese pornographic animation, but also the
deeper issues of legitimacy and recognition within the animated pornography
industry. Understanding the dynamics between streaming platforms as these
navigate complex intersections of legality, piracy, and cultural production in a
landscape that often overlooks animated pornography is crucial for rethinking what
happens to animation during the platformization of porn, and to pornography during
the platformization of animation.
While copyright disputes can garner significant media coverage, establishing a
hentai streaming platform ecosystem that transcends conflicts will require
recognizing animation within the pornographic industry, beyond a subculture genre
existing in the margins. If the metaphor of the ‘hentai streaming platform wars’ offers
valuable insights into the challenges faced by the hentai anime streaming industry,
addressing these requires more than just monitoring pirated content but demands
structural changes in how we perceive and value animated pornographic media
altogether.
Notes
1. For example, Japanese animated film Cleopatra: Queen of Sex was promoted
as the first ‘X-rated cartoon’, even though Cleopatra hardly even qualified as
pornographic.
2. ‘To those outside the fandom, who thought that “watching cartoons in a
language you can’t understand” just showed how weird and geeky anime fans
were, it was all too easy to turn the word into the derogatory “jap animation.”
Those who had an agenda to portray all anime as super-violent and
super-erotic like Urotsukidoji even twisted the word into JaPORNimation’
(Patten, 2014, 85–86).
3. The issue is available online:
https://www.newsweek.com/holy-akira-its-aeon-flux-182652.
4. This reaction remained typical of the early anime American fandom that
tended to distance itself from pornographic media altogether.
5. The conversation took place on the Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.anime.misc
and was archived on Google Groups:
19
https://groups.google.com/g/rec.arts.anime.misc/c/uC-eMOQ-FTA/m/K6zBnI_
GN8wJ
6. The tweet is available on Jacob Grady’s X account:
https://x.com/largehotcoffee/status/1555266404793794560
7. The statement is archived on the Know Your Meme platform:
https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1510676-hentai-haven
8. Including high-profile social media personalities, like Youtuber PewDiePie who
tweeted on 21 December 2018: ‘You deserved so much more than this.
[crying emoji] Rip ... ’. An archived version of the tweet is accessible online:
https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1442535-hentai-haven
Papa HH’s tweet is archived on the Wayback Machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/20190707162412/https:/twitter.com/realpapahh/st
atus/114786057573029478
9. As of 8 July 2019, the matter appears to be resolved between all parties, with
Papa HH sharing a statement on his official X account: ‘Now, could we both
have handled that better? Yes, we could’ve. I shouldn’t have overreacted and
he should’ve gotten back to me sooner. We both talked about this in private
and have resolved any beef there.’ The full statement is available online:
https://x.com/realpapahh/status/1149618904316071944
10.The Crunchbase profile can be accessed online:
https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/hanime
11. The data were obtained via the Semrush’s Traffic Analytics tool:
https://www.semrush.com/analytics/traffic/overview/?q=hanime.tv&searchTyp
e=domain&compareWith=fakku.net:domain.
12.The privacy statement can be accessed on Hanime.tv:
https://hanime.tv/privacy
13.Something additional to note is that at the beginning of this study in July 2022,
hanime.tv hosted 2928 hentai anime, and that by March 2024 the number had
barely changed.
14.The full statement can be found online at the bottom of the homepage on
Hentaihaven.xxx: https://hentaihaven.xxx
15.This research method is refined by the embedded DMCA claims on the
Google search engine, which I was able to access through the Lumen
database project.
20
16.I thank Kate Sinclaire, a law student at the University of Ottawa and
sex-worker rights advocate, for bringing this issue to my attention.
Acknowledgements
The author started writing this article in 2022 following the publication of the ‘Anime
Streaming Platform Wars’, and it has known many versions since then. The author
thanks everyone who pro- vided feedback throughout the years and helped sharpen
their understanding of animated porn distribution. The author is also grateful to Marc
Steinberg and to colleagues at the Platform Lab for pushing to critically think about
the industry of anime streaming.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
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