Forum - View topicChicks On Anime - Yaoi
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Labbes
 Posts: 890 |
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Very interesting to hear about yaoi, I should really go check a yaoi manga out. This phenomenon totally went past me, since I don't go to cons and am not really into manga.
Are there any recommendations for yaoi manga with a low amount of volumes? 
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Megiddo
 Posts: 8360 Location: IL |
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Hmmm, once again I enjoyed this week's article. Mostly it was the balance between Robin and Casey (with Bamboo being neutral mainly) that perked my interest.
Of the two views, I'd say I'm more on Robin's side. I'm no homophobe, but I can't really see yaoi as some great way to spread gay tolerance. Most fangirls that I've talked with about the subject initially say that they're in it for the relationship, but what attracts their attention the most is the sex. |
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Unholy_Nny
 Posts: 622 |
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So, I saw this, and I was like "Hey! Maybe this has some new info for me so that I can properly understand this "yaoi" stuff..."
Besides having already been informed of 90% of the subjects discussed here, I still don't understand... It's like... I say "Why?", I'm given the answer, only to reply with "But... WHY?" Last edited by Unholy_Nny on Tue Nov 18, 2008 1:53 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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jgreen
 Posts: 1325 Location: St. Louis, MO |
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Wow, between this and David Welsh's essay on recent yaoi works of note, this is two interesting pieces I've read this week on a subject I otherwise tend to avoid.
And this was definitely interesting. It did seem to make clear that the vast majority of this genre would not appeal to me in the slightest, but there were definitely some interesting insights into the genre, its appeal, and its fandom. A few comments... - I'll agree with Bamboo, it IS totally the fangirls that irritate me the most about yaoi fandom. - I found the talk about shirtless guy kind of interesting, because as a guy, I don't even notice. Really, shirtless guys are very prevalent in anime, particularly in action shows...take it to its comical extreme and you get Kenshiro, whose shirt rips off every time he does his special technique in Fist of the North Star. I mean, I don't know that that's meant as fanservice to female viewers necessarily, but it doesn't seem like it's there to appeal to the male viewers either, and as a male viewer it's not something that jumps out at me as "different and unusual," as Robin put it. - The phrase "a naked woman with pedals all over her body" confused the Hell out of me. I was trying to picture a woman with a bunch of bike pedals on her for about a full minute before I realized "OOOOOH, she meant flower petals!" 
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yruahippo
 Posts: 11 Location: SE London |
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Wow. I was just thinking about this kind of thing the other night. My friend was asking if I'd be free to babysit some kids and at one point she said 'the parents are a gay couple - are you okay with that?'. And this was what was going on in my head:
'You kidding? Or course I don't mind! I love gays!' 'Omg awesome! That'd be so hot....or cute. I wonder if they're hot or cute?' 'Wait, what the hell? Why would I think that kinda stuff so quickly? That's so rude. :O' 'Oh and I bet I'd fangirl spaz all over them.....they'd prolly think I was weird...' 'I bet they'd hate me. I hate me! Oh gawd I'm an awful person.' Well, my thoughts were a bit more erratic and there were a whole lot more of them than that but that's a brief summary. I think I must've got caught up in the whole yaoi community fandom thing. I spent that evening lying in bed trying to sort out my views and justify them.....which I did. And I'm gonna be a bit more careful about generalising and everything.....I felt pretty awful....^^; ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Anyways, to Labbes. Do you mean yaoi or Boy's Love? I mean I know they're are a bazillion different definitions for each of them but most commonly (that I've found) yaoi is rather more explicit than BL. So if you're only just getting into it you might wanna 'progress up the stages'. Or you can just ignore me......I realise that if you already know all that I may have come over a bit rude.......anyways..... To be honest, most of the stuff I read is either doujinshi or I've read it online and forgotten the title of it. The ones I do own (and I reccomend all of them) are: After School Nightmare (8+ volumes) Gakuen Heaven Love Contract Love Mode (11 volumes - I only have two though) Loveless (8+ volumes) Only The Ring Finger Knows Well, After School Nightmare has pretty much everything not just BL.  But yeah they're all good.
Plus unless specified each title only has a few volumes. Most yaoi tends to only have one to three volumes so I wouldn't worry about that. It's the BL that tends to span out over lots of volumes. I mean, I'm generalising here but that's what I've found. And here are the ones which I'm planning on reading/buying of the top of my head: Junjo Romantica (10) Let Dai (15 - this ones a manhwa) Little Butterfly From Up Above Princess Princess (5 - not that Bl-y but pretty funny) Almost Crying Totally Captivated Hot Limit Blue Sky Sensitive Pornograph Love Recipe I Want To Be Naughty Cute Beast Just My Luck After I Win Love Circumstances Man's Best Friend Our Kingdom Barefoot Waltz Don’t Blame Me I dunno how good all of them are but I liked the sound of them. And that's my kind of art style. But there's loads of yaoi stuff on the web so have a look around. The stuff I mentioned is just the stuff that caught my eye. Theres sooooo much more.
