Forum - View topicAnswerman - Why is Yuri Anime So Popular Now?
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jr240483
Posts: 4429 Location: New York City,New York,USA |
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there are those within the anti LBGT community over there that are are using genres like NTR ,yuri and boys love as factors (as well as it being far too expensive to have a family in japan) is why the younger generation refused to get married let alone have children which is why japan currently is having a population crisis and if nothing is done about it, their population will be less than a million by the end of the 21st century according to the DIET! as a result you would think the JP govt would be secretly pressuring anime companies like kadokawa to take a pass on making yuri animes let alone distributing their mangas and light novels and NOT green light their productions but focused on more popular series that also promote marriages AND/OR having a family like TONIKAKU, SPYXFAMILY or buddy daddies? well hopefully they can solve the population crisis without having to resort to draconian measure like banning the yuri and BL genre by including them in another BS Tokyo Youth Ordinance Bill AGAIN (which according to Aki Sora's author, was a factor in scaring certain Light Novel authors from doing works that involves romance between blood related siblings) more importantly it can just take ONE VERY BAD SERIES OR ENDING to completely kill a genre like what occur to the imouto genre after oreimo and there are no exceptions to this. luckily the yuri genre is very strong in the JP otaku community and with successful series like witch from mercury and licoris recoil, it wont have to worry about that scenario happening anytime soon. YET!
i definitely wouldnt use that disappointing series as an example in getting someone into yuri though when there are far better yuri animes like witch from mercury and licoris recoil. as someone who is a die hard yuri fan since the days of utena and haruka/michiru shipping, AND as someone who read the Japanese light novels, I cringe watch this show. reasons? 1)The best parts are when the main actors aren't the primary part of the scene. especially ains. In fact, the maid Ilya is a far more interesting character than the mains. 2)The brother is on some railroad. He hates the throne, but want's to be king. The King is too busy being bullied by his only daughter to cowboy-up and set expectations or cut the kid off. the definition of the term of having characters that are poorly written. 3) Toho is doing something just as weird for their anime. I don't know if it's an industry thing, but I'm not buying what they are selling. It's too bad. The whole magical items thing was fun to watch. Killing critters to get their magic and put it into something. 4) which is is most important one for any yuri series is that The Yuri have to be fun to watch and must definitely be extremely adorable to see! Sadly, the yuri story between ains and Euphy isn't cute or fun. It's just in your face. Like the studio is waving a pride flag in your face. It's overly ?hard? and not soft? It's just weird. Now dont get me wrong! Tenten Kakumei is not a bad series for there are FAR WORSE series out there, (LOOKING AT YOU SIN NANATSU NO TAIZAI , VALKYRIE DRIVE MERMAID AND ESPECIALLY THE ABOMINATION NAMED NTR NETSUZOU TRAP) but as someone whose been a yuri junkie for decades, this series is the prime example on how to do a yuri series THE WRONG WAY whereas witch from mercury and licoris recoil are the RIGHT WAY to do a yuri series. personally, i think it should not get a second season at all! especially on how the latest volume of the JP light novels ended! worse case is that if kadokawa does indeed give this a future second season (though it is highly unlikely considering that while the anime itself is popular, its light novels are inferior for kadokawa's stands when compared to juggernauts like the Eminence in Shadow light novels) , there is a high chance this anime could end up bombing as badly as season 2 of promise neverland which is a prime example on when a series should quit while their on a high note! for when it comes to tenten kakumei , its definitely the top two alongside princess fena as the most disappointing series ever. they had lots of potential , but squandered it badly |
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mdo7
Posts: 6361 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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I don't like to bring up politics especially one involving GOP/conservatives and their attack on anything LGBTQ (if you're not a citizens of the US, or haven't been paying attention in the news lately, there's been a lot of anti-trans, and anti-lgbtq backlash as part of their culture war for the last 2 years), and we've seen something like this being targeted toward anime/manga fandom. Although I'm happy to see yuri and more representation of LGBTQs in anime/manga, I'm worried that they (along with the larger anime/manga fandom) could be targeted by the same anti-LGBTQ lawmakers and bigots in the US that are going after transgender, and drag queens.
