May 2002) (original) (raw)

Guys on Guys for Girls

Yaoi and Shounen Ai

by Dani Fletcher

One of the more interesting outgrowths of the idea of comics for girls is a subgenre of stories focusing on male/male romantic and/or sexual relationships. As with many other genres and terms, the types of stories, structures, and themes, already diverse in Japan, have been eroded by use, expansion, and their trip across the ocean. Beginning as small, fan-produced extras poking fun at favourite anime and manga, doujinshi (amateur manga) came to include the queering, if you will, of straight characters, placing them in compromising situations with each other. In North America this phenomenon is called slash, while in Japan the work was called yaoi, an acronym for "No peak, no point, no meaning." Shounen ai is generally a milder cousin, structured around the romance/relationship, rather than the explicitly sexual relationship. The same cues that set off North American slash (suspiciously attentive, nurturing, and/or obsessive same-sex relationships, close male bonding) are present in anime and manga. It is not hard to draw same-sex conclusions from Prince Arislan's deeply worshipful relationship with Daryoon, or from Narsus's suspiciously bitter history with the same in The Heroic Legend of Arislan. Anime and manga have picked up on this audience, producing male/male relationship titles for a specifically female audience in a way that North American hasn't. While it is no longer fanbased work in the strictest sense, professionally produced yaoi/shounen ai meets the two requirements that make this subgenre unique: a male character wants another male character, and they have to be there for the benefit of a (primarily) female audience.

What makes the implied audience female is a little harder to pin down. Outside of the "plot what plot" one-shot stories, there tends to be an emphasis on the same sort of interpersonal relationships that underwrite shoujo manga. While the degree of explicit content differs, the relationship, the romance, and the feelings involved usually play a primary role, just as they do in the heterosexual romances like Sailor Moon. Male/male relationships designed to appeal to a female audience run the gamut, from gay characters who never seem to have sex, and whose sexuality is almost incidental to the storyline (Banana Fish) to futuristic worlds in which sex and bodies are a currency, fundamental to the structure of society (Ai no Kusabi). It can be anime/manga-based fan work, like the abundant Gundam Wing doujinshi, or fan-created, like the original stories of Umbrella Studios, amateur, or professional.

One thing that fans of yaoi face that fans of other subgenres, such as mecha, or even hentai don't is the question of why. Even though fantasies of two girls together is a long-running standard in heterosexual pornography for straight men, women who like the idea of two men together tend to have to defend their choice, if indeed they feel comfortable expressing their tastes at all. It is possible that yaoi is simply the flip side of the lesbian fantasy in porn, though there are structural differences that complicate such a reversal, the most significant being that there are almost no female characters in yaoi titles, and if there are, they are extraneous to the relationship completely. (Female characters in series upon which yaoi is based have a tendency to be removed, or rendered unattainable in some way, by realizing that they don't love the male character, marriage to someone else, etc. Death is also a favourite.) Traditionally, characters of the same sex as the audience are designed to act as the audience's insertion point into the work. However, female characters are incidental in yaoi, or absent altogether.

There are reasons outside of simple aesthetic, romantic, or sexual pleasures, as well. Involving two male characters in a relationship removes an element of sexual politics from the appealing romance. Despite the presence of uke/seme binary relationships which are fundamental to yaoi, the problem of sexual roles is less immediate to the female audience. A female encountering this story is not immediately expected to engage with a female character. Though the seme is dominant, older and more confident to the uke's submissive, youthful inexperience, the uke is still not a woman, and the female audience does not have to immediately identify with him. To put it another way, being the one to stay at home is not instantly about being female, since there is no female involved, only a warped and twisted version of same.

The homosexual relationships played out in yaoi, particularly when they are fan-generated works based on ostensibly straight characters, are playing with expectations. Even if a doujinshika isn't thinking about the political ramifications of subversive acts, rendering straight characters queer is itself subversive. It's naughty, and fans get away with it. Same-sex relationships give creators and fans freedom to ignore sexual expectations (they can identify with the seme, for instance). Added to this is the fact that, outside of the subtle suggestions and populations of beautiful male characters in shoujo manga and anime (Fushigi Yuugi, Fruits Basket), the most fertile ground for doujinshi and slash fiction of any sort is actually comics and manga for boys. Female fans have the opportunity to take something that was not even intended for them, pull out the parts that appeal to them, and remake it into something of their own. It just happens that the best place to find men in close relationships are in the same sorts of same-sex situations that are common to men's adventures. Academics have charted the course of male homoerotics in a literary tradition that goes back centuries; there's little wonder that slash writers find it in present-day interpretations of the same stories. Doujinshika and fans of Boy's Love need look no further than anime like Gundam Wing or Gensoumaden Sayuuki etc. to find guys suitably passionate about their friends. Passionate enough to be carefully nudged into sexual relationships.

In the ever competitive entertainment market the tendency of doujinshika and fans to processes titles to their own taste is not overlooked by creators. Anime and manga are frequently populated by bishounen designed to appeal to girls, the same way that immensely popular titles designed to appeal to boys have a larger than average population of cute girls. Boy's Love themes are inching their way into the mainstream on the wave of female consumers. Catering to female consumers can be financially rewarding. In addition to boy's love games and drama cds (voiced by some of the most successful seiyuu in Japan) the appeal of bishounen bonding together without ever doing anything so crass as declaring that they're actually gay has being used to good effect in situations like Weiss Kreuz, wherein the seiyuu have toured twice as a rock group. On-stage male/male fanservice on stage is also something of a staple in the rock and visual kei communities, where markets will be overwhelmingly female.

The appeal of yaoi isn't necessarily in giving stories a happy ending, either. Doujinshika regularly torture, maim, kill, and otherwise torment the characters they pick up. For every sweet romance there is a dark and destructive story of obsessive love. Since love (or at least lust) is what yaoi is all about, the obstacles in the way of achieving satisfaction (love) tend to be emotional nightmares. Zetsuai/Bronze showcases one of the unhealthiest relationships ever to grace anime, with Koji apparently utterly incapable of realizing that stalking Izumi isn't the best way to win his heart. On the other hand, the logic of yaoi tends to suggest that the characters, no matter how maladjusted, are meant to be together, a deeply embedded romantic ideal. The tension between romance and angst can be deeply intriguing.

Why yaoi is appealing is a nebulous and highly relative question, and one that its audience is frequently asked, but, perhaps, shouldn't feel obliged to answer. As it moves ever closer to the mainstream, however, it will undoubtedly face more challenges, both in terms of markets and in terms of philosophy. In fact yaoi anime is still relatively rare, and even when male/male themes appear in anime they tend to be far less graphic than their manga counterparts. Yaoi's introduction to mainstream North American markets is via the relatively gentle anime versions, which may help soften the shock somewhat. The Yami no Matsuei manga, for instance, contains more graphic, overt male/male content than does the anime series.

The question of whether yaoi as a subgenre can maintain a market in North America rests primarily on actions of the companies cautiously testing the waters. Shoujo itself is a relatively new entrant into the North American marketplace, and that is with the tried and true heterosexual romance storyline to fall back on. Boy's love, at best a highly specific cult phenomenon, is a big step to take. Companies like Anime Works and CPM, however, are nonetheless inching in that direction.