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Why “The Crunchyroll of Hentai” Failed to Take Off
In 2016, a former pirate manga website tried to take a current pirate hentai anime website legit. It went horribly sideways.
By Jay Andrew Allen
Anime is one of Japan’s most successful exports. But mainstream news coverage pays little attention to its controversial cousin. Visual and animated pornography, or hentai (ヘンタイ), also known simply as H, or ecchi, exists in a world of its own.
Mainstream manga and anime in the United States have mostly moved from piracy to licensed legitimacy. By contrast, much of the hentai market there remains pirated. In the 2010s, one company tried to legalize hentai anime’s largest pirate site. The result was chaos.
Aurélie Petit is a PhD Candidate at Concordia University, Montreal, whose work focuses on the intersection of technology, animation, and sexuality. In her latest paper, she looks at how the “war” between FAKKU and hentai pirate streaming sites played out. She also digs into why Japanese animated pornography still struggles for recognition even within the larger porn industry.
Note: Much of this article is based on Aurélie Petit’s paper The hentai platform streaming wars, with her permission. This article elides some of the rich details in Petit’s research to tell a story. We encourage you to read her work in full…
