The world’s largest anime piracy website has gone offline. HiAnime (hianime.to) reportedly reached a peak of 153 million monthly visits, even surpassing major legal platforms like Crunchyroll. After years of legal pressure, the platform has shut down, leaving behind a cryptic farewell message on its homepage.
Recently, millions of anime fans worldwide have encountered a cryptic farewell message when visiting the HiAnime website (hianime.to). The two-sentence message is plastered at the top of the homepage, signalling the end of an era for one of the most popular third-party streaming sites:
It’s time to say goodbye. And thank you for a wonderful journey with great moments.
This message differs from past domain takeovers that plastered the homepage with messages from anti-piracy authorities such as the US Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). However, HiAnime has been on the US Trade Representative (USTR) list of ‘notorious piracy markets‘, a list that triggers coordinated international scrutiny and enforcement action.
HiAnime Was the Site that Refused to Die
HiAnime was barely two years old. However, it’s not a new anime website. The site has rebranded several times and migrated domains to stay online amid legal pressure from anti-piracy authorities. It started in 2021 as Zoro, offering free access to a vast library of anime movies and TV shows.
In July 2023, Zoro rebranded to Aniwatch amid growing legal pressure. The fight against pirated anime continued, and in March 2024, Aniwatch rebranded again as HiAnime. HiAnime went on to become one of the most-visited anime websites in the world.
By 2026, HiAnime had surpassed Crunchyroll, the leading legal anime streaming website, in terms of website visits. The former recorded a whopping 153.5 million web visits in a month, compared with the latter’s 145.8 million. This milestone made HiAnime one of the most visited websites on the internet.
We covered the anime website in depth on our HiAnime review, including what it offers and its legal standing.
The rebranding trick is used by a lot of these third-party sites to evade legal pressure. However, it seems that anti-piracy authorities have caught up with the trick. They are now targeting the hardware and server networks instead of the domains, shutting down the operations at the source.
The Shutdown Has Been A Long Time Coming
HiAnime’s shutdown didn’t happen in a vacuum, but was expected. After years of playing games with anti-piracy enforcement authorities, the walls finally caved in.
In October 2024, the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) filed a DMCA subpoena targeting HiAnime and other notorious piracy streaming websites. The subpoena sought the help of domain registries like Cloudflare in unmasking the identity of operators behind these sites.
Two years later, in March 2026, the USTR released a list of notorious piracy sites, including HiAnime. In the same month, ACE secured an $18.75 million ruling against a piracy operator in the US District Court.
“This ruling sends a clear message to digital piracy operators: your actions have consequences,” said Karen Temple, Motion Picture Association (MPA)’s Senior Executive Vice President and Global General Counsel.
All these measures were legal pointers that enforcement action against HiAnime and similar websites is fast approaching.
Anime Piracy Robs Japanese Creators of Approximately $38 Billion Yearly
Financial loss is one of the drivers behind the heightened fight against anime piracy. A 2026 survey reported that in 2025 alone, digital piracy cost Japanese creators ¥5.7 trillion ($38 billion) in losses. The survey was carried out by the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI).
As the fight against piracy becomes a financial urgency, the enforcement strategy has changed. Law enforcement agencies like the Interpol and the FBI have become involved. The fight is moving away from domain seizures and towards criminal prosecution and physical hardware raids.
Under INTERPOL’s Project I-SOP (INTERPOL Stop Online Piracy), police carried out multiple raids across Southeast Asia and Brazil between 2025 and 2026, arresting several high-level site administrators.
HiAnime Among a Long List of Fallen Anime Sites
HiAnime is not the first anime streaming site to go down due to legal pressure. In the past 18 months, at least four popular third-party streaming sites have shut down after a coordinated global enforcement. Police have been targeting the physical hardware and financial assets linked to site operators.
Some of the affected sites include:
- AniWave (9anime) and Animesuge: Shut down in late 2024.
- AnimeFlix: Referred to as the “Netflix of Anime”, this site went dark in August 2024.
- Anoboy, a popular anime streaming site in South Asia, was shut down, and its operators were arrested in Vietnam.
- AnimeKai and 1xAnime: The FBI seized the site’s domains in October 2025 as part of Operation 404.
We have observed the same pattern in sports streaming and IPTV. In 2025, popular sports streaming site Streameast was shut down, and its domains were seized through coordinated efforts by the ACE, MPA, and the US law enforcement. Early this year, UK Police raided a $4 million IPTV operation in London, seizing servers worth over $1 million.
HiAnime Admins Have Provided An Update
A few days after the initial farewell message on the website, HiAnime admins have provided an update via their Discord server. They are reviewing the matter and will provide further information soon. Their Discord announcement reads:
We are currently aware of the situation and are actively reviewing the matter. We are monitoring the situation and attempting to obtain further clarification as of the moment. Further developments or confirmed updates will be communicated accordingly once the review process progresses.
The announcement raises the possibility that the admins are not yet done, and it’s not the end of HiAnime.
Is This the End of HiAnime?
It’s a norm for piracy sites to disappear only to appear under a new name and domain. We can’t know for sure whether HiAnime is gone for good. The ACE hasn’t issued any updates regarding HiAnime or any other site on their radar, so it’s unclear whether this was their legal action.
However, anti-piracy crackdowns have taken a new turn lately, with authorities going after physical infrastructure and financial assets to stop the illegal distribution of content. Seizure of servers, freezing financial accounts, and criminal prosecution of site admins derail efforts to bounce back and resume piracy operations.
Reddit users are already compiling lists of HiAnime alternatives. But is it worth it, given that walls are closing in on most of these unauthorized anime streaming platforms?
FireStickTricks.com doesn’t promote piracy. We encourage readers to seek safe and legal sites to watch anime.
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