reverse-image
ascii2d
A Japanese reverse-image engine matching by color and feature signatures, particularly strong on artwork from Pixiv and Twitter. It is web-only, with no API. Worth a try for Japanese fan art when the mainstream reverse-search engines fail. Status is uncertain: it was unreachable from our infrastructure in testing, connections from outside Japan are often blocked, so expect access trouble.
No programmatic check, opens the archive’s own search.
Why it’s useful & how it works
Ascii2d is a Japanese reverse-image search engine built specifically for anime and illustration matching. It applies two complementary algorithms: a color-hash search that matches by overall color distribution, and a Bag-of-Visual-Words (BOVW) search that matches by local visual features, giving it resilience against color-shifted or partially cropped images. It is particularly effective for artwork from Pixiv and Japanese Twitter. Access from outside Japan is often blocked, so results are not guaranteed; Echo links you to the search page and you may need to try from a different network if it is unreachable.
What’s inside
An undisclosed corpus focused on Japanese illustration sites, primarily Pixiv and related platforms. No public index-size figure is available; coverage is deep within its niche but limited to Japanese art communities.
What we measured
Our own probes, not the archive’s own claims. Re-run periodically; every reading below is dated.
Reachability
- Direct request
- Cloudflare challenge HTTP 200 1 s (challenge-platform)
- Through a datacenter proxy
- Cloudflare challenge HTTP 200 1.1 s (challenge-platform)
Reachability measured 2026-08-22.
Access
May be geo- or IP-blocked from some networks.