Come experience the fascinatingly odd genre of Boy Love…with pictures!

I admit, I’m not a huge fan of Pokemon or Anime, I’d rather watch a Pixar movie with cool graphics and a fish named Nemo, but I digress. In the spirit of our Mardi Gras celebration  and continuing our 14 days of man love ( insert flashing chests and beads…as to what kind, take that anyway you want dirty birds). We begin a new adventure into the unknown of Yaoi Manga. So, put on your safari hat’s, and don’t forget to pack a clean pair of underwear as we go exploring into the wild’s of Yaoi. 

Yaoi [yow-ee] Manga [mon-guh]: Comic smut books oringially read by women in Japan that contain hot boy-love stories written by female authors. Typical plots include submissive’s, or ‘receivers’ usually conforming to the want’s of the aggressor aka the ‘attacker’. Sometimes refered to as Boy’s-Love or BL for short, this is normally read by women. Not into the boy love then step on over and check out bara for gay men and yuri for the ladies who like ladies.  resource: smokinhotapedia

Who doesn’t want to try and read comic porn? While I’m not sure if this genre is for me,seeing as the last comic I read was Archie and Veronica, I’m still willing to give sub’ romances the good ‘ole college try.

Like Anthony Bourdane, I sought out fellow romance and Yaoi Manga reader @Ferishia  for some questions and she was more than happy to shed some light and help me on my quest for knowledge, with NO RESERVATIONS!

Tell us how you got started reading or is it looking at Yaoi Manga?

 
Ferishia Hi all!
First I’d like to say I’m honored that you asked me about yaoi manga. I’m not an expert, but I know a thing or 3 about yaoi. lol I’m a little nervous about this, so I hope my answers make sense. lol

If you don’t know what a ‘manga’ is, it a Japanese comic book. It’s a bound as a book with lots of pages, not like the thin regular comic books sold in the U.S. The pictures are in black and white, but sometimes there is a color insert of the characters. It’s read from left to right, the opposite of the way you normally read a book.You typically do both reading and looking at yaoi manga (but more looking than reading lol), but I’ll talk about that later.  How I got into Yaoi is totally by accident.  It’s been a couple of years, but I remember it clearly (because I remember everything pertaining to smut really well. Lol)

I got started reading them, well…I was up really late one night. My husband was stationed overseas and I have no kid, pets or plants to take care of/bother me, so I usually entertain myself. So, I surfed the net and settled in to my favorite smut site and clicked away *coughRESEARCHcough* lol.  I stumbled on to this animated clip in the m/m section of videos. I’m also a huge cartoon fan, so anything animated I’ll watch. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen cartoon smut…oh, wait, that’s another story.  So…yeah…the video, I watched it…several times, and then had to know what it was. The story (which is the 2nd of two shorts on the dvd) is about a young man who is a pet sitter, and he’s hired to watch and take care of a rabbit named Aki. Only when he gets to the apartment, Aki is not a rabbit, he is very beautiful naked guy tied up in leather restraints and a ball gag. ummm…yeahh! The pet sitter releases Aki and is visibly confused that there is no real rabbit. Anyway, Aki tells him he’s been set up and needs to go along with the scene because they are being watched.  At that point the ‘action’ happens. And all I could do was stare and drool. The young men were very attractively drawn, the color was …well you don’t really care, it looked freakin’ HOT! You can see EVERYTHING! They were well portioned and the hottest scene was when Aki bent over and told the pet sitter to do him. *Drools* This was all subtitled an uncut by the way. Anyway, I tore my eyes away long enough to read the comments. One of them mentions the name as Sensitive Pornograph. Yeah, I know, right? LOL Anyway, the search was on. And by 3 a.m. I’d found and ordered the dvd of it and along the way made a discovery. That type of Japanese anime was called yaoi.  I found and joined a yaoi forum the same night, aarinfantasy.com, which is about all things yaoi. Information, pictures, fan-fiction, and best of all yaoi anime downloads!  I’d hit pay dirt. I spent several days exploring that site. After a bit more research on aarinfantasy, I found out about scanlations (pages of manga comics that have been scanned and translated to English) that are actually pages from Japanese yaoi mangas. When I found out that there were English versions of yaoi available, I asked where I could buy some. One member from the U.S. said she found some at Borders, so the very next day I went to Borders to look. I picked out one to start and took it home, and just about devoured it.  Then went back the next day looking for more. I got recs on what was really good from the forum. Before I knew it, I had a large collection of both yaoi anime and mangas.

Why do you like it?
Ferishia What’s not to like?! Beautifully drawn men kissing, touching, sexin’ each other. It’s dessert for the eyes!  The format is the same as a regular comic with ‘talking bubbles’ and sound effects. However, the pictures are what draw you in.  Sometimes I ignore the words and just look at the pictures at the smexy parts. My attraction to yaoi is the same that attracts me to the M/M romance stories I read, (smex, loving relationship, smex, and smex ha-ha) except they are drawn instead of written. They also have yaoi novels and those have pretty (and explicit) illustrations inserted throughout the book.

How is it a different than reading a male male romance book?
Ferishia Actually there really is no real difference in yaoi and m/m romance books other than the form yaoi takes. Yaoi comes in different forms, like Japanese mangas, novels with pictures, and animation. There is the same type of drama, sometimes a bit unrealistic and extreme, but it’s all fantasy.  The formula is usually an older person is the top or seme (like simi). He tends to be overly masculine and very aggressive. The bottom or uke (ew-ke) is usually young and/or inexperienced, slightly timid, sometimes drawn with effeminate features. Ukes tend to not know they are gay, or in denial or becomes gay for the seme. Some stories the roles are reversed and the seme is younger and uke is older.   Yaoi is basically a Japanese word that refers to illustrated form of m/m romance comics or animation in their culture.

