Like many 90s kids, Charlie* was big into Pokémon. He loved the anime show and used to collect, trade and play with Pokémon cards. Like many 90s kids, Charlie also discovered free internet pornography as he hit puberty. As any horny teenager with an internet connection knows, seemingly unconnected interests can very easily come together. “One day, around the age of 14, I had the idea of typing ‘Pokeporn’ into Google to see what would pop up,” he recounts. The rest is history—years down the line, I came across Charlie listing the Pokémon he’d be happy to fuck on the subreddit r/PokePorn.

This subreddit has a solid 88,490 subscribers and delivers daily uploads of PokéPorn in all its colourful, varied glory. There’s nude sketches of Pokémon trainers, there’s drawings of all sorts of Pokémon sporting throbbing human dicks and bulging breasts (known among the community as ‘anthro’), there’s illustrations of many other Pokémon with more natural, animalistic sexual features (known as ‘feral’). And there’s plenty of fucking—between trainers, between Pokémon, and between trainers and Pokémon. Reddit is home to a number of other PokéPorn subreddits, such as r/GayPokePorn and r/PokeFutanari, a page dedicated to the futanari genre of hentai, where single characters are depicted with both male and female sexual traits.

But that’s just Reddit. Prior to its recent nudity ban, Tumblr hosted many collections of PokéPorn; DeviantArt continues to, as do sites like Pixiv and Newgrounds. The most unadulterated stream of Pokémon-themed pornography can be found on the Gelbooru and e621 image boards—the former hosts a broad range of hentai and adult anime, making it ideal for Pokémon trainer porn; the latter is dedicated to NSFW furry and anthropomorphic content, meaning you can most certainly smash one out to ‘em all on there. Free porn sites such as Pornhub are also home to PokéPorn anime, live action porn scenes with performers in Pikachu costumes, and 3D animations of Lugia—the front-cover mascot of Pokemon Silver—auto-fellating itself.

The popularity of PokéPorn is perhaps unsurprising. According to the infallible wisdom of Rule 34, if it exists, there’s porn of it. The 20-year-old Pokémon franchise has lost none of its popularity, spawning endless video games, anime, and the surreal horror of the upcoming Detective Pikachu adaptation. Following the release of Pokémon Go, the mobile app briefly became more popular than internet porn, concurrently causing a 136 percent spike in Pokémon porn searches. Let’s not forget that the earliest record of Pokémon erotica was approved by Nintendo themselves. It was, after all, in the original 1998 Pokémon Red / Blue game that Pewter City gym leader Brock unashamedly declared: “My Pokémon are all rock hard.”

Arwen Datnoid is a Toronto-based creator of adult content. She performs in videos spanning everything from amateur blowjobs to dragon dildos. Within the Pokémon franchise, she’s cosplayed as Misty, Nurse Joy and Officer Jenny. This is partly out of her own Pokémon fandom, partly out of her enjoyment of scripting escapist fantasies, and partly out of custom video requests—her Misty footjob video was commissioned by a fan. “When it comes to Pokemon, a lot of little boys had a crush on all of the major girls from Pokemon,” Arwen tells me, describing how the human characters were designed to be cute, beautiful, charming women. “Growing up and experiencing life kinda sucks, especially for a lot of dudes who find themselves trapped in labour jobs or far off places like oil rigs or Alaska.” At some point, these men look for porn and find a cosplay performer acting out a dream scene with one of the favourite childhood characters. “It gets to be an escape for them, they can return to a simple time but with an adult twist,” she says.

“I guess it has to do with how it's the rare kind of franchise where Rule 34 encompasses both the hentai (trainers) and furry (Pokemon) universes, and how the franchise is so established that I'd wager it has upwards of 1000 unique characters (combining both types and all universes),” says Alain*, another fan of Pokémon porn. He first discovered the Pokémon universe as a teen, and came across its pornographic variety after becoming bored with regular porn and looking into fantasy videos. Both Alain and Charlie tell me that they started out searching for trainers. “There are plenty of attractive human characters in the Pokémon series, which was the main reason for me looking up ‘Pokeporn’ in the first place,” Charlie explains. After exposure to images of Pokémon alongside trainers, they both eventually became interested in anthro and feral.

