Hentai is adult pornography that uses a Japanese style of animation. It is essentially cartoon-ised images of a sexually explicit nature. However, our research shows that hentai can go far beyond this. Some material can be classified as child sexual abuse imagery, bestiality, and other forms of extreme sexual violence.

Context is key: hentai may appear ‘cartoonish’ and therefore child-friend and easy to dismiss but the content is sexual in nature and can normalise violent, harmful, and illegal content.