aria.nee

Pixiv is a primarily Japanese-language site that is best known for its illustrations, but also has a large amount of fanfiction ("novels"). It hosts even more works than Ao3 - over 21 million!

If you've run out of fanfiction to read in English and don't mind using a translator, Pixiv is a great place to find it. I've found some works I truly love there, though it took time to figure out how to properly use the site.

I've compiled everything I learned here, to help you jump right in if you're interested!

The number of English-language novels is small - for many fandoms, it is zero - so a translator is essential to using Pixiv.

If you're looking to use a built-in translation tool, Google Chrome's is the best for ease of use. Firefox's translator tool is still being developed, so it won't translate pages automatically, which can be a pain. For automatic page translation in Firefox, I recommend the Translate Web Pages extension.

As someone who has read both machine and fan translations of the same Pixiv work, the machine translations are far from perfect. The writing can come off as a bit stiff and unnatural, and names can get particularly jumbled up¹.

Still, the quality and emotions in the writing can shine through, and even through that extra language barrier layer, Pixiv novels have made me cry. (That’s indicative of success to me!)

You will have the best Pixiv browsing experience if you create an account. You can read novels without an account, but there are a lot of limitations. When searching works, you are limited to 300 results, the filtering options are disabled, and you cannot see any R-18 works. If you want to interact with novels, you cannot bookmark or comment on them.

Go to pixiv.net to create an account. Pixiv has an English-language site, so this is easy to do and requires no translation.

After creating an account, there are a few settings you might want to change. If you want to see R-18 works, you'll have to enable that. There is also a setting that lets you automatically filter out AI-generated works, though it does rely on them being marked correctly.

To make the translating work much more smoothly, you'll want to change your Language to Japanese. Otherwise, Pixiv will display some English text, which will prevent automatic page translations.

To find a fandom, go to the search bar. For most fandoms, you can just search the English fandom name and it will auto-suggest the correct fandom for you. If the fandom is based on an originally Japanese work, search for the Japanese title instead. For example, type "Kimetsu no Yaiba" instead of "Demon Slayer". The correct Japanese fandom tag will auto-populate in the search dropdown.

Many fandoms will in fact have multiple tags: one for the fandom in general, one for BL (Boys' Love) works for that fandom, and one for novels featuring self-inserts or OCs. Each should pop up with the English context when searching for a fandom:

• 鬼滅の刃: Kimetsu no Yaiba
• 腐滅の刃: Kimetsu no Yaiba BL
• 鬼滅の夢: Kimetsu no Yaiba dream

If you want results for only a single pairing, not a whole fandom, it's best to search only for that pairing. Not every pairing novel will have a fandom tag as well.

To search for multiple tags, put a space between them. To exclude a tag, put a minus (-) in front of it. As always, make sure you use the established Japanese tags here!

In the search results, each novel will be identified by a title, author, and summary. Each novel will also have the following information: the tags, the character count, the estimated reading time, and the number of hearts (bookmarks) it has. Some works will also have grayed out text above the title - this is the novel series it belongs to. If you only want to read the individual work, make sure to click on the bolded text, which is the title.

If you click Search options, you will find several ways to optimize your search:

Targets: Where the search term is looked for. The default is tags (perfect matching), meaning you will only get novels with tags that exactly match your search. Tags are limited on Pixiv, so choose the "Tags, Titles, and Captions" option for a wider reach.

Age restriction: What age ratings are included in your search.

Period: What period of time you want to search in. The default shows works over all time. If you choose a period, you can set a time period up to a year long.

Bookmarks: Sorting by number of bookmarks is locked unless you have a premium account².

Work language: The default searches for all languages, though the vast majority will be Japanese. Yes, you can set the filter for only English works; however, this rarely returns any novels at all, even in large fandoms.

Text length: You can choose a range of reading time, character count, or word count for your search results. To create your own range instead of choosing one from the dropdown, a premium account is required. I suggest sticking to only character count for this one, as the others seem to have issues.

Pixiv novels are limited to 10 tags, so they aren't used as liberally as they are on Ao3 - it can be pretty difficult to get an idea of what a novel is about without reading the summary.

If you are ever confused about what a tag means, the best resource is the Pixiv dictionary. When clicking or hovering over popular tags, you will see a link to the dictionary entry that explains what it means and how it's used. The dictionary also has an English version, which does not need to be translated but has fewer entries and less detail.

If you're looking for tags used by a specific fandom, the best source is its Pixiv dictionary page, which will have organized lists of tags for the fandom. For example, Demon Slayer's page has lists of tags for pairings, friendship/family relationships, and common AUs, as well as popularity and commentary tags.

Tags may be locked or unlocked by the writer. Unlocked tags can be removed or altered by any user. Also, anyone can add additional tags to a work. So sometimes you’ll see works tagged as “this is a good work” or “waiting for the update”³, which definitely confused me at first!

