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Eisner Winning Manga Creator Gengoroh Tagame Laments End of Adult Gay Manga Mags
posted on by Lynzee Loveridge
Gengoroh Tagame found mainstream success with his award-winning manga My Brother’s Husband and is currently serializing the all ages manga Our Colors (Bokura no Shikisai) in Futabasha's Monthly Action magazine, but prior to general audience works Tagame made his name in the world of erotic gay manga, sometimes referred to as bara.
German publisher Bruno Gmünder Verlag has published Tagame's Gunji, Fisherman’s Lodge, Endless Game, and The Contracts of the Fall manga in English, and Fantagraphics' Massive: Gay Erotic Manga and the Men Who Make It anthology featured work by Tagame.
However, it looks like erotic manga will no longer be Tagame's livelihood and fans of his adult works will need to check dōjin events and underground publications to find it. This isn't the result of a deliberate choice by Tagame himself--gay adult manga magazines were a dying breed and with the final issue of Badi magazine on January 25, there will be only one left.
Tagame wrote on his blog January 1 that all the magazines that featured his work over the last 30 years are gone, including Sabu, G-men, Badi, SM-Z, Kinniku-otoko, and Nikutai-ha. Tagame describes the remaining magazine, Samson, as one that targets "fat and old men only in Japan." He went on to say, "I'm feeling like I'm watching the end of the era of Japanese gay magazines."
Tagame apologized to readers and wrote that he'll still make adult gay manga in his spare time and possibly for crowdfunding campaigns but that his primary job will be drawing all-ages comics.
Tagame co-founded G-men magazine with Hiroshi Hasegawa in 1995 and both were interviewed for Graham Kolbeins and Anne Ishii's Queer Japan documentary. Furukawa Shobu ceased publication of G-men in 2016.
Source: Gengoroh Tagame's blog (NSFW)
