One of my most popular posts is How To Find Bara in English — bara being a term commonly used to refer to gay comics created by Japanese male creators. In that post, I link to sites that host bara scanlations. As a creator myself, I have mixed feelings about doing this — on the one hand, the vast majority of these scanlations are certainly being distributed without the creator’s permission; on the other, the vast majority simply aren’t available for purchase in English and it’s my hope that by increasing awareness of bara, I will also increase demand.

But I had another purpose for that post: to make readers aware that there are legitimate ways for non-Japanese readers to purchase bara manga and thus compensate the creators for their hard work. It’s sort of a stealth plan — come to see sources for free downloads, but wait! Here’s where you can go do the right thing, support the creators and even find bara (and yaoi) manga not available through piracy.

Based on some of the feedback I’ve gotten, it’s seems like a lot of readers are interested in doing the right thing, just so long as they have a way to — and purchasing e-manga straight from Japan is one of the most direct ways to do that. But seeing as many of us don’t read Japanese, navigating a Japanese Web site has felt… daunting. To help out, I linked to an excellent walkthrough by *elee0228 showing how to use the Webmoney service to purchase and download works from the very popular Digiket market.

Alas, for the past several months, readers in the U.S. have been having problems using this method and thus there hasn’t been a really awesome way for us to purchase e-manga straight from Japan.

Well, now reader UltimaST has come to the rescue! On his own, he created a walkthrough for Surpara.com and has given me his kind permission to post it here. Surpara.com is an e-manga site that has lots of yaoi and bara downloads. And, even better than Digiket, it allows you to use your regular old credit card to pay!

So, here’s the step-by-step:

1) The Japanese gay comics can be found at

http://mk2.surpara.com/

so start there.

2) You’ll be taken to an age-check splash screen. If you’re over 18, click yes. (And click the images below to enlarge.)

3) After you find the manga you want to download, click the marked location to add the manga to your shopping basket.

4) You are taken to this screen which displays your shopping basket. You can either continue to shop or just press the next button (marked):

5) You are then taken to a screen where you could enter your ID and password if you were a registered member — but you don’t need to. Instead, just check the marked box next to the red message:

6) Scroll down the page to find the choice-of-payment section. Fill in the spaces as follows:

1 – enter your email
2 – retype your email

And then check the marked location next to the credit card icons.

7) The next screen is a summary of your purchase. Just click the marked location to continue.

8. You are now taken to the screen to enter your credit card information. Fill in the spaces as follows:

1 – enter the name of the credit card holder
2 – enter the number of the credit card
3 – enter the expiration date of the credit card

Then press the marked continue button.

9) If the transaction went through as intended, you will get this screen. Just click the blue link. (If you get anything else, the transaction didn’t go through.)

10) After that, you will get an email with a link to a download page that looks like the one below. Click the marked download icon and you’ll be able to save your manga to your hard drive!

So, there’s you have it — a walk-through on how to download manga from Surpara.com using your plain old credit card. I tried it myself and it worked fine. And they seem to have a nice selection of bara/yaoi downloads.

That said, I just want to give you a heads-up about a couple things. First, is that about a week after I downloaded my manga from Surpara, I received their newsletter in my email inbox. I’m not wild about getting marketing materials I didn’t specifically sign up for (especially when it’s all in Japanese!), so here’s what I had to do to unsubscribe.

1) First I clicked the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email: http://mk2.surpara.com/mag.php

2) Then I was yet again taken to the age-check screen. Being over 18 years of age, I clicked “yes”.

3) Then I was taken to the unsubscribe screen. I needed to enter my email into the 2nd (marked) field and click the grey button next to it.

4) Which brought me to this screen, letting me know my email address was unsubscribed from their marketing materials:

The other heads-up I want to give you is that some of the manga and pin-ups you can download from Surpara feature manga characters who are supposed to be under the age of 18. It is currently illegal in the U.S. to receive obscene cartoons depicting minors in sexual situations through the mail or the Internet. Yes, I consider the law tremendously misguided—and at the moment, at least in the U.S., prosecutors seem to mainly use it to add extra punishment to those who also possess and distribute actual child pornography—but because I care about your safety, I would advise you to choose your downloads with the local laws in mind.

All that said, I believe UltimaST has done a great service to both us and the creators we admire by creating this walkthrough. Please let me know about your experiences in the comments—and be sure to give UltimaST a special “thank you” shout-out!

Hey! Want links to full-color yaoi/bara comics sent to you — for free? Just sign up over at our Free Comic page and we’ll send you the download link to our first comic right away!

Enjoy reading articles like these? Don’t miss out! Get Yaoi 911â„¢ emailed right to you — for free!

Learn More!

• Curious about the next comic we’ll be sending out to our newsletter subscribers? Then read all about our High School rescue-and-romance Boys Love story, Tough!
• Want to read about other creators’ yaoi? Take a look at our in-depth Yaoi Reviews!
• Interested in creating your own manga? Start with How to Write a Full Comic Book Script and How to Find the Perfect Yaoi Artist for your Graphic Novel!
• Would you like to read more about how the law treats readers of manga with underage characters? Read about the Christopher Handley case in How To Keep Manga Fans Out Of Jail and then be sure to check out Cartoon Teen Sex and the Law!

So, I just spent the most awesome hour reading through an online webcomic called OGLAF.COM. Here’s the author’s description:

This comic started out as an attempt to make pornography.

It degenerated into sex comedy pretty much immediately.

And yep, from the very first comic (incredibly NSFW!), I can tell you it is often pretty gosh darn explicit. But it’s often more than a little hot as well. And pretty much always really, really funny.

While it’s not gay per se (there is lots and lots of heterosexual stuff — WARNING: boobies!), there is certainly a lot of gay content as well (and many weenies to view throughout, if you like that sort of thing ).

Here’s an example:

Click to enlarge. Pixelation added by me in lame attempt to protect those subscribing to blog posts via email. If you use her art, the author has requested you include a link to OGLAF.com.

Click here to see original at OGLAF.com.

In some ways, there is an air of mystery about this comic. No “About Page”. No copyright information. No author description. I’m guessing the name of the site comes from this very NSFW comic, but that character has only appeared a few times and his creation could be very well be a ret-con. (EDIT 7/24/10: The creator just responded to this question on Twitter…) Using my Google-fu, I was able to find out who the creator is and that she is a woman, but it seems that she wishes to remain somewhat anonymous which I will respect here.

My overall review: It’s well-written and well-drawn. Both women and men are made to look powerful and foolish in equal capacity. It’s quite geeky — if you’ve ever played a role-playing game, you’ll get more than a few in-jokes. There are many little surprises that show the creator has put a lot of thought into the site (for example, there’s a really adorable 404 page — try entering a non-existant page on oglaf.com in your location bar to see it). And it’s very funny — while reading through the entire series, the time just flew by. I know not everyone can handle the heterosex, but if you can, this comic gets my strongest recommendation.

Where to start? There is an Archive page which helpfully points out which comics are NSFW and which are safer (there are a few non-sexual ones). But I suggest you start with the first comic (very NSFW) and just read your way through by clicking Next Page. Trust me, you won’t be disappointed.

Oh, and be on the look out for an “Epilogue” link to appear in the right sidebar at the end of certain stories (the first one is at the end of Glove) — it’s like a hidden bonus comic.

Want to be clued into more cool yaoi comics? Don’t miss out! Subscribe and get them emailed right to you — for free!

Psst! Want to get some of our free full-color guy-on-guy comics? Just sign up over at our Free Comics page and we’ll send you the download links!

©iStockphoto.com/Alejandro Raymond

(2/14/10: Final sentencing update of Handley at bottom of post. Pretty grim…)

I’ve written about them before, but if there ever was a time for yaoi fans to donate some money to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, it’s now.

A Manga Fan Is Arrested In His Home For Owning Manga

From CBLDF’s October 09, 2008 press release:

Mr. Handley’s case began in May 2006 when he received an express mail package from Japan that contained seven Japanese comic books. That package was intercepted by the Postal Inspector, who applied for a search warrant after determining that the package contained cartoon images of objectionable content. Unaware that his materials were searched, Handley drove away from the post office and was followed by various law enforcement officers, who pulled him over and followed him to his home. Once there, agents from the Postal Inspector’s office, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, Special Agents from the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, and officers from the Glenwood Police Department seized Handley’s collection of over 1,200 manga books or publications; and hundreds of DVDs, VHS tapes, laser disks; seven computers, and other documents. Though Handley’s collection was comprised of hundreds of comics covering a wide spectrum of manga, the government is prosecuting images appearing in a small handful.

