Example of shōnen-ai artwork, originally published at Yaoi (;: やおい ), also known as boys' love ( ボーイズ ラブ, bōizu rabu) or BL ( ビーエル, bīeru), is a of fictional media originating in Japan that features relationships between male characters. It is typically created by women for women and is distinct from homoerotic media marketed to male audiences, such as, but it also attracts male readers. It spans a wide range of media, including, novels, games,. Boys love and its abbreviation BL are the for this kind of media in Japan and have, in recent years, become more commonly used in English as well.
Boys’ Love (yaoi) games feature men in relationships with other men -- created by and marketed to women. But the game genre has languished over the past decade. War Boys salute to Immortan Joe atop The War Rig. War Boys are hand picked at a young age by the guardians of the elevator platform of The Citadel and are indoctrinated as zealots in the cult of V8 with Immortan Joe as their immortal leader.
However, yaoi remains more generally prevalent in English. A defining characteristic of yaoi is the practice of pairing characters in relationships according to the roles of seme, the sexual or active pursuer, and uke, the sexual or passive pursuant. Common themes in yaoi include forbidden relationships, depictions of non-consensual sex, tragedy, and humor.
Yaoi and BL stories cover a diverse range of genres such as high school love comedy, science fiction and fantasy, and include sub-genres such as omegaverse. Yaoi finds its origins in both fan culture and commercial publishing. As James Welker has summarized, the term yaoi dates back to culture of the late 1970s to early 1980s where, as a portmanteau of ' yamanashi ochinashi iminashi' (no climax, no point, no meaning), it was a self-deprecating way to refer to amateur fan works that parodied mainstream manga and anime by depicting the male characters from popular series in vaguely or explicitly sexual situations. The use of yaoi to refer to parody dōjinshi is still predominant in Japan. In commercial publishing, the genre can be traced back to shōnen'ai, a genre of beautiful boy manga that began to appear in magazines in the early 1970s. From the 1970s to 1980s, other terms such as tanbi and emerged to refer to specific developments in the genre.
In the early 1990s, however, these terms were largely eclipsed with the commercialization of male-male homoerotic media under the label of boys love. Yaoi currently has a robust global presence. Yaoi works are available across the continents in various languages both through international licensing and distribution and through circulation by fans. Yaoi works, culture, and have also been studied and discussed by scholars and journalists worldwide. Part of a series on.
Artwork depicting a seme (left) and uke (right) couple The two participants in a yaoi relationship (and to a lesser extent in ) are often referred to as ('top') and ('bottom'). These terms originated in martial arts: seme derives from the verb 'to attack', while uke is taken from the verb 'to receive' and is used in to mean the receptive partner ('bottom') in.
Aleardo Zanghellini suggests that the martial arts terms have special significance to a Japanese audience, as an archetype of the gay male relationship in Japan includes. The seme and uke are often drawn in the style and are 'highly idealised', blending both and qualities. Zanghellini suggests that the samurai archetype is responsible for 'the 'hierarchical' structure and age difference' of some relationships portrayed in yaoi and boys' love.
The seme is often depicted as the male of anime and manga culture: restrained, physically powerful, and protective. The seme is generally older and taller, with a stronger chin, shorter hair, smaller eyes, and a more stereotypically masculine, and 'macho' demeanour than the uke. The seme usually pursues the uke, who often has softer, androgynous, feminine features with bigger eyes and a smaller build, and is often physically weaker than the seme. Another way the seme and uke characters are shown is through who is dominant in the relationship - a character can take the uke role even if he is not presented as feminine, simply by being juxtaposed against and pursued by a more dominant, more masculine, character. Although not the same, a yaoi construct similar to seme and uke is the concept of tachi and neko. This archetypal pairing is referenced more often in older yaoi volumes - in modern yaoi, this pairing is often seen as already encompassed by seme and uke or simply unnecessary to address.
The tachi partner is conceptualized as the member of the relationship who pursues the more passive partner, the latter of whom is referred to as the neko. Seme and uke is similar but not identical to tachi and neko because the former refers primarily to sexual roles, whereas the latter describes personality. Although seme and uke roles are already used in some manga to describe which member of the relationship is more dominant and which member is more passive, there are just as many manga novels which subtly or overtly differentiate between the two. A gay male who asks out another male can initiate the relationship but also enjoy the sensation of being a bottom in anal sex.
Anal sex is a prevalent theme in yaoi, as nearly all stories feature it in some way. The storyline where an uke is reluctant to have anal sex with a seme is considered to be similar to the reader's reluctance to have sexual contact with someone for the first time. Zanghellini notes that illustrations of anal sex almost always position the characters to face each other, rather than in the '.'
Zanghellini also notes that the uke rarely the seme, but instead receives the sexual and romantic attentions of the seme. Though these tropes are common in yaoi, not all works adhere to them. Carola Bauer states that the ' couple dynamic discussed above became essential in the commercially published fiction of the 1990s. McLelland says that authors are 'interested in exploring, not repudiating' the dynamics between the seme and uke.
The possibility of switching roles is often a source of playful teasing and sexual excitement for the characters, indicating an interest among many genre authors in exploring the 'performative nature' of the roles. Sometimes the bottom character will be the aggressor in the relationship, or the pair will switch their sexual roles. Riba, リバ (a contraction of the English word 'reversible') is used to describe a couple that yaoi fans think is still plausible when the partners switch their seme and uke roles. In another common mode of characters, the author will forgo the stylisations of the seme and uke, and will portray both lovers as 'equally attractive handsome men.'
In this case, whichever of the two who is ordinarily in charge will take the passive role during sex. Initially called aniparo, this term covered both male fans' work about female characters and female fans' work about male characters, but yaoi would be surpassed by aniparo as referring to women's fictions. First serialized in in January 1976, Kaze has been called 'the first commercially published boys' love story', but this claim has been challenged, as the first male-male kiss was in the 1970 manga In the Sunroom, also by Takemiya.
Matt Thorn says that Kaze was 'the first shōjo manga to portray romantic and sexual relationships between boys', and that Takemiya first thought of Kaze nine years before it was approved for publication. Takemiya attributes the gap between the idea and its publication to the sexual elements of the story. This character has been called an osoi uke ('attacking uke'). He is usually paired with a hetare seme ('wimpy seme').
References.