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caporushes
Posts: 16 |
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Well okay so the thing of it is, that really didn't talk about yaoi so much as... complain about it. I've been a yaoi fan for, god, seven years now and I have never, ever in my LIFE yelled at a gay couple and asked them to kiss or something. That's called "being an obnoxious moron" and the kind of person who would do that would do any other number of annoying things.
I don't know, the whole thing felt kind of... negatively biased. It DID feel like being a yaoi fan was something to be ashamed of, and I don't like that. Being an obnoxious git is something to be ashamed of. Being a yaoi fan is not, and I honestly don't see why yaoi fans are so often called upon to make other people "get it". There's not some magical answer formula as to why people are into it and what it's all about, that's kind of... silly. |
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mirax
Posts: 24 |
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@caporushes - I agree, it did seem kind of negatively biased, especially against the fans. With reason of course, but you have to take into account the minority: the fans who are a bit more mature and don't read yaoi for the reasons Casey mentioned.
------------------------------------ I'm a huge yaoi fan. But I also hate the mainstream crazy fangurls. With a passion. The things they do and say just boggle my mind. So, where do I start? I think personally, what I was most in disagreeance with was Casey's explanation of it being dangerous, rebellious and forbidden being the main reason young women are into it (And really, I've met more yaoi fans over the age of 25 than under). These women I know, including myself, don't really see that aspect as the main reason to like yaoi. Personally, I've never seen it as forbidden, but I was also a theatre major, my liberal bias existed well before I ever got into yaoi. Nor have I ever decided to like yaoi because of the community involved. A lot of the fans are great people and fun to be with, but I've never decided to enter that fandom because of it. I think that certainly has something to do with it, but I think the degree to which it is important to yaoi fangurls is overstated by Casey. But I also feel I'm not a model of the mainstream yaoi fangurl. I completely understand why many men are put off by yaoi, and why many men feel the whole "transcending gender" thing over-fantasizes it and offends them because they are just gay, not having transcended gender. Yaoi definitely over-glorifies gayness. There's no way to get around that. But shoujo over-glorifies heterosexual relationships too. Many aspects of manga and anime over-glorify it's content. It's more a general manga thing than a yaoi-specific thing. And personally, even before I ever got into yaoi at all, I always believed that you just fell in love with who you fell in love with, in spite of gender, be it man or woman. That may seem undeniably naive, but I'm sure I'm not the only one. One problem is that the "good" yaoi is underscored by the insane amount of pure porn yaoi out there. There is no other reason for that publication to exist besides to be porn. The "good" yaoi (the ones that truly follow relationships past the sex level and explore the relationship as you would explore a marriage or relationship in a shoujo/jousei manga), don't get recognition because you just mostly see fans squeeing over the sex. That's all you ever hear about. Even as a yaoi fan, going to /y/ on 4chan scares the crap out of me. That place is just beyond me. I've never been into yaoi for the sex only, but for the relationship building, for the ones that pretty much follow the conventions of a good shoujo manga as well as exploring the difficulties of being gay. There have to be more people like me out there, even if the number pales in comparison to the rabid fangurls. I think what this conversation failed to mention is that many women read yaoi because with yaoi they can't get jealous of anyone (keep in mind this definitely isn't a majority opinion, just one of the many popular reasons why women read yaoi). If you read the same story as a shoujo, you might start to hate the heroine because you want to BE them, because you have a crush on the male lead. So you get jealous of what the heroine has that you don't. In yaoi, you don't have that, because you go into the manga with the preconception that you could never win against another guy. So you can read it and approve of the relationship without ever feeling jealous. But I definitely understand the point the girls were trying to make here. Ninety-five percent of yaoi exists to be porn, with no plot (even the meaning of yaoi partially means no plot). And there are some crazy girls/women out there who are all for that. So why do so many yaoi fangurls parade it around like it's literary genius? It's a guilty pleasure at best, but one that many people just aren't ashamed of. And porn isn't always a bad thing. Just don't tote it around as a literary marvel or praise every gay couple as gods because of it. Or make it out to be something else besides pure porn. Just, don't judge all yaoi fans by that majority. As in every stereotype, there are those who completely don't fit it. Not that I'm offended by this conversation, I just would have liked another side to be presented. Don't forget: yaoi is serious business. AAAND this became tl;dr. Last edited by mirax on Tue Nov 18, 2008 3:54 pm; edited 3 times in total |
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yruahippo
Posts: 11 Location: SE London |
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I don't want to start an argument here but can we not say things that are blatantly rude without any kind of reason, please? I mean, if you wanna back up your claims, fair enough I guess, but otherwise it's just kinda mean......
