People the world over are hot for hentai.
Hentai, a form of animated pornography, has been the top search term on Pornhub for the past several years, claiming the No.1 spot in 2024 and 2025, according to the NSFW site.
Further, searches for the term have increased 8% over the past half-decade, suggesting an ever-expanding fan base is keeping cartoon smut on top.
A subgenre of manga and anime, hentai is characterized by explicit imagery, stylized characters, and fantastical, sometimes controversial, scenarios.
The word itself is an abbreviation of the Japanese hentai seiyoku, which translates to “perversion.”
And globally speaking, cartoon perversion prevails.
Within Pornhub, the term encompasses everything from video game characters and anime-inspired cosplay to fully rendered 3D animations and beyond.
“Hentai’s sustained run as the world’s top search term since 2021 highlights this unique genre’s global appeal,” Alex Kekesi, vice president of brand and community at Pornhub, told The Post.
The history of hentai dates back to the 17th century and Japan’s Edo period, when erotic illustrations known as shunga were widely circulated and depicted scenes like a naked woman in the carnal embrace of two octopuses.
Featuring an ever-expanding landscape of kink, modern hentai depicts fantastical and exaggerated sex acts and includes characters with wildly distorted body parts.
Who exactly is preferring this unexpected porn category?
Pornhub reports that Gen Z views the category 171% more than any other age group, a generational leaning that Needle believes reflects their increasingly digital existence.
“Many younger audiences who already engage with anime, gaming, and digital fandom culture encounter hentai as a natural extension of the media they already consume, whereas older generations were introduced to sexual media primarily through live-action formats,” Dr. Rachel Needle, a licensed psychologist and the co-director of Modern Sex Therapy Institutes, told The Post.
She shared that in a landscape driven by rapid consumption and algorithmic discovery, the novelty, extremity, and creativity of hentai are particularly appealing to young adults.
Additionally, evidence suggests that younger generations are more attuned to ethical concerns around the production of erotic content. In kind, and kink, many hentai fans argue that the content is safer and less shame-inducing than IRL porn, as no actual humans are being filmed/exploited.
Globally, hentai viewership skews toward men, with Pornhub revealing that the global audience breakdown is 38.5% female and 61.5%.
However, when comparing viewing patterns between genders, women are 43% more likely than men to watch hentai.
Some experts maintain that hentai is less likely to cause body issues in viewers as opposed to AI or airbrushed human porn.
“Live-action sexual imagery/pornography tends to shape expectations around real human bodies and sexual performance because viewers are watching actual people. That can lead to direct comparisons with oneself or one’s partner,” said Needle.
Experts, like Needle, maintain that the appeal of hentai is driven by a combination of psychological, technological and cultural factors.
“Hentai occupies a unique psychological space — it removes the constraints of physical reality, allowing for fantasy exploration that live-action content simply can’t replicate,” Needle explained.
“From a psychological perspective, hentai allows people to explore fantasies that may feel taboo, unrealistic, or difficult to engage with in real life. Because the characters are animated, viewers may experience fewer social or moral inhibitions when consuming the material,” explained Needle.
Because cartoons know no bounds, be it legal or physical, hentai occupies a limitless space where anything can and does happen, offering fantasy fulfillment rather than a mirror of reality.
“From the genteel eroticism of shunga to the garish carnival of today’s hentai, a common thread persists: an embrace of sexuality’s imaginative side. Hentai asks, “What if…?” and answers it with drawn dreams (or nightmares) unchained by physical reality,” writes Javan Anderson in her Pop Culture History of Hentai.
On that nightmare tip, critics note that within the hentai category, female characters are often a hybridization of adult, teen, and child, where tiny frames, hairless bodies, and childlike expressions are coupled with, if you’ll excuse the pun, cartoonishly large breasts.
This aesthetic is consistent with the theme of “sexy innocence” that pervades hentai content. Within the genre, content that sexualizes girls is called “lolicon,” or “loli,” a lecherous nod to Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Lolita. The sexualization of boys is dubbed shotacon.
Critics argue that hentai encourages adults to see minors, especially girls, as legitimate targets of sexual violence.
However, Needle notes that consumption of this content does not necessarily beget action.
“Engaging with fictional sexual content does not automatically translate into a desire to act out those scenarios in real life,” said Needle.
“In many cases, fantasy media can function as a psychological outlet for curiosity or imagination without crossing into behavior,” she continued.
Still, she notes that when it comes to arousal, the brain responds to cues and doesn’t distinguish between ‘real’ and ‘drawn.’
“Hentai exploits this by amplifying those cues beyond anything nature produces. Exaggerated proportions and impossible scenarios hit the reward circuitry harder in some people than others.”
She shared that over time, some viewers may require increasingly intense or unusual stimuli to achieve the same level of arousal.
“This phenomenon can contribute to a form of desensitization or escalation for certain individuals, although this is not universal and depends greatly on personal habits, frequency of use, and individual psychology.”
