In the world ofAnime, characters likeDragon Ball’s Goku,One Piece’s Luffy,My Hero Academia’s Deku, andJujutsu Kaisen’s Gojo are instantly recognizable heroes who have steadily built up the genre for years, turning this medium into a go-to way to consume Japanese entertainment. But on the opposite side of that spectrum,a new NSFW report has revealed that anime’s more risqué subsection called hentai has yet again topped the list for the most searched term on the adults-only website PornHub, setting a record for itself in the process.
Defined in English as “a genre of Japanese mangaand anime characterized by overtly sexualized characters and sexually explicit images and plots,”“hentai” originated as a Japanese term that stretches back a centuryand at first had nothing to do with the raunchy images and animated clips the word is associated with today.
Yet in more recent decades “hentai” has almost synonymously been used in relation to this explicitly animated genre, with a report shared on X by Miles (@Real_Kilometers) officially revealing thatfor the fourth year running, the number one search on the NSFW website PornHub was “hentai."
“Hentai” Tops Pornhub’s Most-Searched List of 2024 for the Fourth Year in a Row
Data Chart Shared by Miles (@Real_Kilometers)
Claiming the number one spot on PornHub’s most-searched term list for 2024, Miles notes, “Hentai’s rise can be seen as an early indicator ofanime’s looming explosion in popularityduring the pandemic,” something that makes sense given how Miles also mentions that “anime” as a search term has cracked the top ten on the site as well. Providing an analytical chart sourced from PornHub Insights and Google Trends, Miles shows how,just over a decade ago, hentai wasn’t even in the site’s top 20 searches, but with interest in anime steadily growing over the years, the genre has benefitted exponentially.
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A genre populated by hot and steamy page-turners, sexually-charged animated videos, and even the more recent use of 3D animation to replace traditional artwork, hentai offers viewers content featuring well-known and obscure fetishes, subgenres involving bondage and tentacles, erotic stories with actual character development, and more, with hentai being a driving force behind what helps the porn industry succeed. Furthermore, when it comes to non-sanctioned fan-made content,there will always be unofficial ways for hentai to grow as a genre, with some going so far as to insertpopular anime charactersinto situations their official counterparts would never be allowed.
Hentai is Becoming an Incredibly Popular Genre For the Adults-Only Crowd
Though it’s admittedly odd to see anime anywhere near an NSFW conversation like this — especially in the context of what’s being reported on here —it can be argued that hentai wasalwaysgoing to become as popular as it is now, and, similarly to the porn industry’s meteoric growth, will use said demand to expand further its niche way of producing racy animated content.Animeisn’t going anywhere anytime soon, and consideringhentairides on the coattails of the genre’s continued success, it can be expected that the same will go for this X-rated take on the category moving forward.