I'm also scared that the attack on anti-LGBTQ/anti-trans in the US that could lead to attack on yuri/yaoi/LGBTQ anime/manga (that include the larger anime/manga fandom) which could also lead to anti-Asian attack (because these homophobes and transphobes will figure out that they're from Japan) in the US because of that. So as a anime/manga fans that is Asian-American (I'm a 35 years old 2nd gen Vietnamese-American millennials who been in the anime/manga fandom since 2006) and ally of LGBTQ rights, this really worries me. |
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CrimeVsCrime
Posts: 30 |
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I think there's a more simple explanation here: you don't have to support or care about gay rights to think lesbians are hot. Just because someone writes a yuri manga or puts a girl/girl couple in their work doesn't mean they have to be a vocal supporter of marriage equality or anything in real life. They could just find it sexy and appealing to do. |
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Vaisaga
Posts: 13235 |
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I'm less inclined to think that since most yuri series I'm familiar with are incredibly tame. Sweet kisses are as far as they usually get. You rarely see them lusting for each other and getting hot and heavy. It focuses on the emotional, not the physical which is why I usually work under the assumption that yuri series target female audiences rather than male ones. |
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Nev999
Posts: 150 |
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Some of this has some truth to it but I think people sometimes overplay how big of a majority it is. People will claim yuri is written by horny men. A decent chunk of yuri, especially the popular titles people over here actually know about because they got anime, are written by women and sometimes openly queer women. Sweet Blue Flowers, Bloom into You and Kase-san were all by women. The author of I'm in Love with a Villainess is a lesbian, so is Akiko Morishima and many more, just for a start. And there's lots of yuri that discusses being queer, including the difficult parts that aren't easily consumable, and even pushes back against Class S stereotypes. The Yuri is My Job manga does that (the anime will probably not get quite that far) and so does Bloom Into You. Even male yuri authors like Iori Miyazawa have spoken out against treating being a lesbian as "just a phase" and said men thinking about how they can get with lesbians is spam you should delete. There's always been yuri that's been transgressive, and it progresses as a genre along with the rest of the world. And we recently had yuri author actively campaign for marriage equality- we might be seeing more of that. She Loves to Cook She Loves to Eat was even popular enough to get a live action adaptation despite very much not catering to the male gaze. Last edited by Nev999 on Fri May 05, 2023 10:40 pm; edited 4 times in total |
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Nev999
Posts: 150 |
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Yeah, but you just said you don't like yuri so I'm not sure why you think you'd know. There is "chaste" Class S yuri, which had a resurgence in the late 90s/early 2000s, but yuri has varying levels of heat like all romance. A lot of yuri manga includes some kind of sexual element, even if it's just a hot springs scene. Bloom into You, Kase san (the author was famously annoyed by her editor calling it "pure" yuri) , probably Magirevo eventually, have sex scenes, though they're not grotesquely fanservicey or very obviously for the male gaze by any means. The anime adaptations just rarely make it that far. Men can like emotional romance, as the recent boom in shonen romance shows. A lot of the recent popular romance based anime people assume are shoujo were seinen- Skip and Loafer for instance. That being said, again, more of these than people realize are written by women and/or directly engage with queer issues and denounce homophobia. And a mangaka might still keep the female audience in mind even if their work runs in shonen magazines. |
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CrimeVsCrime
Posts: 30 |
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Well, it's not like K-On was dripping in fanservice and ecchi scenes either and that's a certified male pandering moe series. I don't think a series needs to be full of fanservice to appeal to men. Just having cute girls is enough But it really depends what you're reading or watching. A lot of the stuff in Comic Yuri Hime, the most popular yuri manga magazine running, like Android wa Keiken Ninzuu ni Hairimasu Ka can get pretty saucy. But if people only watch regular shows that yuribat then yeah, you won't see much. I guess people should specify when they say yuri do they mean actual titles that run in yuri magazines or just any show they're watching that has two female characters in it that they ship together. I don't think being aimed at or written by men or women matters though. Women like smut too. "Male gaze" is a bad term people use because it acts like women won't enjoy seeing boobs or thighs themselves. I prefer just saying sexualized in general. A lot of ecchi artists are women, after all. |
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Vaisaga
Posts: 13235 |