As in the non-porn world of Pokémon anime and games, people have their favourite characters. According to Pornhub Communications Director Chris Jackson, the trainers Misty and Serena, as well as Team Rocket’s Jessie, are all in the porn site’s top 10 recent Pokémon-related searches. When it comes to Pokémon, Gardevoir, Eevee and Lopunny are the current top three. The dominance of Gardevoir and Lopunny is reflected on various PokéPorn sites, with Lucario usually not too far behind. As Charlie explains to me: “Gardevoir is much more human looking while also having a pretty design. Up until Generation III (where it was introduced), there weren’t any female humanoid Pokémon.” R-MK, a Malaysian artist who illustrates anthro Pokémon and characters from other franchises, tells me that Lopunny’s appeal might lie in its narrow hips and eyebrow-raising, giggly battle cry. “It seems like canine/felines/scalies are the more popular races for the anthro community,” the artist adds.

While places such as Reddit, Gelbooru and e621 have pages full of PokéPorn illustrations, they only host images. Other websites, such as DeviantArt and Patreon, have become popular places for PokéPorn artists to test out new ideas and monetize their work. Patreon is where Terufuu, an artist focused on erotic depictions of Pokémon trainers, currently makes $870 per month from 295 patrons. It’s also where R-MK shares exclusive content with their fans. R-MK was first drawn to creating Pokémon lewds by the pleasing design of Pokémon. “Game Freak [the Pokémon game developer] should be praised for their ability to make them unique yet simple,” the artist says. “There's about 800ish Pokémon out there and yet I can still draw (almost) all of them by memory, that's when you know their design really sticks.” R-MK mostly uses cel-shading and soft shading, with a focus on big breasts, big butts and big futanari dicks. It’s successful enough for them to earn their main income from Patreon and occasional commissions.

Regardless of its apparent popularity, PokéPorn isn’t without its controversies. Like some other Rule 34 porn, it relies on source material with primarily child characters. There are lolicon and shotacon collections of PokéPorn showing nude child trainers as children, which constitutes child pornography. On the r/PokéPorn subreddit and on platforms such as Patreon and DeviantArt, such content is illegal and efficiently moderated. Although the PokéPorn that I’ve seen strictly depicts fully-developed, adult sexual features on trainers, we nonetheless know that Misty is canonically a 10-year-old. This has led to various legal disputes over the status of some PokéPorn. The Canadian Criminal Code can treat both actual and imaginary representations of children as child pornography, while the 1st Amendment in the US should, in principle, protect artistic depictions of children. Both countries have seen successful court cases against individuals in possession of various pornographic manga.

None of the PokéPorn fans and artists I spoke are interested in lolicon and shotacon; Alain described it as “disgusting”. When it comes to resolving possible age conflicts between Pokémon canon and how they’re drawn by artists, approaches differ. R-MK steers clear from drawing human trainers. “If [the trainers are] from the [Pokémon anime] shows then it kinda doesn't tick me right cause of them being young'uns,” he says. “Even if you claim that they're ‘aged up’, there's just something ain't ticking right on me.” Alain attempts to discern whether a character has been drawn as an adult, while automatically avoiding anything that is tagged as underage. “Some people will see these fictional characters as children because that is what they’re supposed to be in their series,” says Charlie. “Others will see fictional characters as just that, fictional characters.” For Charlie, these characters are not real, so assumptions about them being children don’t really matter.

In spite of this controversy, PokéPorn shows no sign of disappearing—perhaps a result of its genre-crossing appeal, and the inherent nostalgic pull of one the most globally popular franchises of the past 20 years. “It's about time larger media outlets realize Rule 34 exists, is unavoidable, people will pay for it, and not everyone who draws and promotes it is a terrible deviant,” Alain says. “I see R34 as porn like any other porn, it just has a theme to it.”

* Names have been changed to protect anonymity.