To give some context for how extraordinary this is, CBLDF Executive Director Charles Brownstein said this:

Handley’s case is deeply troubling, because the government is prosecuting a private collector for possession of art. In the past, CBLDF has had to defend the First Amendment rights of retailers and artists, but never before have we experienced the Federal Government attempting to strip a citizen of his freedom because he owned comic books.

To Protect The Children

And what moved this postal inspector to set up this sting? Well, of course it has to do with alleged drawings of underage characters. Not photographs, mind you — or even drawings of actual minors — but drawn manga characters who only ever existed in the minds of the creators before ever seeing life on paper. Luckily, in this case, the judge dismissed the issue of alleged child pornography:

(Again from the press release)

Eric Chase and his team at the United Defense Group have been vigorously defending Handley, and scored a major First Amendment victory earlier this year when the judge found portions of the PROTECT Act unconstitutional in his ruling on a motion to dismiss. District Judge Gritzner of the Southern District of Iowa found that subsections 1466(a)(2) and (b)(2) of 18 U.S.C. 1466A unconstitutional. Those sections make it a crime to knowingly produce, distribute, receive, or possess with intent to distribute, “a visual depiction of any kind, including a drawing, cartoon, sculpture, or painting,” that “is, or appears to be” a minor engaged in sexual conduct. Judge Gritzner found that those sections restrict protected speech and are constitutionally infirm.

Simon Jones provides his as-always excellent analysis why the defense team succeeded in this motion:

…the presiding judge has ruled that the portion of the PROTECT Act which deals specifically with the depiction of minors cannot be applied to this case. (The Supreme Court earlier this year addressed this issue. While this section survived, the justices were also clear that it can only be applied to fictional imagery when the image is clearly based on or derived from actual identifiable minors, i.e. a tracing or digital composite imagery.) [EDITOR NOTE: I discuss this ruling a bit and quote some of the text in this comment -- look at the bottom of the comment for my discussion.]

But this manga fan can still be prosecuted for purchasing and possessing obscene material — and faces up to twenty years in prison for this alleged crime!

(Again from the CBDLF press release: )

Handley now faces charges under the surviving sections of 1466A, which will require a jury to determine whether the drawings at issue are legally obscene. The material cannot be deemed obscene unless it meets all three of the criteria of the Miller test for obscenity: “(a) whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest; [EDITOR NOTE: That means it's intended to sexually arouse -- offensive violence is, of course, in itself still considered protected speech. ] (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.” The jury must answer all three questions in the affirmative in order to convict.

How much danger is this manga fan in? Simon gives us the real-world context:

However, Handley is still on the hook for obscenity related offenses, and this is where the waters become murky. The defense’s best chance is to convince the jury that the manga passes the last of the three-pronged Miller test. But this is an uphill battle, as the jury is asked to decide (in the third portion of the test) whether the work has “serious artistic value,” instead of whether the work was a “serious artistic endeavor.” The spirit of the law really asks for the latter – serious artistic endeavors still routinely produce bad art that nevertheless deserve protection, unfortunately that’s not how the standard is worded. And obscenity laws have a built-in catch 22: if a jury finds the material not obscene, they are in effect saying that the material is regularly consumed in their community… at least, that’s what the prosecution would lead the jury to believe. Now, how many people who own porn would admit that to, say, a prospective employer? Their friends and relatives? In a court of law? The fear and embarrassment factor is so great, juries often completely disregard expert testimony.

So, without a lot of smart defensive lawyering, things look pretty grim for this manga fan. Now, why is this guy’s case important for you and me? Because case law sets precedent. If this guy is successfully prosecuted, it emboldens prosecutors to go after other manga fans and makes it more likely that they will get convictions. As we all know, “protecting the children” has tremendous political appeal — and manga fans both in this country and in others are often seen as easy targets for the media and the government.

What this prosecution needs is a splash of cold water.

What Can You Do

Prosecutions are very expensive — for the defendant. The government has vast financial resources they can to bring to bear to “protect the children” — fictional or not –and the typical manga fan, as you know, often doesn’t. The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is contributing money, time and expertise to defend this manga fan — and I know they are just squeaking by in terms of having any money to work with. Let’s face it — when it comes to providing legal funds to protect comic book creators and retailers from censorship and prosecution, how many people do you know who have given any money at all?

Well, now’s the time. Even a little bit of money will make a huge difference. Give $20. Give $40. Hell, give $5 dollars. Whatever. If you think what the government is doing here is wrong — if you think people should be able to buy and own manga — even manga that you, yourself, might not approve of — without going to jail for twenty years, then give money to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund right now.

If you give $30 on this page, you even get a snazzy print of some green creature with horns holding a torch, and gosh, how cool is that?

(And if you don’t want to give one of their predetermined amounts, you can just use the PayPal Donation Button on the right sidebar of their press release page. [Scroll down just a bit on that page and look to the right for PayPal.] I just gave them $100 that way — took me ten seconds.)

You can’t let the government get away with this. You need to take action right now. Become a card-carrying member of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. Donate some money to help protect creators, retailers and fellow manga fans from unfair prosecutions.

Because the next manga fan they could go after — could very well be you.

(Thank you to MangaBlog for making me aware of this. For more information, here are other links Brigid at MangaBlog and Simon reference:

)

Find articles like this one interesting and useful? Don’t miss out! Get Yaoi 911â„¢ blog posts emailed right to you — for free!

Learn More!

• Curious about the legal issues facing creators, retailers and publishers who publish work with mature themes? Then read Why Comics Need Age Ratings!
• Wondering what kind of moral issues creators face? Check out Should Yaoi Creators Fight Sexism?
• Want to read reviews of yaoi books that might or might not get your own butt throw into jail? Take a look at our in-depth Yaoi Reviews!
• Interested in creating your own manga designed to piss off The Man? Start with How to Write a Full Comic Book Script and How to Find the Perfect Yaoi Artist for your Graphic Novel!

Bara Art from Kowmeiism
© 2008 Kowmeiism

Like any blogger, I keep an eye on my Web site’s stats and visitors and I’ve discovered that a significant number of readers come here though search engines looking for “bara” — that is, Japanese gay male romance manga written by gay men for gay men (referred to by some as “muscle yaoi” due to the fact that the character design often is fairly muscular — particularly compared to traditional yaoi-style bishonen.)

As I’ve mentioned before, discussions of bara in English — let alone English translations — have been hard to come by. But this looks like this might be starting to change. As a service to my readers, I will use this post to provide links for English-speakers to explore Bara manga. I will update it as I discover more sites (and if you have any other suggestions, please include them in the comments!)

(Needless to say, the links I’m including below are ALL Not Safe For Work [or for looking at in front of Grandma, etc.] — you’ve been warned [or encouraged, depending... ])

Bara is hot

First off, let me get this off my chest — I find bara quite hot, more so than many (but not all) of the yaoi works I’ve read and certainly much more than traditional Western gay male comics.

It’s fairly easy for me to put my finger on what it is about bara that beats out the majority of what gets published in Western gay male comics (such as what you might find at, say, Class Comics) — it’s the character design. Bara guys tend to be fairly muscular, which is not so different than what you’d find in Western gay comics. What does seem different is the obsession with monstrous proportions we seem to have in the west.

Take for example the work of LOGAN. This is a gay male comics artist whose artwork I find absolutely superb — he’s got serious chops in terms of linework, colors, composition, you name it. But his men leave me icy cold. Their muscles have muscles and the penises appear easily as large as my forearm. I understand that this sort of thing is hot for some (just like I’m aware that monstrous-sized breasts are appealing to certain straight boys), but for me, looking at this artwork doesn’t turn me on — I just want to buy these poor fellows a back-brace or something. (For a particularly freaky understanding of this, step into the uncanny valley with me and check out some of LOGAN’s Poser artwork.)

Now, I’m sure that serious bara fans would be able to provide me with links to Bara Of Unusual Size, but my point is that this sort of design seems to be the norm with Western gay comics and not so much with the Japanese ones. Likewise, and this is done less often (as there is a fair amount of “twink” art), this “super-sizing” also seems to apply to depictions of hypermasculinity in Western gay comics’ design — making all the guys super-furry, tough-looking and ideally wrapped up in a whole lotta leather. (Ultimately, I suppose we can thank the influence of Tom of Finland for much of this.) It just feels to me like it’s trying way too hard, protesting too much, so while Your Mileage May Vary, for me it’s a big meh. I’m just not much for extremes, in real life or in comic art, so there we are.

And now that I think of it, one reason why bara might often be hotter for me than much of yaoi probably has to do with avoiding another extreme — the hyperfeminization you often find in the design of male characters. Not surprisingly, as a gay man I like my guys to look like guys. Now of course, some yaoi artists like that too — and their art I often will find erotic — but for those who don’t, well I can appreciate the romance in those books, but it won’t get my motor running.

So bara carves out a bit of a happy medium for me in terms of how the guys look — and that makes its artwork especially appealing for me.

