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Website / Pixiv

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Pixiv is a Japanese online community for artists, not unlike the Western world's DeviantArt. Launched in September 2007. Pixiv aims to provide a place for artists to exhibit their illustrations and get feedback via a rating system and user comments. Works are organized in an extensive tag structure which forms the backbone of the website. However, tagging is notoriously haphazard on Pixiv (quite unlike the Image Booru sites, where standardized tagging tends to be enforced by the moderators), so finding images often relies on trial and error (and knowing every possible way the name in question can be written in kanji, katakana and/or hiragana, including any possible abbreviations, as well as English spellings that may be in common usage in Japan, and even mixes of English and Japanese text). One main reason for this problem is that Pixiv only allows ten tags, including the artist's own, so artists usually are either clever (combining multiple tags into one since the search goes for all matches or making very funny, sometimes nonsensical ones) or what could be described as "narcissistic" (anyone can edit tags, but one tag implies the artist wants others/watchers to add them, and this is really bad practice), the latter being very prominent. Thankfully, not only are there generally agreed-on tags by the community, but the "partial tag" search option makes it easy to find all submitted works related to that tag even if you're only typing part of (for example) a character's name, since you get combined results.

Registration is required to view the majority of contents. Anything Not Safe for Work (which is tagged R-18 and its sister tags, R-18G for Gorn materials) is hidden by default on all accounts and permanently enabled for those with accessing the website in general, but an age confirmation is barely there. Even with this, Values Dissonance still applies.

In case that doesn't sound like anything special to you, consider that the majority of Anime and Manga fan arts in the 'boorus and the 'chans are taken from Pixiv, most of the time without permission from the artists. It's also an easy way to gauge a work's popularity in Japan; for instance, Touhou Project, Pokémon, Hatsune Miku, Inazuma Eleven, Fire Emblem and KanColle are all on the first page of tags.

In August 2018, Pixiv surpassed 70 million posts. Given that quite not all posts are of a single image (the artist has the option of compiling multiple images into a single post, a feature that is often used for doujinshi (either samples or if the artist is distributing the entire doujin for free) or collections of sketches, it's entirely possible that the total number of images uploaded could have exceeded 100 million by now.

Originally Pixiv was intended exclusively for Japanese use, requiring non-speakers to make use of various guides to register. It is now configured to allow registrations in the English, Spanish, French, Russian, Thai, and Chinese languages, as well as registering via a Facebook account. Tags and image descriptions are still almost always in Japanese, but the ability to search a lot of tags in Romaji and get a redirection to their Japanese equivalents has been eventually added.

In June 2014, Pixiv implemented the ability to upload animations with a new function called Ugoira.note 

Pixiv Spotlight is a staff picks blog with posts based on tropes, and it's in English!

If you're using Firefox with the Greasemonkey extension, the Pixiv Translation Plus script may be helpful.

Compare Nico Nico Douga (Japanese YouTube).

Oh and by the way, if you find relevant pictures, consider visiting the Image Links Wiki.

All links below should be assumed NSFW, just to be safe.

Random works tags, with characters where available:

    Random works tags 

Tags dedicated to particular tropes:

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