I want to get rid of some major misconceptions about bl and the people who watch it. They are really just like any other romance anime, except both main characters are male; which makes for some interesting conflicts and situations. I am using the SasuXNaru couple as an example because they are one of my favorites, even if they are only fan-fiction. I hope that after reading this, those people that like to go around bashing these animes will at least leave us that enjoy them alone.
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Some useful terms when reading this are:
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Shonen - Literally translated it means “young boy” but is used in anime to indicate that the anime is about a relationship between males, usually young adults or boys.
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Shonen-ai - Means “boy love” (bl is another name for it), an intimate relationship between two males. Shonen-ai includes anime with barely an intication of two guys liking each other, to ones that have multiple make-out scenes.
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Bi-shonen - Means “pretty boy.” It is used to describe unfairly beautiful boys and men.
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Yaoi - It is the same thing as shonen-ai, except more graphic and generally focused on older, more mature, characters.
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AMV - Anime Music Video.
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Fan service - Usually indicates the showing of female characters underwaer.
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Con - Convention.
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Konoha - The Leaf village. It is the setting of the show.
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Hokage - Konoha village’s leader.
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Jutsu - Very hard to explain, but it is something like a spell, though it is not magic.
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Hentai - Means perverted.
The definitions of shonen-ai and yaoi are somewhat overlapping, and most people cannot agree on which animes are included in which, but I did the best I could.
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Everybody who follows the Naruto series remembers that infamous seen at the beginning. Naruto hops onto the desk in front of Sasuke, intently scrutinizing him. Sasuke stares back. They are glaring daggers at each other. Just then, someone bumps into Naruto. Naruto falls into Sasuke, and they kiss. This kiss started off a whole series of yaoi fan-fiction. Here I have a picture of the exact moment the NaruSasu couple was created.
Starting from the upper left corner, Naruto’s Konoha headband angles down to touch Sasuke’s. Sasuke’s headband is mostly covered by his hair. Where the headbands meet, Sasuke’s silky blue/black hair falls, obscuring the Konoha symbols. Naruto’s bright blond hair is for once laying tamed on his head. His skin is several shades redder than Sasuke’s pale beauty. Their pupils are dilated to pinpricks as they stare in shock at each other, sweat rolling down their faces, eyebrows angled down and shadowed eyes wide. Thin lines run down the tops of their faces in descriptive horror. Their heads are angled in the perfect position for their first kiss, Naruto leaning down and Sasuke looking up. The look rather like they are about to sick up. Light thin lines shine out, like the rays kids draw for their suns, adding impact. The horror of the moment is properly emphasized.
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Naruto history and stuff
Naruto and Sasuke are both boys with a tragic past, but very different personalities. Naruto never knew his parents, and for some complicated reasons is ostracized by the village. He is bad at pretty much everything other than mischief, and failed his exit exam the first time. Even so, he has dreams of becoming “the greatest Hokage”. Sasuke had a very large family, but they were murdered by his older brother a few years before this series started. He is the shows resident emo, with a hunger for revenge. He is very beautiful and the best at everything he tries, including school. Almost all the girls have a crush on him, including Sakura (the girl Naruto likes), but he is not interested in anything besides gaining power to avenge his family.
In the anime, they are reluctant friends that each secretly envy the other. They deny their friendship, except when it really matters, and are always fighting. They are in a class group together with a girl, Sakura, who has a crush on Sasuke, finds Naruto annoying, and is the object of Naruto’s affections and Sasuke’s disinterest. The yaoi fan-fic follows the same general story line, except Naruto and Sasuke are hiding more than a close friendship. They get caught in awkward “positions” and come up with crazy stories to explain why they are, for example, sleeping together in Naruto’s bed… “It was a sleeping jutsu!”I will “narrate” this picture from a yaoi fan-fic point of view. I will go with the theory that they already have a secret relationship, though they have not gone very far.