Last edited by yruahippo on Tue Nov 18, 2008 3:47 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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FanFicGuru
Posts: 159 |
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That's a bit vague...are you talking about the article or something that someone else said here in the thread? Specify so people know what you are talking about and you're not just shooting in the dark. |
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ArthurFrDent
 Posts: 466 |
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"You see a nude guy reclining..."
Perhaps the difficulty is that men aren't really made to be beautiful... so when you stick us with the full monty into the picture it doesn't really look right, because throughout history we weren't really associated with beauty. If you look at ancient sculpture they may seem manly, or 'handsome' but the idea that beauty radiates, is really reserved to women... probably because they do in life sometimes radiate like that. So you can see that the above is written by a totally conventional guy, looking at the world that way. How someone gay looks at it is probably quite different, but I can't speak for them. What may be interesting to think on, is 'how does a hetro woman look at this?' Seems like she would have to project a theory onto two gay people she can't fully identify with... Which brings us to an interesting question I'd love to see thought about in the column... How do the various genders and orientations portray love, and why do you think that is? True, it's a wildly open ended question, because once you get past the very conventional POV's all the rest might be completely individual... Last edited by ArthurFrDent on Tue Nov 18, 2008 4:08 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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yruahippo
Posts: 11 Location: SE London |
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To FanFicGuru: I was just responding to walw6pK4Alo. Though I guess it applies to both.
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sekicharat
 Posts: 8 |
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Honestly, I couldn't identify with anything that was mentioned in the article. I'm a yaoi and Bl fan and I'm nearing 30 years old and I know plenty others like me. I don't read yaoi because it's "taboo" and I don't idealize gay relationships.
I read yaoi because I can't relate at all to most shoujo manga heroines. Most shoujo involves high school aged characters with girls who are incredibly simple and can't make up their mind between boy #1 and boy #2. I simply hate most shoujo heroines. Of course, there are exceptions and I treasure Lovely Complex and Skip Beat like pure gold. But most of the time I simply can't enjoy a manga because I'm too enraged at the heroines antics. As a girl, I can't forgive her for doing things that I myself would never do. I can't seperate my feelings as a female and just enjoy the story for what it is. With Yaoi....I can do that... Where yaoi is concerned, many stories contain older characters who are in college or already working professionals. They deal with adult problems. I'm not a gay man so I can suspend disbelief while reading yaoi. I can enjoy it as pure escapism. If a character does something stupid, I can rage at him for being stupid but I'd continue reading to see how it resolves itself, whereas with shoujo, I'd throw the book away and hate her for making girls look so helpless and stupid. And on a pure base level...I'm a female who's attracted to men and who enjoys reading romance. If given a choice between reading the story of 1 cute boy and 1 cute girl or 1 cute guy and 1 even cuter guy....of course I'd go for the two guys. It's simply a matter of it being more aesthetically pleasing. Last edited by sekicharat on Wed Nov 19, 2008 12:24 am; edited 2 times in total |
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Toshirodragon
 Posts: 166 |
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Miyamoto Kano, published by Deux. Her stuff is heart breaking and realistic and not terribly graphic. Yamada Yugi, published by June, a lot of crack weirdness but emphasis on relationships . |
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Toshirodragon
Posts: 166 |
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Couldn't have said it better myself. I'm 44 years old,married with a child and my parents are dead. I have absolutely NO need to rebel and no one to rebel against. I dislike most shoujo because of the inane stupidity of the girls. Yaoi gives me a relationship that starts out far more equal than a shoujo one. Both guys are men, with all the rights, privileges and expectations of being male in the modern world irregardless of their position in bed. No heterosexual relationship will ever start that balanced. No man, no matte how liberated he is, will ever going into a relationship expecting that he's going to continue to do all the housework. |
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Raneth
Posts: 271 |
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It fascinates me that so many people seem so obsessed with understanding why women enjoy watching yaoi.
Maybe it's because they find men beautiful, and love the nude male form. Naked men are sexy. Others may say its only women who radiate beauty, and that may be your opinion, but it's not everyone's. Last edited by Raneth on Sat May 19, 2012 9:55 am; edited 1 time in total |
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