You can find a list of the most popular tags for novels, including work counts, here.

There is no way search by novel popularity without paying for a premium subscription. But if you want to find some highly bookmarked works, there are workarounds.

Many novels will be tagged with an indicator of how many bookmarks it has. It will be something in the format of "[fandom][number]users入り". So, if you wanted to find novels in the Kimetsu no Yaiba (鬼滅の刃) fandom with over 100 bookmarks, you could search 鬼滅の刃100users入り.

If you're looking for the most bookmarked works for a gay pairing, make sure you use the BL/yaoi fandom tag: 腐滅の刃100users入り and then a space, and the pairing tag you want to include.

The most common bookmark benchmarks are 100, 300, 500, and their multiples (1000, 3000, etc.). If you want to find all the benchmark tags for a fandom, they will also be listed on the fandom's page in the Pixiv dictionary.

If you just want to find the most popular novels across Pixiv and don't care about a particular fandom or pairing, you can go to the novels ranking page. You can see the most popular novels for several categories, like across time periods (daily, weekly, monthly), content (original works, AI-generated) or demographic (popular with male or female users).

Pixiv has different features and a different site culture from primarily English-language sites, and so the way users interact with novels and authors is not the same.

Comments are much less common on Pixiv, even for very popular works. Most comments are not text, but stickers that act as a reaction image to the novel. The text comments are short, as there is a 140 character limit. You can message the author instead, which has a 10,000 character limit. If writing a comment, try to stick to very polite Japanese.

Bookmarks are the main indicator of the popularity of a work. Bookmarks are represented by the heart symbol on the novel. You can make a private or public bookmark.

Liking a work was actually introduced some time after bookmarking, which is probably why bookmarks are seen as more important and most works will have more bookmarks than likes. Likes are represented by the smiley symbol. They are completely anonymous, so the author will not know who liked their work.

Machine translators don't help much with understanding the meaning behind acronyms or phrases specific to Japanese fandom! (How would someone translating from English interpret "Dead dove do not eat"?) Here is some of the common lingo and what it means in my experience:

These are some of the differences you might notice between Pixiv and primarily English-language fan fiction sites:

• There are ads. As someone who normally uses an adblocker but doesn't for Pixiv, they're not very noticeable or too obstructive
• Writers frequently and freely promote the sale of their novels, which is taboo on most English sites due to potential legal issues
  • In fact, some novels will only have samples posted, with the rest only available for sale - this isn't super common, it's always clearly stated, and I've only seen it on R-18 novels⁵
• On some works, a pairing tag might be used to indicate a very close relationship, but not a romantic one. These works will have the ship tag, but clarify in the summary that it is a "bromance" or that there is no relationship
• The summaries can be very long, and might be edited to include thank-yous to the readers or even short bonus snippets. There is no other dedicated section for author notes
• It is common to see very long, descriptive work titles on Pixiv - much more so than in English fandom
• A series may be incomplete, but I've never seen an incomplete individual novel. It seems that novels are posted in their entirety, not updated with chapters later on
• Pixiv will recommend you novels based on ones you've read and the one you're currently reading - scroll below the end of a novel to see them. These "algorithmic" recommendations are more frowned upon in English fandom
  • On a personal note, I will say that the recommendations tend to be quite good and well-tailored

These are some of the sources I consulted and other Pixiv guides I found. Most of them are quite old, and all of the other guides focus on illustrations, not novels, but they can still be useful.

Pixiv help center: official source
The Basics of Pixiv by ORT451 (2020)
The beginner’s guide to finding fanart on pixiv by rallamajoop (2016)
Pixiv etiquette discussion on Fail Fandom Anon (2013)
Pixiv Tutorial Part 2 - Searching by fyeahhondakiku-blog (2011)

I was first introduced to Pixiv in early 2025 by someone who graciously (and with permission) translated an excellent Pixiv work to English. They strongly recommended that we go show our support to the original work, and that's when I first started using the site.

At first, Pixiv was very difficult to navigate. Some of it was the language barrier and trying to find the right translation tool, but a lot of it was just the site being unfamiliar. I tried to find some guides, but I couldn't find any that focused on novels - though there are more novels on Pixiv than works on AO3, there are five times as many illustrations as novels!

I was able to use some old illustration finding guides as a starting point, but almost all of the information in this guide I got from my personal usage of the site. Since all of the online guides seemed to be outdated or not focused on finding fanfiction, I decided to write up everything I discovered in case anyone found it useful.

I'll probably keep adding to this guide as I learn more, especially in the "Common terminology" section, but this has been in development long enough and I feel it's pretty exhaustive (maybe too exhaustive...?)

If you have any tips to share, personal experiences with Pixiv, or want to know more, please message me! I would love to hear from you.