Updated 04-May-2020.
Mondo shtuff from around the internet, all about YAOI!
My botty best at summarizing from Wikipedia: yaoi, also known as boys’ love, is a genre of fictional media originating in Japan . it features homoerotic relationships between male characters . boys love and its abbreviation BL are generic yaoi is the practice of pairing characters in relationships according to roles . common themes include forbidden relationships, depictions of rape, tragedy, and humor . Yaoi finds its origins in both fan culture and the use of yaoi to refer to parody djinshi is still predominant in Japan . the genre can be traced back to shnen’ai, a genre of beautiful boy manga women and girls in the djinshi (fan fiction) markets of Japan started producing sexualized parodies of popular shnen (boy’s) anime and manga stories . by the end of the 1970s yaoi derives from girl’s and women’s manga and still targets the shjo and josei demographics . manga serial Kaze to Ki no Uta spurred the development of boys’ love as of 1998, the term yaoi was considered “common knowledge to manga fans” the term bishnen manga fell from favor in the 1990s when manga began to feature a broader range of protagonists mizoguchi: publishers coined “boys’ love” to disassociate genre from publisher of juné . yaoi excludes gei comi (bara), a genre yaoi can also be used by western fans as a label for anime or manga-based slash fiction . characteristics of shnen-ai include exoticism, often taking place in Europe tanbi was used in stories about the worship of beauty and romance between older men and beautiful youths . unusual kanji (chinese characters appropriated into Japanese script) was the most commonly used term in the early the term yaoi and shnen-ai is sometimes used by Western fans to differentiate between two variants of the genre . by the late 1980s, the popularity of professionally published shnes-ais the terms originate in martial arts: seme derives from the ichidan verb “to attack” uke is used in Japanese gay slang to mean the receptive partner (“bottom”) in anal s the seme is generally older and taller, with a stronger chin, shorter hair and smaller eyes . the uke often has softer, androgynous, feminine features with bigger eyes and a smaller build manga novels subtly or overtly differentiate between seme and uke roles . anal sex is a prevalent theme in yaoi, as nearly all stories feature it in some way . the anal sex tropes are common in yaoi, but not all works adhere to them . authors are “interested in exploring, not repudiating” the dynamics between seme and uke bara is a smaller niche genre in Japan than yaoi manga . the author will forgo the stylisations of the seme and uke and portray both lovers as “equally attractive handsome men” bara comics are considered a subgenre of seijin (men’s erotica) for gay males . few titles have been licensed or scanlated for english-language markets . the men in this emergent boys’ love subgenre is more likely to be written by gay male authors and artists . it is also thought to attract a large crossover gay male audience . author: mothers in particular are portrayed in women are depicted in yaoi, “it can’t help but become weirdly real”, author says . shnen manga series used as inspiration for the genre is “mutually exclusive” y yaoi author Fumi Yoshinaga usually includes at least one sympathetic female character . many female characters in Yaoi are Fujoshi themselves . spiritual bond overcomes male–female power hierarchy yaoi manga rarely explicitly addresses the reality of homophobia in Japanese society . the genre has become less realistic and more comedic, and the stories are “simply for entertainment” yaoi manga often have fantastical, historical or futuristic settings . many fans consider the genre to be an “escapist fantasy” homophobia is used as a plot device to “heighten yaoi genre depicts men who are raped as still “imbued with innocence”, a trope that may have originated with Kaze to Ki no Uta . rape scenes in author uses rape as a tragic dramatic plot element in her stories . matt thorn: depicting abuse in yaoi is a way for some readers to “come to terms with their own by 2003, 3.8% of weekly manga magazines were dedicated to BL . magazines for BL included BE-BOY, GUSH, CHARA and CIEL. yaoi market estimated to be worth approximately 21.3 billion yen in both 2009 and 2010 . defining factor is that both the playable character(s) and possible objects of affection are male . 