Yaoi (Boy Love :3)

[Nick9]

Thanks Gizzie,
nice to know my information is not accurate any more Friends of mine traveled around Japan years ago. They said people always reacted to their holding hands in public so they quickly learned to behave like friends, not partners. They had problems to find gay friendly bars and clubs outside Tokyo, but that was probably because they were foreigners and those bars are not advertised...
Is it easy to find a supporting centrum in smaller cities? You know, when teenagers start to wonder about their sexuality.
I guess in the era of internet, everything is easier.

[Musiq]

The loveless episodes are so far really amazing ^^

[Sylph]

I looked at it before out of curiosity and found it cute.

Just out of curiosity, have you seen or read any bara? My understanding is that the primary difference between yaoi and bara is the former is mostly written by women for women and the latter is written by men for men. If you've seen both I'd like to know how you contrast them.

I'm also intrigued by the fact that there are a few men who seem wired to enjoy media aimed at women and vice versa, even when they otherwise conform (more or less) to gender roles. And even when this isn't the case there are some stories aimed at women that men seemed to enjoy as well and vice versa. If I could ever figure it out better then I could figure out what to recommend to friends better.

I haven't seen Bara exactly, but I assume it's less "Yaoi-ish", since theres a distinction between them, like Gizzie states.

When you said "aimed at women" do you mean lesbian or just at the female demographic as a whole? A female version of Yaoi is Yuri if that's what you're inquiring, and I actually do like the few that I've come across :redface: . I actually like more of the fluffy romantic stuff with a bit of angst, so it doesn't really matter to me :p .

Death Note was a millions time better

. I enjoyed it too, however odd at first :p .

I actually caught my sister watching Yaoi :p I would never expect that she would like such a genre. I never questioned her about it.

I really don't need another thing to get hooked on

:o . lol

They have Yaoi rehab, so it's okay :p . Get hooked

The loveless episodes are so far really amazing ^^

I agree :3 *melts* lol.

~

So many replies :o , went to sleep and woke up to find all these comments :biggrin:lol

[Rawr]

I really liked Togainu no Chi, I thought that was awesome. The game and visual novel were both boy love though the anime isn't as much.

[Sylph]

Lol, usually the game versions of Yaoi are less so than the Animes :p . Like Kyo Kara Maoh, although I never owned the game though, but it can't get as gay as the anime :o . Lol, you'd have to watch to figure out what I mean

[Sylph]

Eek, I almost forgot about Princess, Princess.

It's about 3 boys who dress as the school's "Princesses" , due to the fact that it's an all boys boarding school (hmm.. I wonder :p ) and all the boys(well most of them) have to chase them around school and what not, cause they love them :o and it's part of the "school spirit" . Very fun yaoi, although who you'd think to be the "girl" and the "boy" in the relationship is would give you a major curve ball lol.

1 "princess" is straight with a girlfriend in another school, 1 "princess" is gay and the last one isn't really sure, but you'll see as the show progresses .

Princess, Princess - Episode 1



(You can watch this series on Youtube )
~
Also, Sukisho was my first Yaoi and got me into the yaoi world :p . It's a very beautiful and angsty story. It's basically about 2 guys who were lovers, but one "fell" out of a window on the schools highest floor and lost his memory. He's reunited with his lover, but doesn't remember him (kinda like The Vow ). The story explores his amnesia and the trials and tribulations that these two have to go through to get all four of them back together. Has some dark themes, so not entirely fluffy and romantic .
Beware: major Butch/Femme theme goes on in this one. Some of you may not like it, but it's really cute :o

Sukisho - Episode 1



( You can also watch this one on youtube )

[TimmyThink]

I remember a few years back Yaoi was like a huge thing with teen girls. If you went to a FanExpo or Anime North it was just like droves and droves of 15 year old girls with I Yaoi t-shirts. One year at FanEx they sold these yaio paddles ( they looked like mini boat paddles) and they where everywhere, all girls had their kanji I heart Yaoi shirt, yaoi paddle and Neko headband.

It was like Biberfever but like boy love fever, it was strange. That trend ( and anime in general) is kind of dead now, the yaio booth is now stuffed in some out of they way corner of the retail floor with some shirtless dude dancing down to J-pop with his little pride flags and no one is even looking at him.

