Hentai Is Bigger Than Anyone Admits
It gets more searches than Marvel, Obama, or off-season NFL.
A journalist was mocked this week for inadvertently revealing he’d been looking at hentai. Public shaming in general is, let’s agree, not great, and in this case, well …. First, the journalist claims he was doing research. Maybe he was doing research. Second, the journalist is one of many, many people who sometimes look at hentai.
Hentai, for those who don’t know, is erotic anime or manga.
How big is it? Consider a few charts from Google Trends.
Hentai gets way more searches in the U.S. than Marvel.
Hentai typically gets more searches in the U.S. than Obama.
This is particularly true out west.
Hentai gets more searches in the U.S. than the NFL in the middle of off-season.
Like June. There are more people right now searching “hentai” than “NFL.”
In Oregon, hentai is always bigger than the NFL.
Hentai is bigger than boobs and gay porn.
(Boobs win in Utah, Nebraska, and Virginia.)
Hentai is bigger than The New York Times.
(The comparison here looks not just at searches for “the new york times” but also other searches for the newspaper that Google has grouped together.)
Except in the northeast.
Hentai is gradually catching up to the iPhone.
Search interest was one-third as high in the most recent week.
Hentai is way bigger than VR porn.
Despite VR porn getting a ton of media attention and, per PornHub, growing incredibly fast.
Hentai is growing fast in the U.S.
Search interest nearly doubled from 2012 to 2016.
It’s most popular in Oregon, Alaska, Hawaii, and Kansas.
