# The most common anime kinks, ranked by what the index can see

> The most common anime kinks on the KINKSpec index are netorare (NTR), the dere character archetypes, attraction to fictional characters, the yandere type and kemonomimi, the animal-eared character. Netorare leads at an estimated 4% of adults, rank 81 of 486. Every other anime-born term sits at 3% or less, and all of them except netorare carry low confidence, because no population survey asks about anime vocabulary.

Published 2026-09-27. 7 min read. KINKSpec, https://www.kinkspec.com/blog/most-common-anime-kinks

Anime fandom has its own vocabulary for desire. *NTR*, *tsundere*, *ahegao* and *futa* started as tags on Japanese message boards, doujinshi and adult games, and spread through the same channels that carried the shows abroad. People now search for them by name, and the search interest those names draw is one of the signals the catalog's index reads.

The names do not come with numbers. The general-population surveys the catalog draws on measure interests such as voyeurism, fetishism and BDSM, and none of them asks about a dere archetype or a monster girl. The ranking below is the catalog's own estimate, built from five signals, and the confidence attached to each term is part of the answer. The [most common kinks overall](https://www.kinkspec.com/blog/most-common-kinks) sit higher on the same index.

## Which terms count

The list holds the sixteen entries whose names or genres come from anime, manga, doujinshi or visual novels, or which reached English mainly through that fandom. Several Japanese words in the catalog are left out because they travelled by other routes: [shibari](https://www.kinkspec.com/entry/shibari) through rope bondage, for example. The [Fantasy, Fiction & Fandom](https://www.kinkspec.com/collections/fantasy-fiction-fandom) collection holds a wider set, including vampires, werewolves and the furry fandom, which have their own histories outside anime.

**Nothing involving minors is on the list, and the catalog carries no entry that treats such material as an interest.** Where a term involves school uniforms, as one does, the entry concerns adults in costume.

## The ranking

Ordered by the popularity index, the catalog's 0 to 100 score. Each line gives the global rank out of 486, the index, and the estimated share of adults.

1. [Netorare](https://www.kinkspec.com/entry/netorare): rank 81, index 57, 4%.
2. [Dere archetypes](https://www.kinkspec.com/entry/dere-archetypes): rank 122, index 53, 3%.
3. [Fictosexuality](https://www.kinkspec.com/entry/fictosexuality): rank 124, index 53, 2.5%.
4. [Yandere](https://www.kinkspec.com/entry/yandere): rank 159, index 48, 1.5%.
5. [Kemonomimi](https://www.kinkspec.com/entry/kemonomimi): rank 160, index 48, 1.2%.
6. [Schoolgirl uniform](https://www.kinkspec.com/entry/schoolgirl-uniform-fetish): rank 165, index 47, 2.5%.
7. [Ahegao](https://www.kinkspec.com/entry/ahegao): rank 168, index 47, 1.2%.
8. [Maid](https://www.kinkspec.com/entry/maid-fetish): rank 192, index 44, 2%.
9. [Cosplay](https://www.kinkspec.com/entry/cosplay-fetish): rank 209, index 43, 1.5%.
10. [Futanari](https://www.kinkspec.com/entry/futanari): rank 224, index 42, 1.2%.
11. [Monster girl](https://www.kinkspec.com/entry/monster-girl): rank 241, index 40, 0.9%.
12. [Tentacle erotica](https://www.kinkspec.com/entry/tentacle-erotica): rank 253, index 39, 1%.
13. [Mindbreak](https://www.kinkspec.com/entry/mindbreak): rank 303, index 34, 0.8%.
14. [VTuber attraction](https://www.kinkspec.com/entry/vtuber-attraction): rank 320, index 32, 0.12%.
15. [Omorashi](https://www.kinkspec.com/entry/omorashi): rank 368, index 26, 0.5%.
16. [Kigurumi masking](https://www.kinkspec.com/entry/kigurumi-masking): rank 444, index 15, 0.05%.

The order does not follow the prevalence column exactly. The schoolgirl uniform, at 2.5%, sits below kemonomimi at 1.2%, because the index weighs search interest, community size, cultural visibility and research attention alongside the prevalence estimate, and catgirl characters have an enormous footprint across anime, manga and games. The [methodology](https://www.kinkspec.com/methodology) sets out the weights.

Most of the list sits in the upper half of the catalog. Eleven of the sixteen rank above the median position, and the leader, netorare, sits in the top fifth. The tail is long: VTuber attraction and kigurumi masking are rare by the catalog's bands, below 0.5% of adults.

## What the words mean

Most of the list is vocabulary for a character type, a genre or a costume, and few of the terms name an act.

