LOS ANGELES—Five of the top 25 most-searched-for terms on Pornhub, some might be surprised to learn, don't even relate to footage of real people. Those terms, specifically, are "Hentai," "Cartoon," "Fortnite," "Overwatch" and "Anime." Helping fuel that demand in part is fledgling studio Animeshin Club, which has found a home with its own Pornhub channel.
Launched in January of this year, the studio was named Pornhub's Newcomer of the Month in March, while the leading adult tube site also lauded the toon house for holding the distinction across the site as one of its largest and fastest growing "Fan Clubs," a new feature primarily utilized by performers.
"We were very proud of that recognition. It felt amazing to create something you enjoy making, and then be rewarded for that by your platform. But we don't necessarily see ourselves as competition for the other Models in the Model Program," Animeshin Club co-founder Aaron Nathaniel said. "Animeshin Club is its own niche. We’re animated porn. And animation is always a marathon; never a sprint."
Episode Two of the studio's 3D Hentai series Coming of Age is now streaming on Pornhub. The series, which according to Nathaniel draws from the backgrounds of himself and his partner, follows an ensemble cast, led by 18-year-old virgin Grayson Hartwell running a porn studio out of the basement of his father's protestant church.
"It's a story that goes hand in hand with our brand," Nathaniel explained. "We also can't help but make it slightly autobiographical and include our own stories of growing up in religious households where sex and sexuality were very hush-hush. Coming of Age is an original series just like Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones. Except we’re not afraid to show the sex.”
Why did these two animators choose to pursue their careers in Porn Valley vs. Hollywood?
"Every animated studio in the world is focused on competing over the same kid and family friendly market. Good luck," Nathaniel said. "We want to push the envelope in this direction.” And the duo profess to have the data to back up the fact that people are hungrier for it now than ever before.
Their budding success did not come overnight. "We actually reached out to Pornhub's Model Program in April of 2018 to become one of their first animated models and they rejected our application," Nathaniel recalled. "They were like, 'We don't know what to do with you yet.’”
Animeshin Club did what many adult creators do and created a Patreon, but that was taken down for violating its Terms of Service. “But the idea of renewable income, driven by fan interaction at varying pledge amounts was the greatest gift we could have ever been given. That was our ‘Aha!’ moment. That’s how we could legitimize our desire to make this a business,” Nathaniel professed. The two animators then embarked down the tricky path of running their own membership website, but that too was taken down when their payment processor turned off the lights. “That felt like a punch in the gut. It was in the details of the contract. But there was another huge lesson for us about learning to negotiate all of our terms up front. We started as only animators, but now we’re more agile businessmen, too."
He continued, “I was going into the holidays feeling completely defeated. My whole year had been wasted growing successful fan pages before they would be shut down. We thought that maybe there just wan’t a way to do what we wanted to do. That’s when we had the Deus Ex Machina moment and god came down from the clouds. Aria, over at Pornhub, tweeted out in December of 2018 to adult creators facing a similar site-wide ban on Tumblr. Pornhub had created its own membership-based platform for creators. So somewhere between when we had initially asked them to approve us, and us getting kicked off of our fourth online platform eight months later, Pornhub had changed its mind and approved Animeshin Club's request to join the Model Program. We were one of the first to sign up for the Fan Club integration on our account and we haven't looked back."
While Animeshin Club does not claim to be re-inventing the wheel, the team is dedicated to maintaining a steady production schedule. "We're only two animators. TWO," Nathaniel said. "But we're still creating a new ten-minute episode every other month. That's unheard of in any animated production, let alone animated porn. We share that exclusively with our fans for a month before anyone else gets to view it. And we constantly post animation progress videos to update our exclusive fan community to let them in behind the scenes of what we do every day."
How heavy is the workload starting your own animated porn channel? “It’s endless. But we love it," Nathaniel asserted. "If you're Bree Mills, you can shoot an entire two-hour movie in a week, which is a very lucky problem to have. In animation, every single frame must be crafted by hand. The ability to animate an entire minute in a week is crushing it. That’s why every dollar from our channel goes into our company. We used it to buy a new render farm to double the amount of footage we are able to produce a month, and we only have ambitions to scale."
Looking ahead, Nathaniel said, "We want to license a toy line. We hear from our fans that they want strokers with Mindy on it, or action figures of our original characters. We don't even know where to begin, but we would love to speak with companies who have a proven track record of executing vision. We're open for business."
View Episode 1 of Coming of Age here. View Episode 2 here.
Become a Fan of Animeshin Club here.
For business inquiries, email [email protected].
