This group consisted of several female mangaka who were all born around the 24 th year of Showa, or, 1949, who revolutionized the manga business with their stories for young women.
To begin with, it was the so-called “Year 24 Group” (24年組 24 nen-gumi) that pioneered the genre.
Girls’ Manga Revolution of the 1970sīoys’ love has a history of almost 50 years of development, from its first buds in the 1970s, to today’s international communities and blossoming fandoms. Regardless of which term you prefer in referring to the phenomena of BL, and whether you prefer manga, novels or games, one thing is clear fan culture is essential to BL, and most of it is run by women. If you go to a reasonably sized bookstore in Japan, especially in districts such as Otome Road, or Nakano Broadway, publications of this kind will likely be grouped in one section, marked with “BL.” “Boys love” as an expression first came into existence in the 90s, and was used to describe commercial manga and light novels with a focus on male relationships, but gradually also incorporated non-commercial works, such as fanzines and doujinshi. In comparison, many, especially in the west, associate the term “shonen ai” with more innocent content, featuring a larger focus on the emotional aspects and the daily lives and struggles of the characters, and less, if at all, on the sexual. Incidentally, one of the early circles publishing BL manga coined the term with the humorous meaning of “no climax, no plot, no meaning” (山場なし、落ちなし、意味なし yamanashi ochinashi, iminashi), in reference to the lack of plot, although any avid reader will know that in most of these stories, there is no lack of a different kind of climaxes.Īnother popular joke among fans is that yaoi is really an abbreviation of yatte onegai iikoto, which literally translates to something like “Please do something good to me”, or the more dubious yamete, oshiri ga itai – “Stop it, my ass hurts!”. Meanwhile, the current use of the term in Japan seems to separate doujinshi from original content and to classify publications that generally focus more on sex than on plot. In the west, the term “yaoi” tends to be used by fans as a way of identifying any media or publication with male homosexual content. Generally, the use of these terms today tends to be seen as interchangeable, much due to the overlapping nature and origins. Photo credit: Caroline Olsen Terminology and Origins of Boys’ Loveīefore delving into the development of the BL genre, an explanation of the aforementioned terms might be necessary. K Books on Otome Road sells almost exclusively BL doujinshi and fan goods.
In this article, we will put on our historical goggles, and have a look at where it all started, and maybe a glimpse at where boys’ love (or BL) might be going from here. As a genre, BL is adored by hordes of fans, criticized by others and often parodied in more mainstream media.įor the past few decades, it has however, become a force to be reckoned with. If you are at all familiar with Japanese popular culture, you will probably have encountered the term “boys’ love”, or one of its many sister phrases, such as “801”, “shonen-ai”, or perhaps the most commonly used in the west, “yaoi.” The genre stretches beyond just manga, as it also includes media such as anime, live-action movies, CD dramas, games, light novels and doujinshi, all centered around the romantic and sexual relationships of boys who love boys. What started it all and how did it evolve to what we know today?