2006 breakdown of companies that formerly published yaoi manga but are now defunct include DramaQueen, Central Park Media’s Be Beautiful, Tokyopop under their imprint BLU, Broccoli under their Boysenberry im only a select few yaoi games have been officially translated into English . some fan communities have criticized the choice of such a dark and unromantic game as the genre’s first exposure . yaoi has attracted a following of gay male fans in the u.s. due to earlier marketing efforts by distributors . a review of Kizuna was ran in an issue of the prominent american review by cathay che: shounen-ai series is “accessible as the usual gay art house film is eccentric and experimental” yaoi djinshi were amateur publications not controlled by media CLAMP began as an amateur djinshi circle who worked together to create parodies . certain professional artists such as Kodaka Kazuma also create yaoi . publishers of shnen manga may create “homoerotic-themed” merchandise as fan service to BL fans . yaoi fans may ship any male–male pairing, sometimes pairing off a favourite character in Japan, the labelling of djinshi yaoi manga is typically composed of the two lead characters’ names, separated by a multiplication sign . Gundam Wing does not have explicit gay romance content global yaoi was coined by creators and newsgroups that wanted to distinguish the Asian specific content . high-Volume North American publishers of Global BL are Yaoi Press . prior publishers include some publishers of german GloBL were traditional manga publishers like Carlsen Manga . other successful series in GloBL include web comics Teahouse, Starfighter and Purpurea Noxa . state regulations in China make it in 2018, a female author received a ten-year and six-month prison sentence for breaking obscenity laws in China . in Thailand, female readership of yaoi works is estimated at 80%, some gay men prefer gei comi, which some perceive to be more realistic . rape fantasies, misogyny, and characters’ non-identification as gay are also present . in the mid fans may want to keep their yaoi private because of the dual stigma of seeking sexually explicit material which is also gay . different critics and commentators have had very different views of BL . shoujo critics see boys’ love as a genre that allows audience to avoid adult female sexuality . “socially mandated” gender roles are a “first step toward feminism”, says Kazuko Suzuki . y in 1998, Shihomi Sakakibara argued that yaoi fans were gay female-to-male transsexuals . bishounen narratives champion “the imagined potentialities of alternative [gender] yaoi is said to heighten the theme of all-conquering love . it is condemned for avoiding the need to address prejudices against people who identify as gay . critics of the stereotypically ” publishing and distributing BL is illegal in mainland china . child pornography laws may lend themselves to targeting yaoi/BL work . in 2001, a controversy erupted in Thailand regarding gay male comic shnen ai comics provided profits for the comic shops, which sold between 30 and 50 comics per day . moral panic regarding gay male comics subsided; Thai girls felt embarrassed to read heterosexual stories . in 2008, the library decided to stop buying more BL, and to keep its existing BL in a collection restricted to adult readers . people protested against the removal, describing it as “a form of sexual discrimination boys’ love content was initially not included in the raid due to the officials claiming that the books only interested a small, niche demographic . writing the love of boys : origins of Bishnen culture in modernist U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal. 43 (1): 63–84. doi:10.1353/jwj.2013.0001. Aoyama, Tomoko (1988) “Male homosexuality as ISBN 0-521-34515-4. Brient, Hervé, ed. (2012). Le Yaoi articles, chroniques, entretiens et manga (in French) “Boys, Boys, Boys: Kazuma Kodaka Interview”. Giant Robot (42): 60–63. “Transgender: Female Hermaphrodites and Male Androgynes””. U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal. 27: 76. van de Goor, Sophie (2010). Van de Go “Abstracts”. www.mos.umu.se. Archived from the original on 15 January 2010. Retrieved 20 November 2015. Encyclopedia of Gay Histories and Cultures. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-0-8153-1880-4. ISBN 4-89367-323-8 KUCI Subversities 18 October 2010 Levi, Antonia (1996) Samurai from Outer Space: Understanding Japanese Animation ISBN 978-0-7864-4195-2. : Western Girls Write Hot Stories of Boys’ Love. Philadelphia: Running Press, 2006. ISBN 1-56025-910-8. In Perper, Timothy and Martha Cornog (Eds.) Mangatopia: Essays on Anime and Manga in the Modern World. New York: ABC-Clio. ISBN 978-1-59 Boys Love Manga and Beyond: History, Culture, and Community in Japan. [S.l. ]: University Press Of Mississippi. ISBN 978-1628461190. McLelland, Mark (2011). “Australia’s ‘Child-Abuse Materials’ legislation, internet regulation and the juridification of the imagination”. International Journal of Cultural Studies. 15 (5): 467. Fantasies of Cross-Dressing: Japanese Women Write Male-Male Erotica. BRILL. ISBN 978-90-04-21695-2. Retrieved 28 August 2013. “Beyond Shoujo, Blending Gender””. International Journal of Comic Art. 3 (2): 151–161. Ogi, Fusami (2001). “Japanese Comics for Girls: Erotic Comics 2: A Graphic History from the Liberated ’70s to the Internet. Abrams ComicArts. ISBN 978-0-8109-7277-3. Welker, James (2011). “Flower Tribes and Female Desire: Complicating Early Female Consumption of Male Homosexuality in Shjo Manga”. Mechademia. 6 (1): “Glocal Polemics of ‘BL’ (Boys Love): Production, Circulation, and Censorship” (Archive) Oita University.