Trigger warning: The following content could be triggering to certain readers. Discretion is advised.

Among the thousands of messages we receive, many are from people who say they are struggling with a different form of pornography, one that they say is just as addictive. Although most everything we post deals with hardcore sexually explicit images and videos of people having sex, there have been many who say that they are struggling with a form of porn that doesn’t include real human beings at all.

hen·tai

henˈtī/

noun

a subgenre of the Japanese genres of manga and anime, characterized by

overtly sexualized characters and sexually explicit images and plots.

Hentai porn is a relatively new wave of pornographic material that has become extremely popular over the last decade. The word hentai is a word of Japanese origin which is short for hentai seiyoku–a perverse sexual desire. In Japanese, the term describes any type of perverse or bizarre sexual desire or act. Internationally, hentai is a term used to broadly categorize the genre of anime and manga pornography.

Cartoon porn, particularly hentai, has become increasingly popular and is now one of the most searched terms of internet porn. According to last year’s Pornhub analytics detailing the most popular search terms on their site, cartoon was the second most popular category, and hentai specifically ranked #16 in the top 20 in the United States. In the most popular searches worldwide, hentai nearly cracked the top 10 searches, ranking at #11 of all countries put together. Needless to say, this new wave of porn is taking the internet by storm.

Related: How Hentai Porn & Chat Rooms Distorted My Sexuality

The animated porn depicts highly exaggerated sex acts featuring characters with impossibly large body parts, and specializes in featuring disturbing fetishes like animal tentacles, children (particularly little girls), and incest. It is common for monsters, demons, animals, giant insects, and plants to rape cartoon women. Women and girls in hentai look like a mixture of adult and child with rosy cheeks and all. The categories of woman and child are blurred, because neither is off sexual limits. A consistent theme in hentai is sexy innocence. Adult women, teens, and children are fused into one. The large eyes, childlike expressions, and hairless bodies with tiny, petit frames are combined with massive breasts and extreme porn star sexual behavior.

Many supporters of hentai argue that it is porn that is safer and more ethical to view. After all, they reason, it’s not exploiting real human beings and is not linked to issues associated with real porn like prostitution and human sex trafficking. They claim that because it’s just drawings, it is not harmful to the viewer. And while we can understand why people have this perception, the reality is a much different story.

Hentai Is Anything But Harmless

The fact is, hentai porn wouldn’t exist without regular porn, and it only furthers the demand for it to be produced. Everything in real porn can be found in hentai; one wouldn’t exist without the other. And even though cartoons are not real bodies, cartoon porn ideology can encourage men to commit violence against women and girls; it makes sexual violence a form of entertainment. Rape porn is abundant in cartoon porn, as are many other forms of degrading and demeaning sexual abuse, frequently toward children. Animated or not, that’s not good.

According to an article on the subject by Estela Lopez, even though a cartoon porn consumer might not initially look for pictures of young girls, he will eventually find them. On one site, dress-up games (strip games) involve children. In another, the player clicks through some text to reach a little girls room, where they can then touch her while she sleeps. In another game, the objective is to remove clothes from the girl, Meina, in the correct order. If the player does so incorrectly, he has to start over again. Her cheeks get rosier the more clothing is stripped from her.

This form of legal child pornography is called “lolicon,” a sub-genre of hentai. Lolicon is intended to look like young girls or even toddlers. The children are often portrayed as frightened or resisting, but they are also shown enjoying sexual abuse. It goes without saying that cartoon child pornography is dangerous because it normalizes children as appropriate sexual partners. When a female child is sexualized, the social norms that protect children as off limits to male sexual use is chipped away and blurred. Any form of pornography that portrays women as children or that portrays children as sex-objects might fuel an increase in child sexual abuse; the depiction of children in pornography legitimizes child sexual abuse.

Related: How Porn & Technology Are Creating Sexless Japanese Millennials

Cartoon-pornographers violate children’s spaces by making famous, non-sexual cartoons into pornography. The multibillion dollar filmed prostitution industry does not need any more power, but pornographers keep spreading their tentacles into any environment. Hardcore porn of familiar cartoon characters is dangerous for children, because children’s boundaries are being violated if they see these images.

One recent message we received from a female Fighter shows hentai’s real effect on real people:

“I’ve been a member in this movement for more than a year now and I noticed FTND hasn’t touched on this one particular topic: “hentai” (a western term for “anime porn” or Japanese animation porn). A little more than a decade ago, (I’m 21 now) it was my gateway drug to porn addiction. It’s an interesting topic to touch upon as it’s a popular subculture of porn amongst children and youths during the past decade and today.

Hentai sexualizes just about everything from incest to bestiality. Rape and underaged kids being the top common themes. There are even hentai forms of innocent children anime shows such as Pokemon, Dragon Ball Z, and Cartoon Network characters in extreme porn.

It is very unfortunate that plenty of the kids and my peers today are getting their “sex education” from watching anime porn and/or reading hentai “mangas” (Japanese comic books) as well as hentai “doujinishi’s” (self-published or amateur Japanese comic books). Many parents and older generations are not aware of this porn subculture, which gives more advantage for kids to get further sucked into their porn addictions.

My ex and I started to feel a little guilty about watching live porn so we decided to turn to hentai mangas as an alternative to watching porn. This, however, further escalated his sex addiction and he would feed it by watching anime porn multiple times behind my back and during our temporary break ups.

Many people who have struggled with hentai say that it is worse than live porn because the themes tend to be hardcore—the males sometimes have extremely large phalluses and the female bodies are unnaturally “perfect” looking and hypersexualized. A few other porn addicts I have bumped into also said hentai was their gateway drug to live hardcore porn. I’ve also witnessed heartbreaking moments online where young males have expressed that they can’t get turned on by real females because their brains have been rewired into thinking anime-looking females are a lot more attractive. This reduces their chances of getting a real partner.

I would also like to share an unfortunate experience, My past boyfriend was so obsessed with anime females and anime porn that he had them on all his profile pictures and wallpapers. He told me multiple times that he had no friends and once made a “joke” that these anime females (who obviously look nothing like me) on his desktop wallpapers were keeping him company. His usage of porn and non-stop gaming fueled his isolation from the real world. In the end, he chose these flawless looking anime pixel characters over his own real partner.

Bringing up this important topic to the public would be key to educating and spreading further awareness on the harmful effects of porn amongst children, youths, and adults today. It would definitely make many youths question and open their eyes. Porn is porn regardless of what form it’s in. Thank you so much for all the brilliant works you do. I and many other people, including porn addicts out there, truly appreciate it. You guys are awesome!“

-F.

Why This Matters

This message shows that porn is porn, regardless of if it is real people or exaggerated animated characters. Hentai and other cartoon porn is about the complete control and exploitation of the female character, even if it’s a child. Cartoon porn producers invade children’s entertainment and female characters are never safe from becoming a violated, degraded sex object. Even though this stuff is not available on TV, children with access to the internet will find it while searching for familiar cartoon characters and likely be traumatized by it. This frequently leads to what can become a lifelong obsession to porn.

Related: Why Watching Porn Is An Escalating Behavior

With more advanced technology, porn will keep spreading and evolving. As evident in computer-enhanced cartoon porn, technology makes the images more flesh-like. Even if it’s just animated pixels on a screen, pornography that makes rape and abuse look sexy will continue to make the world a harmful and difficult place for women and children.

What YOU Can Do

Speak out on the harmful effects of porn, in all of its forms. SHARE this article and spread the word on these facts.

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