What Yaoi Books do you like? Do you have a favorite?
Ferisha OMG…you REALLY want to know? I have LOADS of favorites, but I’ll try to keep my list down.
The first series I got sucked into was Embracing Love by Youka Nitta. It’s about two Adult (porn) film star actors trying to break into the legitimate acting business. One is young and upcoming actor named Yoji Katou and the other a veteran Kyosuke Iwaki. They both audition for the same part in a movie. Their audition was for them to make love to each other. Uh..hello! lol Iwaki ends getting the part. Anyway Katou, (who is mainly the seme, but they switch) falls for Iwaki and decides to make him his. Iwaki, really not gay, resists Katou’s advances for a while, but eventually gives in. The series is funny, serious, and thought provoking. Probably the most ‘real life’ story I’ve read in a yaoi series. I have all the English printed volumes (all 5 of them). However the manga artist and author Youka Nitta got into some hot water a couple of years ago when it was discovered she used a Diesel ad picture of models posing on a ledge in a drawing for her manga (basically tracing over the models and changing them slightly). So now her stuff is hard to find partly because of that. Her Prime Minister’s Secret Diplomacy is still available (and in kindle eBook form!) and I would recommend it.

My all time favorite would have to be Yamane Ayano’s Viewfinder series, which is so far at five volumes. Her drawings are AWESOMELY HOT!  I love the series so much, it inspired me to write a couple of fan-fiction stories about it (but that’s a topic for another time. Lol ) Her drawings are very detailed, so very beautiful and mouth watering. I have to keep telling myself they are cartoons and not real people. Lol Viewfinder is about a news photographer, Akihito, and a Business man/Yakuza (Japanese mafia head) Asami.  Akihito takes some pictures he shouldn’t have and Asami has him captured, then drugs and sexually tortures him with toys and other sexual paraphernalia. Along the way, Asami is intrigued by Akihito’s attitude, beautiful face and body and eventually falls for Akihito.  I must warn you though; this is HARDCORE yaoi, especially in the beginning.  The scenes drawn are VERY explicit.  They shocked me a little at first, but I got over it quickly lol.  Sadly though, this series is extremely hard to find in English. There is a dispute over the English printing license right now and so no English version Viewfinder volumes are available. Unless you go to eBay and want to pay upwards of $300, I kid you not!  I got lucky and purchased the first volume in English before the dispute erupted. You can still get them in Japanese and other languages (have all of them in Japanese even though I cannot read them, but I’m not really ‘reading’ them.)
Other favorites by her would include Crimson Spell (2 volumes so far) and A Foreign Love Affair, both of which should be available in English and for purchase.

I would also highly recommend:
Love Mode by Shimizu Yuki (11 Volumes), Junjo Romantica by Shungiku Nakamura (11 volumes so far), Incubus by Neko Yayoi (3 volumes so far),Yokai’s Hunger Naona Bohra, Wild Rock by Kazusa Takashima, and Sensitive Pornograph (the manga) by Ashika Sakura. The Sensitive Pornograph manga has six short stories and two of them were made into the anime. I have read all of these at LEAST 3x minimum.
Yaoi Novels to check out Caged Slave by Yukio Takamura, The Man Who Doesn’t Take His Clothes Off (vol 1 & 2) and S by Saki Aida (vol 1-4).
I have lots more I could recommend, but we would be here all day.

Where do you buy your Yaoi books?
Ferishia When I first started buying yaoi manga, I went to Borders because they have a manga section there and I didn’t know where else to look at the time. The yaoi and regular manga are all intermixed and they are shelved by title, so you have to know the title you are looking for to find it.  Typically, if it’s yaoi it will say ‘yaoi’ on it, it’s wrapped in plastic and will have an 18+ rating on the back. There is yaoi that is +16 and below, but that’s really considered Boys Love, which is just boys/men kissing and sometimes touching, but no smex. And no, I do not have any of that.  Now get the majority my yaoi from Amazon/Amazon Marketplace. However there are times where they don’t have what I want and I turn to Akadot Retail (akadot.com) or Right Stuf (rightstuf.com).  I also frequent Kinokuniya Book Store (kinokuniya.com) here in Seattle and a local comic books store, Zane comics.  For the past two years, I’ve attended Sakura-con, a Seattle manga conference, and purchased lots of yaoi there.There is also Yaoi-con (yaoicon.com), which I have attended 2 years in row. It is hosted at the Marriott Hotel in San Mateo,CA. It’s conference for all things yaoi! When I first found out about it, I made it my mission in life to attend. There is a smorgasbord of yaoi and yaoi-related items to buy there, so I stock up on yaoi manga there too. I plan to go both again this year.

So, there you have it. Consider yourself enlightened in the way of the yaoi! lol

Many Thanks to Ferishia for my Yaoi enlightenment, you can find her on twitter making me laugh with only 140 characters http://twitter.com/FERISHIA!

Other Peeps that helped me in my quest for Yaoi Manga Knowldege
Kris N Good Books

Great Post with Katiebabs and Kris N Good Books on Manga and Yaoi  

Read Yaoi? What do you think?

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