### Netorare and the dere types

*Netorare* is the passive form of the Japanese verb *netoru*, to sleep with and take away, and names a story in which a protagonist's partner is seduced by someone else. NTR is the abbreviation, and *netori* is the same story told from the taker's side. The entry traces the tag to Japanese message boards around 2000 and to adult games and doujinshi in the years after.

The *dere* words describe personalities. The suffix is clipped from *deredere*, lovestruck, and each prefix names the manner: *tsun* aloof, *kuu* cool, *dan* quiet, *yan* from *yanderu*, to be ill. The pattern began with *tsundere* in visual-novel fandom. [Wikipedia's account](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsundere) records that an Akihabara maid café held tsundere events in 2006 and that the word was nominated in Japan's buzzword awards the same year. As an interest, a dere preference is a taste in fictional characters, and the catalog files it as non-sexual.

### Ears, tails and monsters

*Kemonomimi* is *kemono*, beast, plus *mimi*, ears: a human character with animal ears and often a tail, of which the catgirl, *nekomimi*, is the best known. The body stays human, which separates it from the [furry fandom](https://www.kinkspec.com/entry/furry-fandom) and from [pet play](https://www.kinkspec.com/entry/pet-play). The monster girl adds horns, scales, wings or a serpent's tail; the entry credits the artist Okayado with *monster musume* around 2007.

*Futanari*, Japanese for "dual form", is the oldest word on the list. The entry traces it to a medieval Japanese scroll of diseases, where it named what would now be called intersex variation, and to its narrowing in the 1990s into the name of a drawn genre with characters of both sexes. The entry keeps the genre and real intersex people apart.

### Faces, bodies and genres

*Ahegao* is a drawn facial expression of climax, named from *ahe*, a panting sound, and *kao*, face. It moved from Japanese adult magazines in the early 2000s into doujinshi and then, as a meme, onto Western streetwear. The meme spread far past the people who read the source material.

Tentacle erotica has the longest documented pedigree. Its canonical ancestor is [*The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dream_of_the_Fisherman%27s_Wife), a woodblock design by Hokusai published in 1814 in the *shunga* book *Kinoe no Komatsu*, showing a diver with two octopuses. The modern genre took shape under Japan's obscenity law, which banned the drawing of genitals: the manga artist Toshio Maeda first drew tentacles in 1976 as a way around it, and his *Urotsukidōji*, serialised from 1985, carried the trope abroad. Mindbreak and [omorashi](https://www.kinkspec.com/entry/omorashi) are narrower tags: the first a coercive fiction trope, the second a Japanese word for wetting oneself adopted as the name of a desperation interest.

### Costumes and characters

Four entries concern dressing up. The [maid](https://www.kinkspec.com/entry/maid-fetish) costume descends from the French stage *soubrette*; anime and maid cafés gave it a second life. The schoolgirl-uniform entry concerns adults wearing a styled uniform as costume. *Cosplay* was coined in June 1983 by Nobuyuki Takahashi in the magazine *My Anime*, from the first syllables of "costume" and "play", as [Wikipedia's cosplay history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosplay) records, and the erotic side of it is a small part of a large hobby. Kigurumi masking adds a hard anime-styled face mask and a full bodysuit, and it is the rarest entry here.

The last two describe the object of attraction. Fictosexuality is attraction to fictional characters. [Karhulahti and Välisalo](https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.575427/full) studied it in 2021 through 71 online forum discussions holding 1,667 messages posted between 2009 and 2018, and defined fictophilia as an intense, long-term parasocial love or desire for a fictional character. VTuber attraction points the same feeling at a live performer behind an animated avatar.

## Why the estimates are soft

Fifteen of the sixteen carry low confidence, which the methodology defines as an order-of-magnitude guess from proxies. Across the whole catalog, 316 of 486 entries are rated low, or 65%. Netorare is the exception at medium, because its estimate borrows from a survey of the fantasy it names.

The five signals show why. Set against the catalog's averages, the anime terms are more searched, better organised and better known, and half as studied.

| Signal (0 to 100) | Anime terms, mean | Whole catalog, mean |
|---|---|---|
| Search interest | 47.7 | 37.7 |
| Community size | 40.9 | 32.0 |
| Cultural visibility | 46.9 | 37.6 |
| Research attention | 12.9 | 25.7 |

**The anime terms score above the catalog average on every signal measured from outside, and at half the average on research, the one signal that would count them.** The prevalence subscore sits near the catalog average, at 53.2 against 54.6, and that is where the uncertainty lives. An estimate built on search and visibility can overstate an interest that people look at out of curiosity, as the ahegao meme shows, and understate one that people keep quiet about.

