HiAnime Is Back: Why the US Government Put the World’s Largest Piracy Site on the Priority Streaming Watchlist

Anime is back in the headlines, and not in a fun way. The U.S. government just put HiAnime on its naughty list, and not the regular one either — the high-priority version.

So, what did HiAnime do to earn a government spotlight?

Every year, the U.S. Trade Representative publishes the Notorious Markets list — basically a roll call of piracy hubs that hit creative industries around the world. This time, HiAnime got labeled a 'priority notorious streaming site,' which is the tier you land on when enforcement agencies want everyone to pay special attention.

The Motion Picture Association backed up that designation with numbers that make you do a double take: SimilarWeb pegged HiAnime at 244.2 million visits in August 2025 alone, with more than 17 million unique users. At its peak, HiAnime was pulling traffic in the same neighborhood as Disney+ globally. That scale is exactly why it jumped to the front of the enforcement line.

It is not alone. Myflixerz (aka Sflix) and Cuevana were also tagged as priority piracy targets in the same report.

How it keeps dodging takedowns

Here is the inside baseball part: HiAnime is built to absorb hits. The report flags its use of Cloudflare as a reverse proxy and notes hosting support from offshore outfits like Crypto Servers Ltd. in Belize, a name long associated with 'bulletproof hosting.' Layer on the usual whack-a-mole tactics — foreign servers, multiple domains, operator anonymity — and the site becomes much harder to subpoena, identify, or outright pull offline. It is not unkillable, but it is designed to be stubborn.

Putting the traffic in context

These are apples-to-oranges comparisons (different business models, geographies, and measurement methods), but the scale helps explain why this got escalated:

• HiAnime: ~244.2 million visits in Aug 2025; illegal; now on the U.S. piracy watch list; operators obscured offshore
• Crunchyroll: ~110 million monthly; legal; still the biggest dedicated anime streamer, but HiAnime outpaced it that month
• Disney+: ~200 million monthly; legal; carries some anime in select regions, but it is not an anime-first platform
• Netflix: 1.2 billion+ monthly; legal; a generalist giant with anime in the mix — a different league in overall traffic

Why these sites refuse to die

Two reasons: tech and demand. Technically, sites like HiAnime stack jurisdictional hurdles and anonymity layers to stay one step ahead. On the demand side, piracy fills gaps — people want fast, cheap, and global access to anime, and legit platforms are still uneven on licensing, timing, and regional availability. That does not make piracy harmless. Japan's Content Overseas Distribution Association has been saying for years that piracy siphons away billions that would otherwise fund new shows. The money that keeps anime alive actually flows through services like Crunchyroll, Netflix, and Disney+.

What this signals — and what it does not

HiAnime getting bumped to 'priority' is a loud signal that enforcement is turning the heat up on anime piracy. But the same architecture that makes these sites popular also makes them slow to kill; Cloudflare fronting and offshore hosts create a lot of drag on investigations and court orders. The practical takeaway for fans is simple: piracy might look convenient, but it directly undercuts the studios and creators making the stuff we want more of.

The long-term fix is not just more takedown notices; it is better legal access. Cheaper, more global, less fragmented. Until that happens, the industry will keep playing whack-a-mole with sites like HiAnime — and the moles are very good at digging new tunnels.