(And to be perfectly honest, I’ve found that there is some technical understanding of how gay sex usually works in real life that the bara creators seem to get a bit better. While there does seem to be a fair amount of the inevitable anal intercourse consummation that you find in yaoi works, there also seems to be a deeper awareness that oral sex and mutual masturbation are also considered equally valid and fulfilling ways for two guys to make love — and that anal sex isn’t necessarily something first-timers would be down for. I find this understanding makes the sex more believable for me and thus, ultimately, hotter. Again, I’m sure we could find yaoi/bara examples that disprove the rule, but speaking generally, this is a distinction I’ve found appealing.)

A Good Place to Start

So hopefully I’ll be able to add a number of links to this post, but I found that good place to start for a nice sample of bara in English is at

Baralover (EDIT 7/31/10: Yikes! For the past 24 hours the Baralover link has been delivering a 404 – Not Found page. Hopefully it’s a temporary glitch, but if it’s not resolved in a week, I’ll remove the link here… EDIT 8/17/10: It’s still down. I sent an email to the owner but did not receive a reply. I did find this update of sorts over at BARA Club. We’ll see how this develops. EDIT 9/1/10: And now we have an explanation — looks like Baralover is down for the count for the foreseeable future.)

So, in the meantime, please look below for links to more sites with English-translated bara!)

At this site you will find bara manga from a good-sized variety of creators all translated into English. Now, be warned, these are scanlations — meaning that the original creators have NOT been compensated for the work you are downloading. There is a complicated (and sometimes ignored) system of ethics that scanlators follow in order to respect the artists they admire that mostly boils down to “We will only make available works that you cannot already buy in English — and as soon as English-language versions are published, we will remove our scanlations and encourage you to buy the for-pay books.”

As a creator myself (with limited financial resources), I have mixed feelings about scanlations. On the one hand, I do believe that increasing the exposure of niche works can ultimately benefit creators and publishers commercially (which is why I am making and will continue to make available free downloads of some of our comics.) But, on the other hand, no one has asked any of these creators for their permission to post these works — and I certainly wouldn’t be happy to have that decision taken out of my hands. And no matter how you frame it, it is piracy — and at least according to a panel discussion I heard at YaoiCon, this sort of online piracy has devastated the manhwa market in Korea.

So please, please, please — if you like what you see in some of these links, do take the time to compensate the original creators. A few bucks from you makes a huge difference in how much future work they can create. (Check out the sections below for ways to find and pay creators for bara downloads.)

OTHER SOURCES

First off, if you’re liking this bara stuff, let me humbly suggest you take a moment to check out our comics, like Tough: “No Kissing” which has a hot guy-on-guy painted cover and art and is a free download for our subscribers. Just saying…

Other great places (last update 8/4/11):

http://bara.fuzzybuns.org/
- Kyo, the original webmaster of Baralover just sent me the link to this saying “someone has made a sequel to my old Baralover website”. I’ve checked it out, and so far, it looks pretty great!

Comiz.net
- Lots of full scans of bara mangas from famous creators in an easy to read format. Most are scanlated into English. Definitely worth your time.
BARA – Club (+18) [Yaoi]
- Lots of hot images, lots of links to scanlated Bara. A nice forum to talk about it all. You have to register to get access to the links, but the process is quick and painless. Some pop-up windows seem to have been recently added, though…
Baraspot
- Bara boards site with lots of art (updated link!)
The Bara Forums
- Currently active discussions and postings on Bara (with lots of images), worth your time (but looks like the spammers might be taking over…)
Bara Club on MyAnimeList
SoupGoblin’s Stash
- A variety of bara-themed posts and images (includes some photos, some furry, but lots of bara art), definitely worth your time
Daphira Scans
- Not updated since 2007 but some good work
The baralovers community at LiveJournal
TAKU HiRAKU’s iLLUSTLATiON SiTE
- Creator site with explicit bara, lots of nice images (NON-ENGLISH)
ウホクエ
- chubby cartoonish bara, and all by the same artist (I think) NON-ENGLISH

SOME TUMBLR BLOGS

On the plus side, these sites have well-drawn and very explicit pin-up art, often updated everyday. On the downside, they almost never credit the artist—which is frustrating as a viewer and deprives the artist of even the (non-consensual) gain of building a fan-base. Hopefully, the culture on these Tumblr blogs will change around that…

Bara all day, every day – does just what it says on the tin and the moderator seems willing to try to find out who the artists are if you ask nicely. For the artist’s sake, please ask.

The Queer Geek – lots of bara, with some Western art and photos. Quite nice. Also seems to list the artist more than others—also nice. Should be your first stop just for that reason alone.

bara-onda – offers a mix of Japanese and Western art in a thumbnail layout. Not the most convenient set-up, but there were some pics here I hadn’t seen elsewhere.

Rainbow Robin – a mix of Western art, bara and real-life photos. (Seems to have a lot more gay porn photos/animated gifs lately. And the comics art mostly concerns Robin and Batman.)

FUCK YES YAOI – lots of bara and Western art as well as slash. States in its FAQ that “slash” and “yaoi” are “the exact same thing”—which might come as a surprise to some original BL creators—but the moderator also expresses an interest in crediting the artists which is, at least, a nice thought.

(I’d also be remiss not to include a link to Japanese Gay Art here where a lot of the nicer pieces in the blogs above seem to come from and where you can purchase work and support artists. It’s a really well done site — definitely check it out.)

Buying Bara E-Books

Right now, as far as I know, there isn’t any bara being published in English (yet!). And it’s hard to get enthusiastic about (and ultimately want to support) work you can’t read. So, I will continue to look at Bara scanlations. But after sampling a bara author’s work through a scanlation, I try to do the right thing — I look for ways to get the creator money. This is both to balance out the free-work I have enjoyed and also to offer the creator support so they can create future work to enjoy. How do I compensate these creators? I buy their Japanese-language works. And there are actually a couple ways you can easily do this.

First off, some Japanese manga creators offer for-pay downloads of their work — and this work is often more recent stuff that hasn’t been scanlated yet.

Let’s say you’ve become quite taken with Kowmeiism’s comic “Judo Boy” (the opening image in this post [of that guy with the sword] is also by the same creator). A Google search brings you to his Web site and there you find a Download link page with some of his for-pay e-books. You click on one of the DiGiket download links and — after clicking through the “Yes I Am 18″ button [the first blue one on the left] — are brought to the DiGiket online manga marketplace page to download one of his manga.

At this point you might feel stymied — everything’s in Japanese, you see, and it’s not intuitively obvious how you’d pay for his work, let alone download it. Luckily, there is a simply excellent English-language walkthrough for how to download manga through DiGiket in a journal post over at elee0228′s DeviantArt page. Follow the instructions over at that page and it’s easy as pie to download DRM-free and very high-quality manga art.

(The payment method recommended by elee0228 is WebMoney — a Japanese form of electronic cash that uses special alphanumeric codes that you enter on payment Web sites. It’s very easy to use and it ensures your buying choices will be completely anonymous. In order to get myself some WebMoney to spend, I used kanetrade.com which provided me the WebMoney codes nearly instantaneously and whom, based on that experience, I feel comfortable recommending. They sell WebMoney codes in 1000 point increments and Digiket is smart enough to prompt you for a 2nd WebMoney code for the balance remaining if your first code doesn’t have enough to cover the cost of the manga download, so there is no need to sweat not having exact Yen amounts for the codes you buy.)

UPDATE 2-27-10: Also, for extra easiness, be sure to check out the Yaoi section (sidebar on the left under “Interests/Fetishes”) of the English-language DLSite. Lots of options from Japanese creators, descriptions in English, you can use a regular credit card. Easy, peasy. Should be your first stop. (Just ignore the boobies on the home page… )

UPDATE 12-27-10: And because some folks in the U.S. have been having a difficult time downloading from Digiket using WebMoney, a reader has created and allowed me to share a walkthrough for a similar Japanese site, Surpara.com, which also has the benefit of letting you use your regular credit card.

Buying Physical Bara Books

But what if a creator doesn’t have an e-book available over at DiGiket (or you can’t find it)?

A great place to get hardcopy Bara books is over at Rainbow Shoppers. They have a wide assortment of bara works that you can order including works by creators you’ll find on the Baralover page such as Takeshi Matsu and Tsukasa Matsuzaki. Just click on the “Comic” link in the left sidebar over at Rainbow Shoppers and work your way through the links it provides. They accept VISA and Mastercard and will ship to any location worldwide.

(Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I have to tell you that I actually have not yet ordered from Rainbow Shoppers, but I know those who have and they’ve had good experiences. Of course, all the books are still in Japanese. But the artwork is still gorgeous — and if you really appreciate a creator’s work, don’t you want to do the right thing and help make sure they can afford to keep making it? I thought you did. )

I’ll Keep Updating This List — with your help!

