Hentai has never been so popular Hardcore Japanese animations could soon replace traditional pornography

Watching porn has never been more complicated. Across the entire European Union, following the lead of the United Kingdom, accessing any kind of adult content, from major platforms like PornHub to social media sites like X.com, now requires official age verification. A regulatory crackdown that has put one of the most profitable digital entertainment industries in serious difficulty. Wired reports that major adult streaming websites have been pressuring Apple, Google, and Microsoft to find alternative solutions to block minors from accessing pornographic content without causing a collapse in adult traffic, which ultimately sustains the business. And while traditional porn is entering an unprecedented moment of uncertainty, a new category is rapidly rising: hentai.

What is hentai?

In Japanese, the word hentai literally means “pervert”, but in common usage, it refers to the entire universe of sexually explicit content related to manga, anime, and even video games. With the global boom of Japanese media during and after 2020, their erotic counterpart has also experienced a dramatic surge in searches. In 2024, the most viewed category on PornHub was “hentai,” surpassing the long-time dominance of the keyword “lesbians,” which had reigned undefeated since 2022.

Hentai is not a simple replacement for porn, as they are almost always built on complex narratives, imaginary worlds, and aesthetics that could never exist in real life. The key difference is that porn, at the end of the day, is an audiovisual product depicting realistic sexual acts performed by real actors, shot to elicit immediate arousal. In the Japanese genre, the main selling point relies on total fiction, where the body is no longer a biological or ethical limit but a graphic element through which fantasies become exaggerated, sometimes surreal, and often cross boundaries that would be impossible to depict, or enact, in reality (including the suspicious presence of tentacles).

The case of “yaoi”

It is precisely this distance from reality that transforms hentai from mere erotic content into a true subculture, with its own codes, languages, and deeply dedicated global communities. Among all its branches, one in particular seems to have captured millions of Gen Z users, especially women, becoming a genuine cultural phenomenon: yaoi, or Boys’ Love.

The genre, which portrays homoerotic relationships often marked by drama, toxicity, or heightened romantic tension, is not new, but in recent years it has undergone an interesting transformation. In 2020, it was still considered a taboo territory, almost a guilty pleasure to consume in secret. By 2025, however, the landscape has completely changed. Thanks to the normalization of anime aesthetics, the growth of TikTok, and the explosion of fan edits as Gen Z’s dominant visual language, yaoi has suddenly become an “acceptable” trend, or at least no longer a clandestine one.

On TikTok, videos parodying classic genre tropes (the “bad boy” yearner, the jealous childhood friend, the rival-turned-lover) are everywhere, while fans openly discuss ships and dynamics on X. Even Google Trends recorded a peak in interest in 2021, which later plummeted until January of this year.

Do hentai encourage gender violence?

And yet, even if traditional porn and hentai work in different ways, their impact on sexual imagination often ends up being very similar. As reported by KQED, hentai has long been criticized for its violent scenarios, ethically questionable dynamics, or fantasies that could not exist in real life. The ability to animate anything, from surreal situations to fantasy elements suddenly coming alive, makes the boundaries of representation almost infinite, raising issues that go far beyond artistic provocation.

A study from the University of Porto examined the link between hentai consumption and adherence to so-called rape myths, meaning those cultural beliefs that minimize or normalize sexual violence. Based on a sample of 906 university students, researchers identified a positive correlation between frequency of consumption and acceptance of problematic narratives, particularly in the categories “stereotyped representations of rape” and “personal invulnerability”.

The porn industry 2.0

The point is not to demonize hentai itself, but to acknowledge how it is perceived by young audiences. Many users see it as «cartoon porn», something far removed from real violence, almost harmless — and that distance lowers the viewer’s critical defenses. Adding to the complexity is the representation of the female body, which in hentai is often altered, exaggerated, or rendered disproportionate in ways that push the aesthetic far beyond traditional manga standards.

Gigantic breasts, impossible curvy bodies, or on the contrary, infantilized features and faces that rely on ambiguous and questionable dynamics. This mix of hypersensualization and infantilization makes many works in the genre more problematic than traditional porn, especially for those still forming their idea of body, desire, and consent. And in a moment when access to pornography is increasingly regulated, while a portion of Gen Z shapes its romantic and erotic imagination through fanfiction, edits, and romantasy smut, hentai risks entering the cultural landscape as a reference point without being recognised as such.