## Old interests with new names

Several of the terms name an interest the surveys already measure under an older word, and the older word usually ranks higher.

Netorare is a fiction genre built on the fantasy of a partner with someone else, which the catalog records as [cuckolding](https://www.kinkspec.com/entry/cuckolding), rank 33 at an estimated 8%. In the survey of 4,175 Americans reported in Lehmiller's *Tell Me What You Want*, [52% of heterosexual men and 26% of heterosexual women](https://www.sexandpsychology.com/blog/2020/10/12/how-many-women-fantasize-about-cuckolding/) had fantasised about watching a partner with someone else. The NTR genre adds betrayal and loss to that fantasy, and it is the version that anime fandom named.

The maid and the school uniform sit inside [uniform fetishism](https://www.kinkspec.com/entry/uniform-fetish), rank 55 at 7%. Kemonomimi borders pet play, at 2.5%, and the monster girl borders the wider [monster fetish](https://www.kinkspec.com/entry/monster-fetish). The anime words name a character or a genre precisely where the older words are broad, and the surveys ask with the older words.

## Fiction and the clinical view

None of the sixteen is a diagnosis in the DSM-5-TR or the ICD-11. Each entry's clinical status describes a genre, an archetype, a costume interest or an identity label, and the catalog treats a costume or clothing interest as a disorder only with distress, impairment or a non-consenting person, the test set out in [whether a fetish is a mental disorder](https://www.kinkspec.com/blog/is-a-fetish-a-mental-disorder).

Two entries need a closer reading. The catalog flags yandere as harmful because the archetype romanticises obsessive and coercive behaviour, which is abuse when it happens between real people; as a taste in fictional characters it is not a disorder. Mindbreak is a coercive trope in drawn fiction, and its entry describes it as a narrative device and a tag.

## Common questions

### What is the most popular anime kink?

Netorare, or NTR, on the KINKSpec index: rank 81 of 486 with an estimated 4% of adults, the only anime-born term rated at medium confidence. It is the anime genre name for the fantasy of a partner with someone else, which the catalog records separately as cuckolding at an estimated 8%.

### What does NTR mean in anime?

NTR abbreviates *netorare*, the passive form of the Japanese verb *netoru*, to sleep with and take away. It names a story in which a protagonist's partner is seduced by someone else, with the emphasis on betrayal and loss. *Netori* is the same story told from the side of the person who does the taking.

### Is having an anime kink a mental disorder?

No. None of the sixteen anime-derived entries in the catalog is a diagnosis in the DSM-5-TR or the ICD-11. They describe genres, character archetypes, costume interests and attraction to fictional characters, and a costume or object interest becomes clinical only with distress, impairment or a non-consenting person.

### Is being attracted to anime characters normal?

Yes, in the statistical sense. Fictosexuality, attraction to fictional characters, is estimated at 2.5% of adults on the KINKSpec index, rank 124 of 486. Karhulahti and Välisalo's 2021 study of online forum discussions described it as a lasting parasocial attachment, and it is not a clinical diagnosis.

### What is kemonomimi?

Kemonomimi, Japanese for "animal ears", is a human character given animal ears and often a tail, the catgirl being the best known. The body stays human, which separates it from the furry fandom. The KINKSpec index places the interest at rank 160, an estimated 1.2% of adults, at low confidence.

### Why are anime kink numbers uncertain?

Because no general-population survey asks about anime vocabulary. Fifteen of the sixteen anime-derived entries are rated low confidence, and their research-attention score averages 12.9 out of 100 against 25.7 for the whole catalog, while their search and visibility scores run above the average.

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Entries this article is about: https://www.kinkspec.com/entry/netorare, https://www.kinkspec.com/entry/dere-archetypes, https://www.kinkspec.com/entry/fictosexuality, https://www.kinkspec.com/entry/yandere, https://www.kinkspec.com/entry/kemonomimi, https://www.kinkspec.com/entry/schoolgirl-uniform-fetish, https://www.kinkspec.com/entry/ahegao, https://www.kinkspec.com/entry/maid-fetish, https://www.kinkspec.com/entry/cosplay-fetish, https://www.kinkspec.com/entry/futanari, https://www.kinkspec.com/entry/monster-girl, https://www.kinkspec.com/entry/tentacle-erotica, https://www.kinkspec.com/entry/mindbreak, https://www.kinkspec.com/entry/vtuber-attraction, https://www.kinkspec.com/entry/omorashi, https://www.kinkspec.com/entry/kigurumi-masking