So I hope you found this post a useful introduction to getting your hands on some of that bara art that we’ve all been hearing rumblings about for some time. If you know of any other links that should be included in this post, please let me know in the comments!

(UPDATE: Tina Anderson has a nice listing of Japanese language sites and sources for bara at her blog — which is especially handy as it includes direct links to creators’ Web sites, including noting who sells at DiGiket. She also turned me on to the Top Ten List of Gay Comics over at Rainbow Shoppers.)

Hey! Want links to full-color yaoi/bara comics sent to you — for free? Just sign up over at our Free Comic page and we’ll send you the download link to our first comic right away!

Enjoy reading articles like these? Don’t miss out! Get Yaoi 911â„¢ emailed right to you — for free!

Learn More!

• Curious about the next comic we’ll be sending out to our newsletter subscribers? Then read all about our High School rescue-and-romance Boys Love story, Tough!
• Wondering why the heck I’m making a yaoi book? Check out Why This Gay Man Is Creating Yaoi!
• Want to read about other creators’ yaoi? Take a look at our in-depth Yaoi Reviews!
• Interested in creating your own manga? Start with How to Write a Full Comic Book Script and How to Find the Perfect Yaoi Artist for your Graphic Novel!

A conversation with Simon Jones of Icarus Publishing.

So, last time we talked about the difference between manga and porn, what it means to be a successful publisher of erotic comics and what challenges face those who choose to publish this material. This time we’ll talk about working with Japanese publishers and bring the focus more specifically on what English-language yaoi publishers need to do to succeed in today’s market.

Let’s get right to it!

The Internet seems to be full of stories of manga publishers behaving badly (the recent hullaballoos re: Tokyopop comes to mind, but we can certainly find bloggers expressing concern for the actions of yaoi publishers as well.) I notice that you recently went through heroic measures to replace a print run of books that were missing a page. How does acting with integrity make good business sense in the manga publishing world? Is it more or less relevant for a small press?

Thank you for the kind words, but I wouldn’t characterize that as heroic, merely doing the job competently. The biggest motivation for the reprint was not for the readers, but the artist himself. We want him to know his book is presented in the best possible way.

I would hope integrity is valued in all businesses, of all sizes. But I would expect smaller publishers to adhere more strictly to ethical behavior, because there’s simply no excuse not to do so. There’s no one else to shift the blame to for your mistakes or bad behavior.

With regard to Japanese manga licensees specifically… well, would you try to screw with a Japanese businessman? CAN you screw with a Japanese businessman?

This being a yaoi site, you’ve of course offered me a great set-up by asking me whether I could screw with a Japanese businessman. But resisting that temptation, you bring up an interesting point. It’s a truism that social etiquette and reputation are very important in Japanese business dealings. Do you think that any of this “bad behavior” is being noticed in Japan? What advice do you have for publishers working with artists and businesses in Japan?

First, I hope I didn’t give the general impression that Japanese publishers are difficult to deal with. I don’t speak Japanese, and the Japanese editor I work with does not speak English. But we still manage to get things done. When there’s a willingness on both sides to work together, anything is possible. The key is finding the right person, and making them as enthusiatic about licensing to you as you are. The guy in the licensing department is not necessarily the best person to talk to.

Know exaclty what books you want. If you don’t know how to contact the Japanese publisher directly, try finding the manga artist online, work up a rapport, then ask for their editors. Try to build strong relationships with one or two publishers instead of licensing 10 books from 10 different pubs. One can never be too polite, too transparent, or too concise. Keep things simple in general.

Oh, and pay money up front. That, uhh… usually helps things.

Recently, we’ve seen a couple of small yaoi publishers seem to stumble — I’m thinking here of DramaQueen and Iris Print. What are the specific pitfalls a small publisher of ero-manga, including yaoi books, needs to look out for?

Being underfunded. It doesn’t matter what genre of comics you wish to work in, you need to have proper capital before going forward, and work within your budget. This is simple and universal. If you have to take a big risk, that’s fine… but don’t take other people down with you. Don’t peg this month’s bills and payroll on the next check that may or may not come in from the distributor.

I’ve noticed that some publishers of gay erotic work are very concerned about competing around price. One publisher, Nicole Kimberling of Blind Eye Books, has written about pricing her first book so low that she actually loses 5 cents for every book sold on Amazon.com! How big a factor do you believe price is for ero-manga sales and what factors do you consider when pricing your books?

Given the material, we know we’re never, ever going to become mainstream, and our pricing are in line with a specialist, niche publisher. Our books are priced as low as we can go given our small print runs, while still guaranteeing royalties for artists. We do recognize that our pricepoints are far higher than what most manga readers are familiar with, so we have reissued a few older titles at a lower MSRP for more price-conscious readers. Also, our Comic AG magazines are priced very cheaply on a per page basis, as we view it almost exclusively as promotional tool.

We need to pay artists and sustain ourselves. We’re not a vanity press. Pricing ourselves out of profit range is not an option.

So you view Comic AG as almost exclusively a promotion tool — this would be promoting your trade paperbacks? So, what do you think are the best ways for a “specialist, niche publisher” to reach her audience, particularly with limited funds?

Those with limited funds should focus on acquiring more funds. Sorry, but that has to be your number 1 priority as a publisher.

There is no one best way to reach out to your audience, you just have to try every way you possibly can to target your readers. If you’re a niche publisher but don’t know who or where your audience is, then you shouldn’t be publishing. For a yaoi publisher, any failure at reaching your audience is even more inexcusable. They’re right in front of you. There are websites and clubs dedicated to covering yaoi. There are yaoi-only conventions. Mainstream press writes a “what is the yaoi” article every two weeks. It would take a special kind of incompetence not to be noticed.

Indeed, much has been made of this “yaoi boom” on the Internet and elsewhere. How strong a market do you really think there is for yaoi work? Do you feel it is growing or has it reached its peak?

This is best directed toward yaoi publishers, but my personal, uneducated opinion? Yaoi has not peaked. But the audience has become more sophisticated. Certain segments of the retail market haven’t gotten behind yaoi as hard as they could have.

When you say the audience for yaoi has become more sophisticated, what do you mean by that and how should small press yaoi publishers take that into account?

It’s become more sophisticated in that with more choices, readership has become segmented. Some follow only specific artists, others reject certain themes. Expectations need to be adjusted accordingly.

And when you say certain segments of the retail market haven’t gotten behind yaoi as much as they could have, what segments do you think could be taking better advantage of this genre? What do you think would be the best way to encourage them to do that?

Obviously, I speak of comic stores. This isn’t to say that the blame rests with the Direct Market. Unfairly or not, comic shops have the reputation of being boy’s clubs, and perhaps some publishers have not reached out to the DM properly. Nevertheless, the impetus is on retailers to attract yaoi reader by offering these books, not to wait for yaoi reader to come asking for them, cause that’s not happening. Yaoi readers want to buy stuff, they want to give you money. That’s the best kind of customer to have.

There’s no reason the DM shouldn’t be totally kicking ass on this front. Mainstream bookstores refuse to carry the most explicit yaoi manga. Likewise, yaoi pubs need to recognize the advantages of working with the DM market… the DM pays you within 30 days.

[Ed. Note: Obviously I agree with Mr. Jones here...]

So, do you think English-language readers can expect more or fewer options for ero-manga and yaoi in the future?

That’s not a question for me, that’s a question for readers. If you support the books, there’ll be more.

Any last advice you would give to small publishers of yaoi manga just starting out?

If you’re a licensee? Don’t make Libre angry.

If you’re self-publishing original material? Come into publishing with realistic expectations, and plan for a long, steep climb. This is not a sprint, so don’t quit early if things don’t go your way at first. Have fortitude and conviction.

Well, it definitely sounds like you have had “fortitude and conviction” — so has it been worth it? Knowing what you know now, would you do it all over again?

Even now, I can walk away from this at any time. But I’m not going to.

So, that’s it, folks. I hope you’ve enjoyed this conversation as much as I have. I want to thank Simon Jones for taking time out of his very busy schedule to answer my questions. If you found what he had to say useful, please take a look at what he has to offer in his (of course NSFW) catalog — if not for yourself, than how about for that super-supportive otaku boyfriend in your life? I’m sure it will be a gift he’ll remember. And who knows? Maybe he’ll be so inspired, he’ll run out and buy you the hot yaoi in return…

Enjoy reading articles like these? Don’t miss out! Subscribe and get them delivered right to you!

Psst! Want a free yaoi full-color yaoi comic? Just sign up over at our Free Comic page and we’ll send you the download link!

Learn More!