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I'm still privy to the discourse around these things. If these shows had sex scenes it'd be plastered all over the internet. Not just by the immature "seggggs!" types, but also yuri fans throwing a victory parade. Last mainstream show I can recall that had actual lesbian sex was Cross Ange. |
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Nev999
Posts: 150 |
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That is a good point, though I think that while the meaning of the term "male gaze" is diluted online, it doesn't just mean "boobs and butts" but goes into spectatorship and heterosexuality and so on in actual academic discussions. There is a weird disconnect (which may or may not even be subjective) between my own lived experience and desires and the way lesbians can be packaged as this alien thing disconnected from any considerations of what it feels like to be a woman (much less one who gazes at women) in some anime so it can be a handy thing to express that. When you sit down and just know from every single bit of it they never considered a lesbian would watch this show about lesbians. It's not so much the eroticism as the weird grotesque passivity and sanitization. I mostly pay attention to who it's written by just because I like knowing about queer artists expressing themselves on a "that's neat and I relate to that" level, though men can write great yuri and women can write bad stuff. I also think it helps to counteract the myths about who yuri is by or for. |
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Florete
Posts: 377 |
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On top of what Nev999 said, there is also the fact that the stereotype that yuri is mostly consumed by straight men is not true. Polls from Yuri Hime and yuri communities have generally seen the gender ratio to be ~50/50. Though it should be noted this is specifically referring to people who seek out and enjoy yuri as a genre, not people who just like lesbian porn or enjoy occasional two-girl fanservice. |
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Helix91
Subscriber
Posts: 63 |
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I think the fact is that there isn't just one definition of yuri that people use consistently. Sometimes it means an explicitly romantic relationship between women/girls, but sometimes it means a show with heavy ship-teasing (like Lycoris Recoil). It just depends on who's using it and in what context. I'm not sure if BL/yaoi has the same crossover of the terms, but I think it happens sometimes. And calling something "fujobait" is pretty close to calling something "yuri" when the romance is all subtext. |
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Cho_Desu
Posts: 235 |
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Speaking generally, I've noticed over the years that what gets constituted as yuri by the masses is more generous than what gets constituted as yaoi. The former can often include anime with just hints of a potential "ship," while the latter seems to almost always require scenes much more explicit (often in more than one sense of the word) to convince everyone. I'm for seeing all kinds of stories, so that includes stories of friendship of all kinds, as well as non-romantic "bromance" and "womance" stories, and stories that commit to letting characters actually have LGBT+ relationships. It'd be nice to see more "mainstream" series be willing to go through with having same-sex leads as a couple, even if romance is not the main point of the story. (Tangentially, I'd also like to see more series where the lead boy and girl are indeed just friends the whole time, with no hint of romance whatsoever.) |
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Toyokaaaa
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Considering even SFW series still get labeled as "yaoi"(an outdated Japanese term roughly translated as "porn without plot" or "plotless fun"), I'm not surprised about general audience's reception of BL as a genre. It was always more hush-hush in anime and manga circles despite many industry giants admitting to enjoying it. Just look at how people react to Fujimoto recommending adult BL titles - most people don't them seriously and spam memes instead. Even ANN did that. But that's fine, it still makes me more manga titles are available nowadays, for any kind of audience. Wish I could say the same about anime, but alas. |
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primalmaximus
Posts: 108 |
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Hell, the manga "Doughnuts Under a Crescent Moon" has lead characters who are asexual lesbians. Meaning they feel romantic attraction towards women, but don't feel sexual attraction towards them. |
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r1chancellor
Posts: 27 |
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There are a lot of long-standing misconceptions about yuri that still get confidently repeated by people outside Japan who don't know any better, such as the one about yuri being written mostly by and for straight men. Erica Friedman's book By Your Side: The First Hundred Years of Yuri Anime and Manga is an excellent resource for those who want to be informed on the subject rather than to rely on dated stereotypes, as is her website.
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