Naruto - This is their first kiss, so he is upset because he wanted it to be something special. He also like “uh oh,” because he knows Sasuke did not want anybody to know about their relationship, and he does not want Sasuke to blame him. The room is full of people, including Sakura (who he is “pretending” to like), so there is a very good chance that people will figure out what is going on. He is feeling kind of sick at the thought of the consequences of people finding out (people think that gays are hentai).
Sasuke – He is panicking because people seeing him kiss Naruto would completely ruin his loner image. He is also upset because he knew Naruto wanted to wait. Plus he is worried how all the girl will react when they realize the relationship, and what that means about their chances of getting a date with him. He does not really care is people think he is hentai, but he is really mad at the person that bumped into Naruto and is probably thinking something dark and threatening that includes bodily harm towards that person. Not to mention, HE was suppose to steal Naruto’s first kiss, NOT the other way around.
I wanted to write about this picture because it is the begining of something beautiful. They are a very popular yaoi couple, and one of my favorites. Their coupling follows the pattern of their friendhsip, denial of liking but inability to ignore each other.In the fan-fic world there is a running joke about denying the relationship. When caught together by the “press” at cons they will either run or adamantly deny having any intimate relationship, though Naruto is sometimes slow on the uptake.
The NaruXSasu couple is just an example of a yaoi couple though, there is also RitsukaXSobi, KilluaXGon, ShuichiXYki, and many more. Some, like NaruSasu, are fan-fic, while others come from animes. I like the stories that go along with yaoi and shonen-ai, and the style of drawing in them is right up my alley. I love the fan-art made of yaoi couples, and like to watch AMV’s about them.
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Some GuyXGuy history
Yaoi is a genre of shonen. There is plain shonen, shonen-ai, yaoi, but they all focus on male relationships. Shonen is one subject of anime. There are several others, mecha, shojo, ext. The shonen-ai and yaoi animes were originally intended for a female audience. I found the history of yaoi very interesting. The creators of anime found that not very many females were interested in anime, so they set out to create something females would be interested in. Romance was the obvious choice. They already had a lot of romance animes, but to attract the male audience to those they had included fan-service. Realizing that the female audience was not interested in looking at other females (for the most part), they decided that what the females would really like to look at is pretty guys. So, put two bi-shonen together in a romance anime, exclude females, and what do you get? Shonen-ai and yaoi.
Bl story lines will generally follow a predictable pattern, much like other genre’s. They meet, they fight, become friends, then kiss. Then comes the trials of love and overcoming obstacles. One of the obstacles that is always present in bl is “but we are both guys!” expressed by one of the main characters. The other main character is perfectly secure and has no trouble with the idea that is does not matter what gender you are, the purpose of a relationship is to make each other happy, and that is all that matters. Many times there is also family pushing the men to get married (to females) and produce heirs, or a girl that is very attracted to one of the men and very pushy in her suit. They generally try to hide the relationship (never successfully) to avoid prejudice and ostracization, and there is also the on-again-off-again thing going throughout the anime.
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An Irritated Fan
The urge to watch yaoi and shonen-ai anime is not, like so many people seem to think, born from some perverted desire to ogle gay porn. People watch it for many different reasons. I watch it because they have good humor and I like the style of drawing. Other people may watch it to flaunt convention, or because they are gay themselves and relate to it better than they do to ”straight” anime. I am not saying that no one watches it for more hentai reasons, just not most. Also, there are even more “straight” hentai anime than there are “gay” ones.
I would also like to point out that watching “gay” anime does not make you gay, and not everybody that watches it is gay, just as watching “straight” anime does not make you straight, and not everybody that watches it is straight. I know many people that “cross-watch” anime. So, leaving comments on shonen-ai and yaoi sites saying that everybody there is a gay hentai makes absolutely no sense, and just makes that person look like a moron.
This is very important to me because I am exceedingly tired of having to put pleas on all my web pages that include shonen-ai and yaoi just to forestall nasty comments, though I do not mind putting warnings that the page contains yaoi and such. I do not leave nasty comments about stuff I don’t like on your page, so don’t leave them on mine.
