Don’t you hate it when you’ve got an interesting anime image and want to find what series it’s from, or who the artist is, but you can’t find any reference online? Happily, some truly amazing anime reverse image search tools can help you find the “sauce” in no time. Let’s check out the best websites for anime image lookup in this blog post!
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Find That Anime! What Are the Best Tools for Anime Reverse Image Search?
There are a few things I’m good at. I can list multiple reasons why fans should watch the latest anime rom-com without breaking a sweat. I can identify which season an anime comes from just by seeing a pantyshot thumbnail. I’m also an expert when it comes to finding the source for anime images. In this post, let’s explore the best online tools for anime reverse image search you can use!
Recently I made an “Otaku Quiz” to see how many anime boobs fans could recognize from tiny thumbnails. I knew about half of them by sight, but had to use various software tools to find the others, as well as get help from other writers on the J-List blog. Creating that post got me thinking that an “Ultimate Anime Reverse Image Search Guide” could be helpful to fans!
Google Image Search Dropped the Ball
But wait a minute. Why do I need an anime image lookup guide? Can’t I find anything by using Google Image Search?
Sadly, no. In 2017, Google engineers rolled out Google Lens, a fancy-pants tool for searching for items inside images. Want to find the Ikea lamp in the background of a photo you’re looking at? Google can help you. Got an anime GIF you want to identify the source of? Sorry. GIFs are no longer searchable because it wasn’t profitable for the company. Google also seems a lot less willing to help track down hentai images than it used to.
Another frustrating change Google made was removing the “view image” functionality that let you grab an image right from your browser. Instead, they want to force you to visit the site, which is laudable in a way, but frustrating as a user. The site might have obfuscated the image to make it impossible to find, and my browser might be overwhelmed with spammy ads. Happily, there are workarounds if you’re using Google Chrome.
The Top Reverse Image Search Engines for Finding an Anime’s Source
Let’s check out my personal recommendations for anime image lookup websites, based on my many years of searching for the source of anime pantsu.
Trace.moe Is the Most Reliable Anime Reverse Image Search Tool
Without a doubt, the website that gives me the anime source I’m looking for most accurately is Trace.moe. This is a great website run by Soryuly that is truly a game-changer. Not only will it (usually) tell you the source you need, it will give the episode and time stamp. Amazing!
Trace.moe works with both static images, like JPG and PNG, as well as GIFs. It’s by far the most accurate and easy-to-use anime image lookup tool I’ve found.
Yandex Will Find the Anime Image You Need
Do I like using a shady Russian website like Yandex because Google made a business decision to make its image search less useful in favor of driving more monetizable traffic? Not really. But Yandex image search is pretty handy to have around.
Yandex works with still images as well as GIFs. It will help you find the source you’re looking for, although you’ll have to scroll through spammy auto-generated websites to get it. I do like the way I can drag an image to the site, then browse lots of similar images, which might help me get the right image for a blog post.
Google Images Is Still Useful
Although I knock Google Images because of some of the changes they made, it is still an important site for finding images quickly. You just can’t search for GIFs. A workaround is to convert the GIF to an MP4 movie, then open your short movie in any movie viewer and use the screenshot shortcut to get a still you can search for. (I do this automatically using automated tools like FFMPEG.)
Gelbooru Image Search Is Great for Anime Image Lookup
A “Booru” is a kind of image board that’s based on the open-source Danbooru software platform. There are a ton of them, each focusing on a slightly different slice of online fandom. Gelbooru search can often find the source of an anime image for you and at least point in the right direction. There’s also a Multi-Service Search linked from the Gelbooru search page, which performs your search on the other major Booru sites. Very handy!
Need the Sauce Now? Just Go to SauceNao!
It’s got a user interface that’s jimi — that is, simple, plain — but darned if SauceNao.com can’t usually find the source of the image for you, usually with the link to the original poster on Pixiv or DeviantArt. I use it all the time!
Just Manually Search a Booru Site
Another way to find the source of an image is to roll up your sleeves and hit the image boards. These are amazing sites that archive all the world’s images, adding tags so users can search by character or series name, pose or action, panty color, boob size…you get the idea. Here are the major Booru sites you might want to explore!
- Danbooru, the OG and still the best for a lot of uses. Not good for anime screencaps or video clips.
- Safebooru, the best way to browse SFW anime images.
- Gelbooru has all the fanart and anime screencaps you could want. Lots of animated GIFs and MP4 clips from anime. Being a power user, I appreciate that the site is super fast.
- Konachan.net, an excellent image board specializing in wallpapers made by fans.
- Sankaku Complex, one of the best image boards, with accurate tags.
- Yande.re, another outstanding image board that mostly focuses on fanart, not screencaps from anime series.
- Sakugabooru.com, an amazing site for browsing high-quality anime clips going back decades, with a focus on determining which individual animator made that cut. Great for browsing for specific series, but there are no individual tags, so you can’t browse for “upskirt twintails striped_panties” like you could on other Booru sites.
Other Image Search Options
There are a ton of other sites for searching for image sources, though they’re less effective for most use cases. Here are some you might consider using:
- Bing image search. It was able to find both my normal anime reference image, as well as this sexy picture from Kase Daiki-sensei. However, I’m not a fan of the way many of the results were unrelated AI-generated images.
- SauceKudasai is able to tell what series a lot of screencaps are from, but it won’t help you find fan-made or ecchi art. There are better tools out there.
- Tineye, a site once hailed as a major player in image search, found my sample anime image but was unable to return ecchi image results.
Thanks for reading this blog post about the best anime reverse image search tools on the Internet. Do you know of any other good websites for finding an image source? Tell us in the comments below, so we can do some “research”!
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