• Wondering where our conviction comes from? Check out Why This Gay Man is Creating Yaoi!
• Interested in creating your own manga? Start with How to Write a Full Comic Book Script and How to Find the Perfect Yaoi Artist for your Graphic Novel!
• Want to see how our second comic is coming along? (Or just want to look at some pics of the cute boys fighting and making out?) Click on over to Yaoi Art: “Artifice” Pencils! (Age 18 and over, please!)
• Want to support DramaQueen by buying a book with hot sex and pretty, pretty boys? Check out our review of Empty Heart by Masara Minase!

A conversation with Simon Jones of Icarus Publishing. (Part 1.)

Recently, there’s been some discussion about how some small yaoi publishers have been struggling despite offering quality yaoi titles to their readers. With DramaQueen in particular, it saddens me to hear of their difficulties — I’ve enjoyed their work, found their enthusiasm infectious and have great affection for company president Tran Nguyen, despite having only met her a couple of times — she’s just that cool.

So, the question for me is “How can a small yaoi publisher survive, even flourish, in today’s competitive bookselling marketplace?” To get some answers to that question, I reached out to Icarus Publishing’s Simon Jones. I started corresponding with Mr. Jones on Warren Ellis’ creator forum The Engine in 2005 (a forum which, alas, has since shuttered its doors). This was right when I was first conceiving the Yaoi 911™ project and since then, I’ve found our email correspondence and the articles of his (NSFW) blog very helpful and inspiring.

Mr. Jones is not a yaoi publisher — in fact, the work he publishes is very much heterosex comics for straight guys — but it shouldn’t surprise you that I would want to hear what he has to say: This whole project is about being inclusive, I feel we’re all in this together when it comes to publishing erotic manga and, most importantly, Simon Jones knows his stuff. He has a keen understanding of the comics publishing industry and his blog has a strong reputation for excellent articles about all forms of erotic manga publishing, including yaoi.

When Simon Jones has something to say, it’s worth listening to. Especially if you’re a publisher of erotic comics, such as yaoi — or even if you’re a reader who’s just looking to see yaoi publishing actually survive the next decade.

So let’s get started!


Mr. Jones, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us about these issues. Let’s start off by introducing you to our readers. What is your title and how would you describe the work you publish?

I’m the publisher, editor, graphics, pre-press, licensing, and janitor of Icarus Publishing. We produce porn manga; we see ourselves more as a manga publisher than a porn publisher, and that guides the way we do business and how we present ourselves.

I’ve heard you describe your work as “ero-manga” — how would you define ero-manga for those not familiar with that term?

I find it interesting that you ask how “I” define ero-manga, as if it were subjective, its essence malleable by my whims… it’s not. Ero-manga are explicit pornographic comics from Japan. A commercial, physical product. There’s no nebulous concept or lifestyle to be ascribed to it, no depth to be probed outside of itself. As a publisher, I neither shape it nor direct its development. I merely serve, and act in service of, the material.

You say you see yourself more as a “manga publisher” than a “porn publisher” — what do you see as the distinction there? How important do you think story and character are for ero-manga?

The strength of most manga is actually not the plot. It’s the focus on storytelling and the likability of its characters. This holds true for ero-manga which, lets face it, usually aren’t very deep in the story department. There is excitement and energy in the art, angles are dynamic, the pacing is predictable but clear, and the framing is varied and not afraid to get up close. Characters emote.

What got you interested in being a publisher and how did you get started?

I publish manga because I like manga. I publish ero-manga because it’s one genre that I like, that almost no one is publishing. As a fan, that sucks. So my motivation is similar to most other publishers out there… we want to work on material we believe in and enjoy. We want the market to suck less.

Have you ever been tempted to create your own manga?

Of course, I dabble in drawing occasionally. Don’t have the dedication required to make a manga now, or the time. There are 1000 pages of hi-res manga scans across three computers I need to clean and reformat. Sorry, my dear Intuos tablet, back on the shelf you go.

Icarus Publishing’s anthology magazine Comic AG has been called ero-manga’s “most popular series.” That’s pretty cool. As a publisher, how do you define success?

While flattering, being considered a top-tier ero-manga publisher is in some ways a hollow victory. There’s very little other ero-manga being officially produced, and the market overall for sex comics has dwindled since its height during the 90s. Does Comic AG successfully present ero manga to English readers? Yes, I strongly feel that we’ve produced the best products we can under current market conditions. Have we been successful in fully exploiting ero-manga’s potential in the marketplace? No.

So, in terms of success, it sounds like you take pride in the quality of the work you’ve been able to introduce to English readers, but that you still see that there’s a lot of untapped potential in the market. In particular, you say the market for sex comics has “dwindled” since the 90s. Why do you think this is? Do you expect it to come back and is there anything publishers can do to hasten that?

This is directly related to the number of retail outlets in existence available to us. We are not distributed through mainstream book stores, and we may never be. Direct market comic stores are run by individuals who can choose whether or not they want to carry adult material (and we are thankful to every retailer who does.) Adult bookstores have given way to DVDs and online porn.

[Ed. note: The number of Direct Market stores were greatly reduced in the mid to late 1990s as a result of a severe contraction in comic book sales. Speculation and poor business and creative decisions were most likely to blame for this.]

As a publisher, have things worked out how you expected? Any big surprises?

As far as meeting our modest goals, yes. But what I didn’t expect was slow acceptance by both fans and retailers who readily embrace ero (or hentai) anime, which is essentially the animated form of ero-manga.

What do you think are the biggest challenges a publisher of ero-manga faces?

The biggest challenges are ones we have very little control over… retailer apathy to outright avoidance of pornographic material, proliferation of unauthorized material online and the sense of entitlement that creates, the usual suspects. And of course, finding solid sources of investment.

Which is a topic you discuss specifically in relation to what’s happening with DramaQueen over at your blog. In the comments of that post, you also discuss the dangers of being a fan-run business — namely that a fan’s optimism might get in the way being realistic about how to run their business. Yet it seems you consider yourself a “small, fan-operated publisher” as well — are there ways where being small and fan-run can be a business benefit, both for ero-manga in general and the yaoi market in particular?

I can’t speak for anyone else but myself, but we only license 10 to 12 books a year, so every one of them is special to me. Or look at the books DramaQueen has managed to release… from a production standpoint, they’re beautiful. Of course, there is a direct flip side to this. Again, I can’t speak about DramaQueen or any other publisher specifically, I don’t have that knowledge. But just speaking generally, a rabid fan publisher might be less willing to make certain concessions. Maybe it’s the quality of the paper stock, or maybe it’s skipping a deadline to make the book perfect. We all think very highly of the books we work on, but we also need to be able to step back and say “this isn’t the Sistine Chapel. We have to ship.” As a licensee, I have to think of it this way: we need to make money for our licensors and artists. That means making good books, *and* making sound financial decisions. Interior color is great, and french flaps are lovely. But if they’re going to wipe out our margins, we just have to make do without them.

So, that’s the end of Part 1 of our conversation with Simon Jones, publisher, editor and janitor of Icarus Publishing. In Part 2 (now posted) we talk about manga publishers behaving badly, whether it’s possible to screw with a Japanese businessman, and what small yaoi publishers can do to survive in a tough market.

And if, in the meantime, you are finding yourself a little curious about Mr. Jones’ titles, you can read about them online at his NSFW online store and find them for purchase at your local comic book store. (And hey, if all those boobies on his web pages are making you a bit wary and you’re wondering what’s in it for a yaoi-loving straight girl, then Mr. Jones recommends A Wish of my Sister by female mangaka Masahiro Itosugi, an ero-manga trade paperback which features “boy-toy” (read: uke) character Keisuke. You can read a review of the work over at AnimeonDVD.)


Enjoy reading articles like these? Don’t miss out! Subscribe and get them delivered right to you!

Psst! Want a free yaoi full-color yaoi comic? Just sign up over at our Free Comic page and we’ll send you the download link!

Learn More!

• Want to read more about helping out small yaoi publishers? Check out How to Keep a Steady Stream of Hot Yaoi Coming Your Way!
• Interested in creating your own manga? Start with How to Write a Full Comic Book Script and How to Find the Perfect Yaoi Artist for your Graphic Novel!
• Want to see how our first comic is coming along? (Or just want to look at some pics of the cute boys fighting monsters and making out?) Click on over to Yaoi Art: “A Shot in the Dark” Inks! (Age 18 and over, please!)
• Curious about which DramaQueen book first won my love? Read a review of a great yaoi comedy: Yaoi Review: Challengers by Hinako Takanaga!

…and why our book will be large and in full color.

