Can someone help me understand the appeal of yaoi?

@Commit_Crime (characters limit)

@Merve2Love


Really? What else is there?

@Commit_Crime (characters limit)

@BilboBaggins365

The abvious. The sexual. The ecchi. :)

I am bisexual man lol....I like men....pretty sure that's the case for bisexual/straight women too. I mean how far can the discussion go on these topics? There probably is some analysis for how attraction forms in human beings IDK.... beyond my expertise.

No idea, how I discovered it, I found out about hentai in my early teens, probably saw it around that time. Honestly it probably was NarutoxSasuke fanart. That probably was my first experience, over any actual works lol. First experiance? I was a deeply in the closet, bisexual kid, who was a pretty strong Christian, so at the time, I probably had a ton of guilt.


Women doing stuff together leads to different dynamics, men doing stuff together leads to different dynamics/aesthetics and if you are bi like me, it creates variety. Plus I mean there is GL, stuff that doesn't just have two vaginas, frankly I prefer it when it doesn't TBH.

I'm seeing quite a few responses saying it's because "woman is attracted to a man, then what's better than TWO men?" but riddle me this...why is there a lot of lesbians into bl then? They couldn't be further from the assumption above lol

@piroriparopirira This is extremely inconsistent and outdated.

The "gay men yaoi" aka bara is incorrectly attributed to gay men. First, it's impossible to applie a genre towards people of any sexual orientation. Second, gay men have different taste in men, they can like muscular guys, normal body types ones or even both. Third, women can enjoy bara. Finally, LGBT+ Periphery Demographic exists for a reason.

@Merve2Love Oh yeah I mean...that one is pretty obvious lol. Still you got wholesome romances out there too, for people into that.

@BilboBaggins365

Lets just keep pretending OP didn't get the romance OR the ecchi angle and is actually confused about the topic, shall we?^^

@Merve2Love
It's not that I'm confused, it's just that I'm curious.
I like to hear people talking about their different and unique experiences.

@Merve2Love
It's not that I'm confused, it's just that I'm curious.
I like to hear people talking about their different and unique experiences.

@BilboBaggins365, I am also bi and like guys as girls, I agree with you.

You have such an amazing history of introduction to the genre, thanks for revealing this to us!

@Nurguburu
Its based on what Japanese people generally like. Shounen Ai is popular amongst teenage girls, who generally like "Bishounen" types, hence it's dominant presence in Shoujo. Seriously, look at anything aimed at teenage girls, weither its Shoujo manga or idols.

According to a popular "Bara" mangaka whose name I can't recall right now, it was made as a response to Teenage girls "claiming the genre" in the 80's, focusing on "gachimuchi" and "debu" bodytypes that said audience would find "gross" but gay men (and older women) were more open to, as the Yaoi seen in Shoujo didn't appeal or relate to them at all.

Of course, weebs in the west shaped their tastes based on what Japanese people liked. Most western fujoshis are attracted to the Bishounen stuff because that was all the gay manga we got for a very long time, while bara here is more neiche due to its general confinement to the Internet. It's also far more popular amongst furries than weebs too, even in Japan.

Also, Bara and Shounen Ai are both sub-genres of Yaoi anyways.

@thewiru I think you should have phrased that differently then. If the question was, what was your first experiance with BL or GL?.... That makes sense. When you ask what the appeal of it is, when these stories are either romance stories or smut, that is harder to answer because to me, and I think most people, the answer is very obvious.

Nah many self insert into the more feminine guy. It's more like there is less feelings of jealousy.


Well it doesnt seem that odd when you consider other characters like a murderous yandere you can like in fiction but not in real life. Not that im comparing directly.


The Japanese dont call it these things.

Shounen-ai = stuff for shotacons. I dont know why Westerners really misunderstood the term.

Bara = Not a Japanese genre really as far as I can tell...although it seems Japanese methods are not always about genres and more on topics in some cases.

Also it's BL not yaoi. Yaoi is a subgenre of BL that is focused on more explicit sexual relations over romantic. BL is more a catch all term but in effect implies more on the romance side and more subtly erotic tones vs the more explicit yaoi

If a Japanese person could step in and confirm that would be nice...

@AzafuseKingTora
Why was there was no demand for gay boys who look like real boys and aren't fat? Is a fat fetish common among Japanese gay men?

The last time I told someone you were bi, you denied it and told me I had misunderstood.

I personally like the dynamics and tropes.

I also like seeing men get dominated and be dominate in a guy on guy way.

Help me understand the appeal of jousou seme? You wanna get pegged?

OP is really trying to understand yaoi while openly admitting to looking at shota and otokonoko doujinshi?

Honey...

