Boys Love Manga

I will be posting about my interests as much as I will about my writing. After all, people are interested in multiple topics.

One of my greatest interests (obsessions?) is manga, which are Japanese comic books. I’ve been reading them since I was 13, though at that time the selection in the bookstore was small. Now, manga has become quite popular not only in the U.S., but in other countries as well. We don’t have the variety that Japan does, of course, since not every series is translated, but it has certainly grown.

One of my favorite manga genres, and one I’ve really gotten into over the past few years, is boys love, or yaoi. Just like it sounds, the BL genre focuses on male-male relationships. Its primary target is female readers, but I have talked with some gay young men who read it as well (and some straight men likely do, they just won’t admit it). Bara is a genre targeting gay men, but, as far as I know, they are not available in the U.S. 

BL can be sexually explicit, and there are scenes I sometimes have to skim, as I am rather shy. Yet, I am oddly addicted to this genre. A part of it stems from the fact that, even years before I started reading BL, my best friend and I were telling stories with male couples in them. Sometimes, I would just rather read about a same-sex couple than a heterosexual one. The sexual relationship between the couple is based on the uke (bottom), and seme (top). These terms actually stem from martial arts; uke means “to receive”, and seme means “to attack”. In some BL series, the couple are reversible, meaning they “take turns”, being uke and seme. The uke is often, though not always, portrayed as the “feminine one”. Their features are drawn more delicately, they’re often shorter, and more emotionally sensitive. 

Boys love and yaoi can be used interchangeably, but ironically enough, BL is used more often in Japan, while yaoi is used by English-speakers. In the 1970s, shoujo manga magazines would publish short stories featuring platonic relationships between boys (shounen ai). During this same time, fan fiction featuring male characters from shounen manga/anime recast as lovers (slash fiction) became popular. The term yaoi was used for this. Later that same decade, magazines began circulating devoted to this genre. Tanbi, June, and shounen-ai were terms that were used for original works with male-male relationships, but in the ‘90s, the English term boys love began to replace the other words, and today, boys love is used in Japan to describe the genre. The word yaoi is mainly used for slash fiction, but Western readers typically use yaoi as the generic term for the BL genre. This can lead to some confusion between Japanese and Western readers of the genre, so be careful. For the sake of authenticity, I will use boys love (BL) to discuss the genre. 

My BL collection has expanded over the last couple of years, and I have read many good ones. Earthian by Yun Kouga is confusing but wonderful. I love Hinako Takanaga’s works, such as Little Butterfly, Crimson Spell by Ayano Yamane, Tale of the Waning Moon by Hyouta Fujiyama, Ze by Yuki Shimizu,  and Love Stage! by Eiki Eiki and Taishi Zaoh are just some of my favorites. If you consider yourself a lover of manga, then don’t avoid the BL genre.