In the comment section to Yaoi Art: “A Shot in the Dark” Pencils, I was asked why I was choosing to publish the first Yaoi 911™ book in color — an unusual choice for a manga book. In responding to that, I also commented on reasons why the vast majority of manga books here in the U.S. are not published in color, despite our culture’s current embrace of full-color comics. And I gave some reasons why these books are consistently published in a small “digest-size” format (typically around 5″ x 7.5″) as well.

Even though it’s just a comment, I thought that readers might find these topics interesting, thus I decided to pull it out into its own post. So, if you’re curious about why manga is printed the way it is here or why I’m bucking this tradition by creating full color yaoi, read on!

Bowing Towards Japan

The short answer to the question of “why small and black-and-white?” is, of course, the fact that most manga printed in the U.S. is licensed from Japan and the publishers here are merely being true to the original material — material that contains almost exclusively black-and-white art (which Japanese readers are very comfortable with) and that is often collected in digest-size tankoban.

Now, of course, there are straight-forward logistical reasons for publishers not making changes to this format — if the books were never colored there, then you’d have to hire an artist to do it here, a considerable expense of time and money (not to mention a bit Ted Turneresque…). But also very important is the desire to honor the Japanese author’s creative choices, something that has become very important in an increasingly savvy U.S. manga market.

A good example of how these factors play out is the fact that most Western manga publishers now print their licensed books in the Japanese-style right-to-left reading format, even though it requires a learning curve on the part of many Western readers to have to read manga that way. Why do they make this choice? Out of respect for the original art (so it doesn’t looked “flopped“), deference to the fans of that art (who want to experience the creator’s original vision), in response to contractual requirements of certain mangakas and, frankly, because it’s just faster and cheaper.

Obviously, changing the aspect ratio of a book to a more traditional American graphic novel size or coloring the pages would be an even bigger alteration of the original work and thus would also have to be avoided for the same reasons — despite the fact that it could very well make the books more accessible for a Western audience. (I still know people who won’t read black-and-white comics of any stripe…)

For licensed manga, however, the market has spoken — the books sell. Why take on additional expense and effort if you don’t have to?

But What About Original English-Language Manga?

So, those are good reasons why publishers wouldn’t want to make changes to licensed manga — and thus why most manga here is formatted the way it is. But many American publishers also choose to stick to the smaller, black-and-white format even for their own original, English-language works — a choice which seems to fly in the face of the traditional comics market here in the U.S.

Now, there has to be more behind this than a desire to imitate the Japanese works. The vast majority of these publishers are smart enough not to slavishly follow the right-to-left tradition for OEL manga. Most are willing to innovate in terms of story and art to appeal to more Western tastes. So, why would they almost universally choose the Japanese format for size and color? Why are so few willing to break out of that box?

In order to offer some good reasons for that (and tell you a little more about what my plans are for the Yaoi 911™ books), I will now post some excerpts from my original response as to why I am choosing (perhaps foolishly) to buck the small and monochromatic manga tradition. (I’ve altered the order of the text a bit to facilitate our discussion here — let’s call this the “remix version.”)

Comment by Alex Woolfson

…There are good reasons why almost all manga [including OEL manga] is a particular size. One is, of course, tradition. But that tradition has created certain expectations that have shaped the manga market. For one thing, having one size for a particular genre of book makes it easy for bookstores to stock your book on their shelves — and you want to make it easy for bookstores to stock your book. For another, consumers get used to a particular size and have probably adapted their reading habits to that size — you can stick one of those small manga books in your purse, for example, good luck doing that with an 8.5″ x 11″ book — and confounding consumer expectations can be dangerous. (It can also pay off, they might really like it, but it’s risky…) Finally, there’s the fact that smaller books are cheaper to publish — they use less paper, they cost less to ship — and in running a business, cheaper helps you live to publish another day.

Is it any wonder why pretty much every yaoi book is black-and-white and pocket-size? Really, so long as people are willing to buy them, it’s the “smart” choice. And in a risky business like publishing, you really want to make smart choices.

So those are some solid, practical reasons to follow the herd. Yet the Yaoi 911™ books are going to be different — here’s my reasoning why:

…[Now,) there are things I am doing as a publisher that are hopefully “smart” choices — getting the word out with this blog, hiring a pro for my cover design, having realistic expectations for sales in a niche market, etc…

But even if it’s not, I will have made the book I wanted to make — and that’s ultimately what’s important to me. Creating this book is a realization of a dream. And I choose not to follow my dream by half-measures.

What Do You Think, Gentle Reader?

So there you have it — reasons why a publisher should stick with the traditional Japanese format and my reasons for breaking with that tradition. Will it be the “right” choice or will I be remembered as the Don Quixote of yaoi publishing?

I hope you found this discussion interesting and useful (and I encourage you to click through some of those links above to find out more), but the original intention of this post was to inspire discussion, so I’d really like to know… what do you think? Do you think there is room for different formats of manga (at potentially higher prices) or should the traditional format just be left well enough alone?


Enjoy reading articles like these? Don’t miss out! Subscribe and get them emailed right to you — for free!

Learn More!

• Curious about how to create your own manga? Start with How to Write a Full Comic Book Script and How to Find the Perfect Yaoi Artist for your Graphic Novel!
• Want to see how our first comic is coming along? (Or just want to look at some pics of the cute boys fighting monsters and making out?) Click on over to Yaoi Art: “A Shot in the Dark” Inks! (Age 18 and over, please!)
• Just looking for a good time? Read a review of a great yaoi comedy: Yaoi Review: Challengers by Hinako Takanaga!

Recently, in private correspondence, a woman asked me this question:

You want to make Yaoi? Why? I think I’d like to see you make something by a gay man for a gay man that might appeal to me on my level. 0_0.

Even though I’ve tried to address the larger issue of this in previous posts, this question brings up a specific point that I feel is worth responding to.

I’ve been gay my entire life. I get all the memos, talk the talk, walk the walk and even got the T-Shirt. So, I have a pretty good idea what gay boys like and could certainly write to this audience in a way that would speak to them not only directly, but specifically. And by specifically, I mean with all the inside knowledge, the in-jokes and the experience of someone who has grown up a homo in an intolerant culture.

Of course my comics will be written “by a gay man,” but I guess when I think of writing “for a gay man” what that means to me is that I’m writing with the expectation of specific shared experiences and a specific appeal. And while I do hope other gay guys dig what I write, the stories I want to tell are ultimately for a larger, more inclusive audience.

Writing specifically for other gay people (and this includes lesbians, too) can be very fun, rewarding and challenging (just trying to create an interesting new take on the done-to-death coming out story requires Herculean creative chops) — and I’m sure in time I’ll have stories to share that will be “just for us gays” — but the comics I am looking to publish right now don’t require inside knowledge of what it’s like to be gay or specifically address issues that exclusively concern gay people.

They are action-romances where yes, guys love each other and try to protect each other and kiss and get naked and a whole lot more — and I want to tell those stories in a way that can turn on a straight woman in Florida as much as a gay guy here in San Francisco. We can speculate until the cows come home about what makes a yaoi work “yaoi”, but the one thing that seems to be consistent between all the different definitions is who your audience is.

Every writer should be keeping their audience in mind when telling their stories. For me, as I am writing my scripts, I see my readers consisting of women, gay guys and very cool straight guys — but especially women. (In fact, there is a particular woman I keep in mind, but that’s a whole other tale..)

I like yaoi stories. I like the people who like yaoi stories. And if you like other yaoi books, I think you are going to like my books.

I do hope my stories will appeal to you “on your level.” But they aren’t just for other gay men or even primarily for other gay men. As I said in a previous post, one thing I like about creating yaoi is its potential to allow everyone to celebrate gay love — both its special and universal qualities. Maybe my flavor of yaoi will feel a bit more inclusive than other creators’ — I’m just fine with that — but I’m not interested in finding ways to limit my audience or exclude others from what’s cool about a guy loving another guy. In fact, it’s just the opposite. My goal as a creator is to bring disparate groups together and to expand people’s understanding of one another. I personally believe I can do that while showing them a good time and my chosen genre for making this happen is yaoi.

You’re going to see me make something by a gay man for a yaoi audience. They don’t seem to have a T-shirt for that, but where I’d like to see us go, I’m hoping we won’t need them.


Enjoy reading articles like these? Don’t miss out! Subscribe and get them emailed right to you — for free!

Psst! Want a free yaoi full-color yaoi comic? Just sign up over at our Free Comic page and we’ll send you the download link!

Learn More!

• Curious about the story behind me making these books? Check out The Sweet Yaoi Action You Can Expect From Me!
• Eager to find out more about why people get hot under the collar about this topic? Check out Should Yaoi Be Just For Women?
• Had enough discussion and debate and just want to look at some pics of the cute boys kissing? Click on over to Yaoi Art: “A Shot in the Dark” Pencils! (Age 18 and over, please!)