Getting turned on by seeing a love interest feeling aroused is pretty standard and works both ways, otherwise everyone would only care about their own satisfaction.

Likely because it would be the direct translation for Boys Love and Girls Love.

Surprised that the term "hard gay" never came to the west.

So if I got that right, the relation between BL -> Yaoi -> Lemon is like the relation between VN -> Eroge -> Nukige?

@thewiru
Shounen ai is an older term the predates the term BL. Both technically mean "boys' love," but the former is usually only used to mean 70-80's mlm manga. BL+nsfw warning/age rating is the most common way to define canon mlm. Unlike shounen-ai, Shoujo-ai is strictly pedophilia (not lolicon!) so it's prohibited to compare it to the male equivalent. Don't make that mistake.

Yaoi on the other hand is meant for doujins. It stands for Yama nashi Ochi nashi Imi nashi ヤマなしオチなしイミなし, "without climax, without punchline, without meaning," and is used very similarly to the Western equivalent of PWP("plot, what plot?") acronym in our fandom terms. In the west, you never see the term PWP in any official original work, same shtick with yaoi here. Yaoi is also sometimes later shortened by the numbers "801" because it's a homophone (google Japanese goroawase numbers. Tvtropes also has a good chart: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GoroawaseNumber)

Now, let's get into BL+wider scope when targeted at women in Japan in current-day internet.

Fumuke腐向け "targeted at Fu's" is an online-tagging subcategory of josei-muke (and shoujo-muke, to a lesser extent) that specifically caters to fujoshis. "Fu" ｢腐｣, or "corruption" is a tongue in cheek response to some who lament at women enjoying such distasteful things and "corrupt" their minds with homosexuality. It has the same roots as fujoshi.
Most of this is just BL, but for women. This means nsfw/sfw, canon/headcanon mlm shipping. But, there's exceptions. For instance, undertones/subtext aren't included in the BL definition, but fits fumuke. So fumuke is the wider definition that eclipses what counts as BL and then some.
Also, some internet dictionaries incorrectly translate it to yaoi, so look out for that.


History of (original and official) BL route:
Shounen-ai --> JUNE(general slang term originating from one of the first strictly mlm magazine of the same name)-->BL(priority in general) or fumuke(internet priority, internet includes undertones*)

Doujin (fanwork) route:
Yaoi-->801-->fumuke(internet priority, undertones included*) or BL(priority in physical)

* = mlm undertones published in physical usually get sold at female-targeted isles with neither BL nor fumuke term

Bara is a whole can of worms that you can find me just barely scratching the surface in earlier replies. Just know, while under the BL umbrella, many men who want to seperate themselves from the rest of BL use the term geicomi and maybe some body type slang.

@foxsurprise
Honestly? Best comment in the entire thread, I've learned a lot here.

I assume the terms separated in the 80's?
I've studied the origin of the term lolicon, and from what I could gather, it was used by three distinct groups:
First by fine-art groups for a movement that existed in the 60-70's about the artistic qualities of youth (And young girls, in specific), which is where came things like "Shoujo Alice" or that one photoset from that european gymnast.
Then, around the 70's, people began to buy similar photo-sets for pornographic reasons only, as well as loopholes in Japan's anti-pornography laws (Which made female pubes, not her genitals, illegal) made it so imported CP from Norway/Denmark became legal and some people used it became it was the only way to find uncensored porn. There were even some Japanese magazines at the time.
(It's wise to remember that the only reason the term "Lolita" was used was because Japanese people were not aware of the book and simply though it was a word westerners used for "Shoujo").

At the start of the 80's that shifted, even before legal restrictions came into place because... people just didn't like real photos. No, I'm not kidding, the readership of "Manga Burikko" would spam the editors with letters so that they "Would stop posting photos of real girls, they came there for the 2D ones", and eventually that happened, and all modern lolicon "came from those guys".
Funny enough, during the mid-80's, for a time the word "lolita" became synonimous with "hentai" (Well, how the west uses the term hentai, at least. Japanese people just don't have an equivalent one) due to eroge and hentai OVAs with "Lolita" in their names (Like people used to call all video-games "Nintendos").

This is what I was able to gather, are there any mistakes in it?

I just prefer how male characters are written in anime. The type of female characters I really like are very rare in anime as it's largely filled by bug eyed teenage girls and Tsundere types and more often then not romantically tied to a guy just because guy and girl share the same anime space.
Plus yaoi explores male relationships in a different way and how they express themselves. It also is less likely (in more modern ones) to avoid the cry baby I can't do anything without my love

@Commit_Crime (characters limit)

I'm seeing quite a few responses saying it's because "woman is attracted to a man, then what's better than TWO men?" but riddle me this...why is there a lot of lesbians into bl then? They couldn't be further from the assumption above lol