HiAnime Returns as ‘Priority Notorious Streaming Site’ in New U.S. Government Watch List
Popular anime streaming site HiAnime is listed as a “priority notorious streaming site” in a new list of piracy sites being targeted by the U.S. court system.
As seen via Torrent Freak, the Motion Picture Association published a response for public comment dated Oct. 1, 2025, by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative for “submissions from the public on notorious markets outside of the United States.” Among these submissions is a list of “Priority Notorious Linking and Streaming Sites,” which includes HiAnime along with platforms such as Myflixerz and Cuevana. HiAnime is still widely considered the world’s largest anime piracy site, with its monthly views outstripping the likes of Disney+ in January this year.
MPA Issues New Statement on Anime Piracy, Targeting HiAnime, Anime-Sama & More
The official description for the platform from the MPA statement reads, “Hianime, formerly known as Zoro[.]to and Aniwatch[.]to, has a global ranking of 159 with 244.2 million visits from 17.54 million unique visitors in August 2025, according to SimilarWeb. The site provides access to a range of content, especially anime content. The hosting location is masked using Cloudflare’s reverse proxy, but the site is currently believed to be operated from Vietnam.” HiAnime is listed as a “priority” site on the new report, alongside Myflixerz/Sflix and Cuevana.biz/is, while additional new entries to the list include the likes of Anime-Sama and Kisskh.co/kisskh.ovh.
HiAnime is also listed in the statement as being hosted by Crypto Servers Ltd., which is described as “an offshore hosting provider registered in Belize… The company provides infrastructure commonly used by pirate sites seeking anonymity and takedown resistance… Although the company lists an abuse contact, it operates with limited transparency, offshore registration, and lack of accountability, characteristics often associated with bulletproof hosting.”
In October 2024, the MPA requested that a California federal court issue subpoenas for customers of Cloudflare and the Tonga domain registry, which would have included HiAnime customers to whom a staggering 302.2 million visits were attributed the previous month. The MPA request included any identifying information that could be made available for the operators of HiAnime, including their names, IP addresses and payment information. The subpoena requests also listed several other popular piracy platforms, such as AnimeSaturn and KissAnime.
As difficult as the struggle against sites like HiAnime has been for the MPA, it hasn’t been for naught. As reported in June, the 2024 Business Report from Japan’s Content Overseas Distribution Association revealed a vast swathe of takedown requests that have actually been honored by similar platforms. While popular piracy sites have consistently failed to honor many (if any) takedown requests, major social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, Google Video and Vimeo have maintained some of the highest rates for honoring requests to delete and monitor pirated content on behalf of rights holders. Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, Google Video and Vimeo each held 94%, 97.84%, 99.87%, 99.75% and 100% deletion rates, respectively.
