Romance by Any Other Name

With journalists and industry insiders alike trumpeting manga’s appeal to women, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that a romantic subgenre aimed at women has skyrocketed in popularity over the past year. What raises the eyebrows of many, however, is that this niche market does not feature your typical Regency couple—it’s all about guys falling for other guys.

The favored term in Japan for this subgenre is BL, an acronym for boys’ love, which is, in turn, a translation of the now-outdated Japanese phrase shonen-ai. A related term, yaoi (pronounced “yah-oy”) is used in Japan to indicate fan or amateur comics that portray same-sex relationships between canon characters from manga, anime, and video game series. In the United States, most fans use shonen-ai to indicate romance and yaoi to imply adult sexual content. Whatever you dub it, BL now has a large readership that has made its demands known. According to industry news site ICv2.com, 32 of the 87 titles announced for release from September to November are BL and yaoi titles.

These books are appealing for many of the same reasons that prose romance novels are attractive. First and foremost, it’s because they focus on relationships. While the couples may be high school students, samurai, or cops, their occupations and environments are secondary to their desires. Homophobia, family expectations, and societal disapproval may be used to heighten the drama, but the lack of strictly realistic issues contributes to part of the appeal.

What distinguishes BL from traditional romances is the idea that the two male leads start off as social equals. Female readers can identify with either hero, although sexual dynamics and gender stereotypes can still be strictly coded, as many creators favor an alpha male pursuing a reluctant partner, though younger creators are breaking down that trope. More challenging titles explore BDSM, sexual power plays, and sexual violence.

Until recently, drawing genitalia was illegal in Japan, so creators drew strategically placed sheets or left it to the readers’ imaginations to fill in carefully delineated white space, humorously referred to as “glowing cones of light.” Today, many titles depict the whole caboodle, and while they’re not any more explicit than a Laurell K. Hamilton or Zane novel, they are inherently visual. Each library must consider the visual and textual elements of the story and reference what they collect in films, television series, GNs, and video games. U.S. publishers rate BL titles more conservatively than the heterosexual equivalent; most are rated ages 16+. Titles rated ages 18+ include mature content, though not always explicit nudity. Selectors should note that publishers try to rate the series, not a particular volume in the series.

As BL grows, more publishers have launched series and imprints to meet demand. Tokyopop was the first with Maki Murakami’s Gravitation, and it now maintains the BLU imprint for more mature titles. Digital Manga dominates the market with their Juné imprint, averaging eight new titles a month. Digital Manga’s sister publisher, 801 Media, takes on the more hard-core series, as does DramaQueen and CPM’s Be Beautiful. New manga publisher Aurora has started off with a BL imprint, Deux, and Broccoli Books just launched its own Boysenberry imprint.

BL creators are not limited to Japan: Netcomics, a Korean manhwa publisher, has Boy Princess and several other milder series, and Yaoi Press and Iris Print feature manga-style BL titles from creators from Italy to the United States.