Yaoi is written predominantly by and for women — but is it “just for women”? Yaoi works feature guys falling in love, guys kissing and guys having sex — but is it actually “not homosexual”?

Who “owns” yaoi and why this is important is the subject of this article.

Not too long ago, I commented on the August 09, 2006 post over at Comics 212 (EDIT: which you now have to scroll down a bit in his archives page to see, check out the August 18, 2006 post for his response while you are there) which included some interview excerpts from a very well-known yaoi mangaka, Kazuma Kodaka. In response to the question “How much connection do your stories have to gay culture?” (asked by Giant Robot’s Cathy Camper), she said:

My manga is yaoi, not homosexual, and there’s a subtle difference between the two… It’s about how the characters feel and how they struggle to obtain love until it’s finally achieved. The story is usually about the characters’ feelings of pain and longing for each other, which is a more feminine sensibility.

This wasn’t the first time I had heard a yaoi mangaka express a belief in such a distinction and it has always seemed like a misunderstanding of “gay culture” to me, so I responded in the comments of that post:

It’s interesting that “feelings of pain and longing” are often being attribued more to women than gay men by BL creators and that this perception is being used as a way to show the distinction between yaoi and gay comics. Certainly listening to Bronsky Beat’s Age of Consent as a kid and remembering now how much it resonated with me, it’s hard to imagine my “gay” feelings as a teenager and young adult (the age of many BL heroes) described as anything other than “pain and longing.” In many ways, this argument rings false to me, especially because as a gay guy I have no problem relating to the characters in these “just-for-women” works.

But that said, one of the reasons I am choosing to write “yaoi” works as a gay guy is because I believe that labeling something as manga and yaoi in particular does imply a stronger focus on relationships and emotions in the story, even if the story is an action-adventure one. And the fact that the intended “yaoi audience” is predominantly but not exclusively women encourages me as a creator to focus more on universal elements in my stories, hopefully making them fun for the whole family. So perhaps I am part of the problem, too.

I think the true definition of “yaoi” and exactly how it is supposed to differ from “gay comics” will be something that will take a number of years — and the maturing of the yaoi market — to be decided. And I question whether, in the end, the distinction will be relevant in any meaningful way.

As this was on an older post, I hadn’t expected anyone to really notice it, but I guess I wasn’t the only one thinking about this issue. As I said in my last article, the comment got a mention at Mangablog and just yesterday Chris Butcher of Comics 212 himself weighed in with an excellent take on the subject. (EDIT: This is the August 18, 2006 post I mentioned above.)

In that article, he brings up a number of interesting points and issues I’d like to address.

Yaoi ain’t Tom of Finland — does it need to be?

Just as there are assumptions on the part of creators and pundits about what a female audience prefers in guy-on-guy action (effeminate-looking men, clear gender roles, etc.) there are similar assumptions about what gay men really want — and often that’s considered to be hyper-masculine images, such as those created by Tom of Finland. This is often cited as the reason why gay guys just don’t get yaoi.

But just as there are all kinds of things that turn on women in this world, not all of us gay guys are into this hyper-masculine ideal — apparently I like clueless boys, for example — and some of the “just for girls” hearts and flowers imagery and warm-and-fuzzy stories found in yaoi can be a lot of fun for us gay boys to read. Chris makes the excellent point that when it comes to fantasy, trying to predict what people should like based on what group they belong to is useless.

In addition, as Lyle Masaki of Crocodile Caucus points out, just because the yaoi heroes don’t always reflect conventional images of Western gay culture doesn’t necessarily mean these stories exist in some kind of gay-ignorant vacuum:

I sometimes find myself disagreeing with the contention that these stories aren’t about gay men, as sometimes these stories handle gay issues (emotional, not political ones) as a source of romantic complications that wouldn’t have as much impact if these characters were heterosexual, or even the “straight-except-for-this-one-guy” type… If the reader doesn’t look at the characters as gay, the story loses a lot of its impact. The “my boyfriend is with me only for the sex” conflict has a lot more drama when a cultural issue of self-acceptance is part of the subtext.

This is another reason why I think it’s misguided to assume that you need a “feminine sensibility” to feel a personal connection to these stories. Yes, the characters in some yaoi stories live in a far more accepting world than the rest of us do, but many yaoi stories I read just seem to get what it’s like to be homosexual in an intolerant culture: the isolation, the longing for acceptance, the perceived need to keep the truth of one’s affections secret… and yes, the “pain and longing” of growing up gay.

So why make the distinction?

So where does this need to draw a line between gays and yaoi-lovers come from? Certainly, as Craig McKenney of Headless Shakespeare Press pointed out in his response to Kodaka’s comments, such sentiments have the aroma of homophobia:

I, too, had great trouble with the assertion that gay comics aren’t about emotions, feelings, relationships, etc. It smacks of the whole “I’m not gay!” defense on the part of straight people who feel they must continue to define themselves & the things around them so that no one thinks they’re gay.

My take at the time was that it actually had more to do with sexism than homophobia — as little kids, we were taught to make important distinctions between boy-cooties and girl-cooties and it seems like every culture takes great pleasure in continuing to play up perceived differences as we grow into adults. And, as I understand Japanese culture, gender roles are still much more defined and restrictive there than here, so that might be informing Japanese mangakas’ perspective on this issue.

But Chris points out another potential reason:

To be honest I think it all comes back to fangirl/fanboy entitlement, like so much of the manga discussion seems to these days. The uneasy relationship between people who love something and the companies who want to sell it to them. Like I always say, a community is defined by who it excludes, and the yaoi community seems to think that it doesn’t include gay men. Sure, their reasoning is benign on the surface and it’s all very nice, but honestly? It’s false, entirely false…

So is that it? Are the yaoi girls just wanting to keep us gay boys out of their club house?

A Girls Only Sanctuary

It’s funny, but as I was reading Chris’ article and the words of others on this subject, I was reminded of a controversial transition that took place in the club scene some years ago here in San Francisco. A new dance club for women opened called “The Cafe” right in the Castro district. This was somewhat special because while there were a number of dance clubs in San Francisco that catered to men who liked men, there was a dearth of them for the lesbian community — in fact, this might have been the only full time women’s dance club in the Bay Area at that time.

But because of zoning ordinances, only one other club in the very gay Castro district allowed dancing and that fact, combined with a very moderate cover charge, led to a huge influx of gay men shaking their groove thing in this women’s only space. Soon, the men outnumbered the women and in less than a year it was essentially, for all intents and purposes, another gay male club. And many women were quite unhappy with that change.

Chris says:

The queers are coming. First one to cater their gay porn to the gay community goes home with the money.

And I think there’s truth in that. There is money to be had by courting gay dollars and yes, I think it is foolish for publishers to ignore or alienate that market in the West. But I also think the fangirls’ interest in keeping the flavor of yaoi distinct from other forms of guy-on-guy romance has a foundation in something less trivial than cliquish pettiness.

Yaoi — because its predominant audience is women — does in fact offer something different than comics that cater primarily to gay men. As I’ve suggested, I have serious questions about the validity of a “feminine sensibility” when that concept means somehow excluding men from understanding basic human experiences. But there is something — perhaps found in the explicitly stated winks-and-nudges to the shoujo fan girls in Fake or the emotional tenor of works like Sweet Inspiration — that makes these works special and unique. And fans trying to define what that is — and even looking to protect that some — is understandable.

The “dominant” members of society — and that includes men, both straight and gay — can use their power to co-opt things that didn’t originally belong to them. Dominant white culture co-opted jazz and turned it into swing. Corporations have taken the concept of grassroots activism and, using their far greater resources, are giving us “astroturf” activism. Have these actions killed jazz or grassroots movements? No. But it does dilute them in the popular culture — and those who originally created and loved such things cry out “Hey, you guys are missing something!”

So What Should “Yaoi” Mean Then?

I am struck by Chris’ insightful observation about it all coming down to “the uneasy relationship between people who love something and the companies who want to sell it to them.” What is that relationship? It’s the relationship between identity and marketing.

On the one side of this relationship, Yaoi books offer something special to a group that has not been served by other kinds of media. It’s more than simply “Hey, look — just like straight guys like lesbians, straight chicks can dig the guy-on-guy action!” — actually, trying to define the appeal can be fraught with peril — but whatever the reasons, the appreciation of these books has created a sense of community and belonging and frankly, I don’t think it’s petty to want to belong, to want to be member of a group of peers who share the same perspectives on love and fantasy that you do when so much of the dominant culture seems to tell you such perspectives are wrong.

On the other side of the relationship, as a writer and publisher, I know that when you are going to sell a book, you need to know who your audience is and try to find a way to let them know that you’ve made this book especially for them. Get it wrong — or worse yet, seem like you merely trying to manipulate a fan base — and the reaction can be quite severe. Get it right, and hopefully you make enough money to keep publishing the books you love.

