Boys Love: 100% Boys, 100% Love
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Boys Love otherwise known as Yaoi is a popular fictional media (either published as an anime or manga) focusing on homoerotic stories featuring beautiful young boys that have homosexual relationships with each other. Originating from the Japanese phrase "Yama nashi, ochi nashi, imi nashi," Yaoi originally meant "no climax, no point, no meaning," and was originally used to refer to how early Yaoi was written, which was often written with emphasis only on "beauty and sexual relationship" and nothing else.
However, as Boys Love gained a wider audience, and the genre started to evolve, deeper and more mature themes started to emerge. With the market of Yaoi being predominantly female, writers of Yaoi began to focus on themes, roles, and elements which female readers and viewers prefer. Comedic and entertaining themes became Yaoi's mainstay element.
Because Yaoi was primarily written with female audiences in mind, a counterpart of Yaoi developed. This counterpart genre, called Bara which means gay manga, also known as Men's Love or ML, generally catered to gay male audiences and tended to be written by homosexual and bisexual male writers and artists.
A recent development introduced a new subgenre within Boys Love, called gachi muchi or muscle-chubby BL, this media offered more masculine-drawn male characters and was likelier to have gay male artists. While still primarily marketed towards female audiences, the subgenre has attracted attention from gay audiences as well.
Yaoi usually portrays two males, one being portrayed as the stereotypical male and one portrayed as the subservient or more "feminine" male who are in constant sexual tension. The story's main goal is to have that sexual tension resolved before the end of the story. The aggressor or seme, is the one portrayed as the more masculine of the two, and is generally drawn as taller, older, with a stronger chin and smaller eyes; while the uke, or the passive male is drawn with a smaller build and more feminine features, sometimes often being drawn in such a way that the character appears more female than male. The drawings can be so vague that outlines or the silhouette of breasts can sometimes be seen on uke characters.
Yaoi stories are often told in a uke's point of view. With the protagonists or the uke often not identifying as gay or admitting to be openly gay. This has been pointed out as the author's way of showing that the overall theme of the story is not homosexuality but the all-conquering power of love.
Female characters in Boys Love stories seldom appear, or if they do, are given minor roles or are killed early in the series. Fan works derived from stories which may have had a leading female character are often changed to have the female character's role minimized or altogether removed in the new version. Yaoi has often been criticized as misogynistic in its early years but this has largely worn off as the genre became more popularized. Today, Yaoi is a mainstream element in fiction and in media. |
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Author Resource:-
Justin Doe is the founder of the largest online database of Boys Love movies in Asia, the site also boasts the largest showcase of yaoi manga comics from Japan.
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By :
Jessie Stone
Submitted
2010-10-16 08:36:26 |
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