Western gay manga
BL, “Okama”, and gay stereotypes in animanga
Since BL and fujoshi discourse is the hot topic du jour, let’s talk a bit about gay stereotypes in Japanese manga and anime.
I’m seeing a worrying number of people not only saying that all BL and fujoshi promote homophobic stereotypes, but that BL is the primary or sole instigator of homophobia in Japanese society (excuse me, I choked on brew there).
For those who don’t understand, Boy’s Love (BL) is a niche category of shoujo/josei manga that focuses on M/M relationships (commonly known in the west as “yaoi”, though that is a misnomer). It’s still frowned upon, both for being lgbtq+ content and for being mainly romance aimed at women. The word “fujoshi” — used today to mean “female fan of BL” — even has seriously misogynistic origins.
So far, BL is published on specific magazines, and most anime adaptations are OVAs that aren’t aired on TV. Although it has a significant following, it’s definitely not well-liked enough to change the views on gay men of the entire anime fanbase, much less of Japanese society as a whole.
Homop
Massive—which Chip Kidd designed and Anne Ishii and Graham Kolbeins edited—is a follow-up to The Passion of Gengorah Tagame: Master of Gay Erotic Manga and marks the second the time the trio have worked together in this genre. With Massive, now in its second print run, the Western world is introduced to the first English-language anthology featuring the masters of Japanese gay manga.
Fantagraphics, which publishes Substantial, will participate in CAKE (Chicago Alternative Comics Expo) at the Center on Halsted on June , featuring comics for sale, including Massive, along with workshops, exhibitions and panel discussions.
In an attempt to get the large picture on Massive, WCT chatted with Ishii to
A Beginner's Guide to LGBTQ+ Manga
The terms yaoi and Boy's Love/BL both allude to manga that follow sexual/romantic relationships between two male characters. However, as a command, yaoi manga always feature sexually explicit material, while Boy's Love may or may not. Yaoi is largely considered an outdated word and has been primarily replaced with Boy's Love within recent years. These terms are not to be muddled with shounen-ai, a genre that focuses on the sentimental relationship between boys, which emerged in early shōjo magazines during the s. Although shounen-ai is also an outdated subgenre and term.
The term "Bara" used to refer to gay manga written by and for gay men help in the 80s, but that phrase has since been deemed outdated and inaccurate. Instead, manga that is specifically written by and for gay men are currently referred to as "geicomi", "gei manga", or "gay comics/manga".
Much like American relationship novels, which are often written by women for women, mainstream, widely on hand yaoi/Boy’s Love have traditionally been written and designed by f
Re: Bara, Yaoi, BL - what are the genre/subgenre differences?
#2Postby arcadeparty »
This is actually a super interesting question (at least to me) and the answer, especially when it comes to the interrogate of "yaoi VS bara" for an audience of gay men, is just this:
It genuinely varies from work to work and from person to person!
I can say that although I've generally had a rare love interests in distinct things that wouldn't be out of place in either the yaoi or bara genres, I typically don't call my have personal work either one* in marketing or conversations about it, but I do feel comfortable generally lumping what I form into the larger category of "BL" if it seems like "MxM" or "BxB" doesn't the gesture across to someone.
(* - This doesn't signify that I don't tag my stuff as those things if I ponder it could genuinely employ or that I don't get hits from categories/games in those genres, though! Tomai actually gets its highest and second-highest number of hits from an Itchio category called "Yaoi/BL Games", while AWOO gets the biggest amount of traffic f