So, for both members of this relationship, there is good reason to try to pin down what exactly yaoi is and who it’s for. I’ve tried to mention some of the things that I think make yaoi unique, but honestly, as I’m sure you can tell from this article, it’s something I’m still trying to figure out how to express. And as I said in that first comment on Comics 212, I think it might take a number of years before we as a culture or as fans will truly know how yaoi should be defined here in the West (and in the “Global Boys’ Love” scene in general.)

But even though I believe it would be best for yaoi to retain its own distinct character — both for those who identify with it and for those who wish to sell books to these fans — I think it would, in fact, be missing the essential truth of yaoi to try to draw strong barriers between men and women, gays and straights when looking to define that character. Even though they are written for a predominantly female audience, yaoi books give everyone an opportunity to appreciate gay love, regardless of their actual gender or sexual identities.

In the end, I don’t think anyone “owns” yaoi. It’s an art-form that by its very nature is about breaking down barriers. Whether appreciating or marketing these books, we should strive to be inclusive — not for the cash prize of appealing to a larger market, but rather, because if there is anything that these “just-for-fun” romantic fantasy romps teach us, it’s just wrong to tell people how, who or what they should love.

P.S. For what it’s worth, a decade later, The Cafe club I mentioned earlier is now very mixed with boys and girls shaking their groove things side-by-side. Just thought I’d let you know how that turned out…


Enjoy reading articles like these? Don’t miss out! Subscribe and get them emailed right to you — for free!

Psst! Want a free yaoi full-color yaoi comic? Just sign up over at our Free Comic page and we’ll send you the download link!

Learn More!

• Curious about the story behind me making these books? Check out The Sweet Yaoi Action You Can Expect From Me!
• Wondering “Why yaoi? Why not just write for other gay men?” Find out in Why This Gay Man is Creating Yaoi!
• Looking for a good book to curl up with? Click on over to our Yaoi Reviews!
• Had enough discussion and debate and just want to look at some pics of the cute boys kissing? Click on over to Yaoi Art: “A Shot in the Dark” Inks! (Age 18 and over, please!)

Some things I’ve been reading lately have gotten me thinking about “The One True Yaoi.”

Recently, Tina Anderson got some heat for not writing what one yaoi fan considered authentic Boys’ Love works. And an interview excerpt (EDIT: scroll down for the August 9th post) over at Comics 212 demonstrated the lines even creators (perhaps especially creators) try to draw between yaoi and “homosexual” works (prompting me to write a comment that received a very kind mention over at the excellent MangaBlog.) [Edit: And now Christopher Butcher himself over at Comics 212 has weighed in with a very interesting and thorough take on this. Very cool. Please check it out.] (EDIT 2: This would be the August 18, 2006 post which you now have to scroll down for on this page as well.)

I’ve talked about my motivation some in “Why Yaoi?” but I wanted to tell you the story behind why I’m making these books and what you can expect in them.

When I was a teenager, I was a big movie fan. In particular, I loved sci-fi and action films — and if you could combine them as James Cameron did in Aliens, I was in heaven. I suppose there were a lot of other boys who were interested in those kinds of films, but growing up as a gay boy, I was craving something more, something that nobody seemed to be interested in providing — action heroes who liked other guys.

Now, in the 80s and early 90s, there were beginning to be a number of images of gay characters in mainstream films, but at best, they were comic relief, more typically they were portrayed as either bad guys or victims (or in the case of Miller’s Crossing, repeatedly both.) Nobody, it seemed, believed that gay guys could actually be the heroes.

Of course, there were a lot of messages I got while growing up gay that told me that I was not as worthy as the girl-seeking guys — the fact that the word “gay” could be blithely used by all my classmates for anything negative being high on that list — but the one I felt I could actually do something about was this lack of heroes on screen.

I was already writing fairly regularly by my mid-teens — short stories and theater plays, a couple of which even got produced in my home state of Vermont — but I knew that being a writer wasn’t going to be good enough. I needed to be the one who had the true power to shape the message of the film — the director. So, I dedicated my life to developing the skills and experience to make the films I wanted so desperately to see as a young man. (And now you have my filmmaker origin story. )

But as I got older and more experienced, it became very clear to me that realizing my visions in film was going to take years and years of development. I’ve worked on a number of low-budget independent movies, including my own — so I knew that was an option — but ultimately, they weren’t the kind of stories I wanted to tell. I wanted to make a big-budget sci-fi/fantasy action movie where the guys kiss at the end (and perhaps in the middle, too!). Yet I knew that even in this post-Brokeback Mountain age we live in, raising millions of dollars from investors for a boy-on-boy blockbuster would be nearly impossible.

Of course, I could have just rewritten my scripts as conventional prose novels — and I did consider this — but in the end, I’m a visual storyteller. From the moment I saw actors breathing life into one of my plays onstage at the tender age of 16, there was no turning back. I didn’t want to merely describe to people what I saw in my head — I wanted to show them.

So for a long time, I despaired of ever getting a chance to tell these stories the way I wanted to. I still wrote them, mind you — but I knew that unless lightning struck, they would never be more than Sisyphusean exercises, shared only among those close to me.

But a few years ago, a new friend — LB — rekindled an old passion: anime. And as I watched classic Ranma 1/2 and Oh, My Goddess, I started to realize that there might be another satisfying way to tell these expensive stories — with drawn art where the only limits are those of imagination. I did some research on producing an animated film and discovered it would be nearly a costly as a live-action movie. Yet I knew I was on to something. And then, as I was reading some fine online literature, it hit me — why not tell these stories as graphic novels?

I was already a fan of such American classics as Alan Moore’s Watchmen and Miracleman, so I knew the form could be used to tell some amazing stories. And my developing exposure to anime, manga and yes, slash-fiction, let me know there might in fact be a market for the kind of stories I wanted to tell.

What kind of stories are those? Character-based action-romances with strong plots but where the ultimate focus was on the relationships. I knew it was a strange combination — thrilling fantasy-action and sweet, warm-and-fuzzy guy-on-guy romance — but as I became more familiar with yaoi, I realized I had finally found a home for the stories I wanted to tell.

And for the same reasons that it wasn’t enough for me to just be the writer of the films I made, I’m passionate about being the publisher of these books as well. This is my opportunity to realize a life-long dream and I’m going to create the kind of books I’ve always wanted to read. And that means publishing a full-color graphic novel on nice, coated paper with fun action, sweet romance and writing intended for a mature audience — and by “mature,” I mean for those looking for developed, three-dimensional characters and plotting that does not insult your intelligence. (And for the first Yaoi 911™ book, we are creating a collection of five comic “short stories” where some cute guys try their best to rescue the guys they love. You can see art for the first of those comics here.)

Will the yaoi community consider our work “true yaoi”? I don’t know. While women are drawing many of the stories, obviously I’m not a woman and I’m writing and publishing them. The guys in our stories are going to look like guys, not androgynous bishonen — and not necessarily impossibly beautiful guys either. (Cute yes; impossibly beautiful, not so much.) And while every relationship has power dynamics, I’m not likely to follow the traditional seme/uke conventions found in classic yaoi works — frankly, I think more complex, less hetero-traditional relationships are more interesting. Perhaps for some, those choices alone will mean three strikes and I’m out of the whole yaoi game.

But reading other yaoi works — by women and for women — gives me hope. I know they are “meant” for women, but I really connect with a lot of those stories, both published and fan fiction. No, I’m not going to make any special effort to follow yaoi conventions — other than trying to appeal to the female audience I feel so connected to. Instead I am going to tell you stories that I’ve been wanting to tell you all my life. And I’m going to do it with passion and heart and with every intention of making you, my reader, smile, laugh and hopefully fall in love with my characters a little. As I, myself, have fallen in love with the characters of other yaoi creators.

Will the fans consider it “true yaoi”? Who knows — but I do promise you that I will do everything in my power to tell really fun and interesting guy-on-guy romance stories. After all, you are helping me realize a life-long dream — the least I can do is show you a good time.


Enjoy reading articles like these? Don’t miss out! Subscribe and get them emailed right to you — for free!

Learn More!

• Wondering “Why yaoi? Why not just write for other gay men?” Find out in Why This Gay Man is Creating Yaoi!
• Curious about how to create your own yaoi book? Start with How to Write a Full Comic Book Script and How to Find the Perfect Yaoi Artist for your Graphic Novel!
• Looking to buy a sweet yaoi book? Check out Yaoi Review: Sweet Revolution by Yukine Honami and Serubo Suzuki!
• Want to see how our first comic is coming along? (Or just want to look at some pics of the cute boys fighting monsters and making out?) Click on over to Yaoi Art: “A Shot in the Dark” Inks! (Age 18 and over, please!)