[Update 8/2/2019:] It appears SadPanda has returned, as some people are reporting that they’re able to access exhentai once more. Whether or not it will stay up remains to be seen, but it’s at least back… for now.

[Original article:] The administrator of E-Hentai made a pitiful post over on the e-hentai forums, declaring that E-Hentai and SadPanda are going away. According to the post E-Hentai will be operable up until the end of 2020 unless something changes behind-the-scenes. He claims that this is due to new legislation in the Netherlands, and instead of finding a host outside of the Netherlands, he decided to just give up the fight.

The administrator, Tenboro, made a post on July 26th, 2019 writing…

“As some of you already know, I have been considering retirement from this site for some time due to a persistent tendon injury that makes it impossible to spend any extended time in front of a computer. This is why the last Galleries update took over a year to complete, and why there’s been no other updates to the rest of the site for almost two years. Still, the site has been operating normally even though I’ve only been able to put in the bare minimum work to keep it running, mostly thanks to the staff and the community in general. “Unfortunately, recent legislative changes in the Netherlands, confirmed by our host, has made it impossible to keep the status quo going. While it may have been possible to move the necessary servers to some other country with more lenient laws, at this point in time it’s probably a game of whack-a-mole, so even if I wanted to attempt it, the aforementioned tendon injury makes it impossible for me to play that game. “As such, certain changes have already been made, as you are all already aware of. “EH itself will continue operating at least until the end of 2020 unless anything unexpected happens, and possibly indefinitely beyond that. While I’m not really that interested in running a neutered site on a personal level, and considering the tendon injury and inevitable rioting that will take place, it is not unlikely that no more development will take place and that I will retire at that point – however, I do recognize the importance of this site, so the ultimate outcome here has not been settled, and will depend on a number of factors. “In the event that I retire, it has not yet been decided whether the existing staff will attempt to have a full successor established or whether it will be left to the existing mirror sites, but regardless of the outcome, I would arrange to have some sort of permanent archive hosted indefinitely.”

Earlier in the day there was a cryptic message from Maximum Joe on 4chan, who claimed that SadPanda was going down in a few hours, giving users a limited amount of time to archive and backup anything they felt was important from the site.

While both claimed that this was due to new legislation in the Netherlands, there were no reports about any legislation related to adult oriented material. The most recent reports were about public consultation and the new update regarding the implementation of the Dutch Remote Gambling Act, as reported by DLA Piper. There were also reports about parliament increasing exports of medical cannabis to Germany, as reported by Marijuana Business Daily, but nothing about adult content restrictions.

Regardless, SadPanda is toast and E-Hentai will be gone by the end of next year unless something changes. Either way it’s best you download and archive what you can while you can.

[Update:] After multiple people made multiple suggestions for saving the site, Tenboro updated the initial thread, writing…

“Update: I’m looking into various alternatives based on information and suggestions from a variety of people. But just to clarify; if a fully intact live version of the site cannot be made available, then the necessary data to clone it will be made available instead.”

(Thanks for the news tips Tomatotentacle and Animatic)