[Sylph]

I remember a few years back Yaoi was like a huge thing with teen girls. If you went to a FanExpo or Anime North it was just like droves and droves of 15 year old girls with I Yaoi t-shirts. One year at FanEx they sold these yaio paddles ( they looked like mini boat paddles) and they where everywhere, all girls had their kanji I heat Yaoi shirt, yaoi paddle and Neko headband.

It was like Biberfever but like boy love fever, it was strange. That trend ( and anime in general) is kind of dead now, the yaio booth is now stuffed in some out of they way corner of the retail floor with some shirtless dude dancing down to J-pop with his little pride flags and no one is even looking at him.

I don't think it's quite dead yet . There may not be huge expos for them anymore, but I think it's still popular, especially for teens (both boys and girls) . I liked watching them and still do, because it shows how far we've come, since those black and white cartoons, of men with moustaches, ordering their wives/girlfriends around and flexing their muscles.

Plus, it can help young gay people see that it's not strange to be gay, cause if they have it in Mangas/Animes/Video games, then it must be okay, and it will help them be able to be themselves. More Yaoi's keep getting made anyway, so they must be somewhat popular :p .

Also... I want one of those paddles >.> , ... but not for the reason you think . It's a totally innocent reason. ...right? lol.

[OrphanPip]

I think the representations are problematic.

First, I'll begin with a disclaimer. Japan has a different history of attitudes towards sexual minorities than that of West, but at the same time there is an interesting cultural hybridity (especially amongst popular culture) that makes the analysis something of a minefield. So, I'll avoid making judgments about what these representations reflect about Japanese culture or attitudes, and instead focus on what the consumption of this media by Western audiences might mean.

Now, there is something to be said for affirmative representations in any form, at least they aren't outwardly hostile. However, I think it would be a mistake to assume that these are progressive representations of gay people. To an extant, I view these as a modern form of drag entertainment, which itself has a long history in entertainment. Drag performers and other forms of non-challenging gender deviation, one's that don't challenge directly the heteronormative paradigms, were popular elements of the vaudeville stage at the beginning of the 20th century. In other words, people just get a kick out of inversions, little deviations on the way things are. So, in these worlds, where often any serious tackling of issues is absent or brushed over, the focus isn't really on homosexuality, but on the play of the inversion and the delight this provides for the audience.

This gets to the root of why women produce this media primarily for the consumption of other women. It's not really about gay boys at all, but it's about heterosexual women in a form of animated drag. They play out overwhelmingly heteronormative relationship paradigms. Sometimes they can't avoid playing with these norms that become problematic as a result of the gender inversion, but mostly they don't really challenge anyone's conventional ideas about gender or sexuality.

So, we end up with a form of homo-drag in art where the heterosexual female viewer gets to delight in the playfulness of it and still identify directly with the romantic plots, because it is essentially the restrained female desire for the male seducer that is being played out in the plots. It might even become more popular for young teen girls because the cross-gender identification helps to veil any implications on their own sexual desires, it let's them engage in a mild form of erotica that doesn't compromise their sexual "purity" by having the desire mediated through a male-male homosexual relationship that removes the threat of her own sexual compromise. Of course, we also see this in the chasteness of much of the relationships depicted in the non-pornographic ones.

Another parallel we might draw is to something like Disney's Song of the South. Where the African American culture and figure is deployed as a form of entertainment for the predominantly white audience. Here you get an indulgence in the "otherness" of a group, but the spectre of discrimination and racial prejudice is brushed aside in favour of whimsical folk songs. We shouldn't assume because white audiences in the 1930s were engaging in watching these representations that this reflected positive attitudes towards black people. They weren't outwardly aggressive, but they were more about the attitudes and desires of the white audiences than they were in any way about the lived reality of black people.

[Nick9]

OrphanPip, this is the most interesting point of view I have ever read or heard about this. wow.

I am not familiar with yaoi and my laptop is not willing to play video these days, making the firefox to completely freeze, so I can't watch it now.

Would you say that you can recognize from the story plot or dialogues, that it was writen by a woman? Are there some ilogical turns in those stories that could happen in hetero relationship (like those autors probably experienced them), but not between two men?

Do I understand it correctly that you suggest that those man/man relationship are in fact depicted like man/woman relationship, but to make it more interesting the authors "pro forma" changed the woman into a male?
So basically the story is m/w, but two men are "on the stage"?

Thanks