E-Hentai

E-Hentai is an image hosting and file sharing website focused on hentai (Japanese cartoon pornography). The site hosts user-generated image galleries primarily of pornographic content originating or derived from anime, manga, and video games, such as fanart, scanlations of manga and dōjinshi, and cosplay photographs. Its sister-site Exhentai (colloquially known as Sad Panda) was spun off from E-Hentai in 2010 to host artwork that depicts material that is illegal in certain jurisdictions, such as lolicon, shotacon, and bestiality.

E-Hentai
Type of site
Image hosting, file sharing
Available inEnglish
OwnerTenboro
URLe-hentai.org
LaunchedJuly 1, 1999 (1999-07-01)
Current statusActive

History

E-Hentai launched as a Yahoo Group on July 1, 1999. The group moved to a .net domain in 2001, before moving to its current .org domain in 2005 after ownership of its .net domain lapsed and was purchased by another party.[1] On March 27, 2010, E-Hentai announced that in response to pressure from advertisers, it would no longer host artwork depicting underage characters (lolicon and shotacon) and bestiality. Existing galleries containing this content were deleted from the site, amounting to the removal of approximately 30,000 of the website's 150,000 galleries; this content was later spun off onto Exhentai, a sister-site to E-Hentai.[2] Access to Exhentai requires an existing E-Hentai account; for individuals without an account, Exhentai appears as a blank page with the illustration "reminds me of you" by DeviantArt user Epiphany, which depicts a crying panda.[3] Exhentai consequently has earned the nickname "Sad Panda" among users of the site.[4]

On July 26, 2019, E-Hentai and Exhentai announced that both sites would shut down in response to "recent legislative changes in the Netherlands," where the servers of the sites were hosted at the time.[2][5] Vice speculated that the shutdown was in reaction to the April 2019 European Union Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market, which makes digital platforms legally liable for material posted by users that violates copyright, as well as a July 2019 proposal by Dutch Minister of Justice Ferdinand Grapperhaus to impose harsher punishments on websites that do not rapidly remove child pornography.[6] 24 hours of notice were given for the shutdown of Exhentai, leading users on the image board 4chan to attempt to archive the entire site, before it ultimately shuttered on July 27.[2][6] On August 2nd, 2019, Exhentai relaunched after its servers relocated to Moldova.[7]

Operations

Works posted to E-Hentai and Exhentai are typically pirated, and are uploaded without the consent or knowledge of the original creator.[8] The site is owned and operated by an anonymous moderator who uses the handle Tenboro,[6] and is funded through a combination of advertising revenue and donations; in 2009, E-Hentai estimated its annual hosting costs at USD$46,000, with donations covering "less than half" of operating costs.[2] In 2019, Tenboro stated that a persistent tendon injury limited their ability to perform timely maintenance on the website and that they were considering options for its future, such as naming a successor moderator or preserving the website as a permanent archive.[6][9]

Impact

Collectively, E-Hentai and Exhentai are one of the largest databases of hentai manga, and contain over 100,000 image galleries.[10] The site hosts both original Japanese hentai manga and scanlations in multiple languages, including Chinese, English, French, German, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Thai.[8] At its peak of popularity, the commercial web traffic company Alexa ranked E-Hentai as the 264th most popular website on the internet.[4] Outlets have noted that E-Hentai functions as a de facto archive for artwork that is rare or non-existent on other physical and digital platforms; the site hosts content such as Comiket-exclusive works and out-of-print art books that are both pornographic and non-pornographic in nature, with Vice calling the website the "Alexandria Library [sic] of hentai."[6][4] The Daily Dot described E-Hentai as "a relic of 'the old internet'," citing it as an example of niche portal for digital content that predates contemporary social media.[4]

See also

References
  1. Spectre (8 April 2010). "How was this website created?". E-Hentai. Retrieved 21 June 2020.
  2. Tenboro (27 March 2010). "So it has come to this, Achtung!". E-Hentai Fourms. Archived from the original on 1 April 2010. Retrieved 19 June 2020.
  3. epiphany (11 March 2005). "reminds me of you". DeviantArt. Retrieved 19 June 2020.
  4. Martinez, Ignacio (27 July 2019). "Fans are mourning the shutdown of hentai repository 'Sad Panda'". The Daily Dot. Retrieved 19 June 2020.
  5. 歪力. "老司機末日！成人論壇「熊貓/EX」驚傳關站倒數，眾紳士哭喊生無可戀". 4Gamers (in Chinese). Retrieved 21 June 2020.
  6. Cole, Samantha (26 July 2019). "'Dear Fucking God:' The 'Alexandria Library' of Hentai Has Suddenly Vanished". Motherboard. Vice. Retrieved 19 June 2020.
  7. "娘子出嚟睇耶穌呀！ 「傷心熊貓」Exhentai關站7日後原地復活". HK01. 3 August 2019. Retrieved 21 June 2020.
  8. Noppe, Nele (2014). The cultural economy of fanwork in Japan: dōjinshi exchange as a hybrid economy of open source cultural goods (PhD thesis). University of Leuven.
  9. Tenboro (26 July 2019). "A Message to the Community". E-Hentai. Archived from the original on 28 July 2019. Retrieved 19 June 2020.
  10. Kaartinen, Sami Johannes (2017). Where, How and Why? Fan Translations Unraveled: A Study of the Fan Translation Process Through Personal Experience (PDF) (Master's thesis). University of Vaasa.
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