Yeah but it’s mainly that Marvel and DC did negative amounts to reach out to tween and teen girl readers, so manga & manwha companies got to them. The girlies love sequential art.
I knew this anime would start discourse.
There are plenty of trans and gender non-conforming folks in Japan and anime has often had gender non-conforming characters. Japan also has somewhat different language around non-c*s gender identities.
I’m obsessed with the fact that the H*artstopper author is weirdly racist against Japanese media and considers themself to be “one of the good ones”.
Again, my fellow queers (esp queers read as femme), you will never be “one of the good ones”.
They’re bishounen but they’re specifically bishounen inspired by Lady Oscar who is in turn a bifauxnen inspired by Enjolras in Les Misérables who is in turn inspired by actual actor of the Terror, Louis-Antoine de Saint-Just.
They are beautiful and terrifying. That’s the point.
Most female characters are disliked due to misogyny. Either misogyny on the part of the mangaka writing them poorly, or on the part of the fanbase judging them too harshly.
@asexualthot24
Also “real men don’t act like that” and it’s usually just treating their romantic interest with basic respect or showing interest in her hobbies and aspirations.
… Like A+ for self-awareness, I guess.
I really need everyone who thinks this way to look a CSA survivor in the face and say “it would have been better if you died at 7 (or whatever) than lived to be the person you are today”.
Cause that is how you sound.
1) This is not unusual for a well-liked manga. Editors encourage writers to stretch plot elements out to keep an ongoing from finishing if it sells issues.
2) Shoujosei mags are usually monthly or bimonthly.
3) Toriyama just died from overwork. This is in very bad tasts.
This is the consequence of demanding LGBTQIA rep be sanitized, btw. The people who hate queers don’t care about you liking “the good ones”. They hate it all.
Today in Brevard County we banned a book because our chair couldn’t understand why a Japanese translation was being read from right to left.
Well that & she accidentally said the LGBTQ relationship was “inappropriate”
1) BL was created mostly by women in a period when women’s sexual agency was restricted. It is deeply feminist.
2) A plurality of current BL readers and authors are now queer. Probably always were, but our language has evolved to describe more identities.
@AbsentTulip
As they should. BL is the most the fetishist genre ever, it doesn't represent the actual queer experience. It's just a nitche genre that has straight women as a target audience not the queer community
@AniTrendz
I didn't expect anime related to idols other than Oshi no Ko. because idol stories usually only show the good side and it's just that if you try and spice it up with a little drama you will definitely be successful in the world of idols
1) Comics were solidly a collector thing by the 2000s.
2) In the 2000s, manga specifically appealed to teenage girls when comics wouldn’t, thus leading to the manga aisle at mall bookstores like Walden.
Casual reminder that Watsuki was convicted of possession of pedophilia and had so much CSEM that when the cops found it they thought he was a distributor. You cannot watch this without supporting putting money in his pockets and we know exactly how it will be used.
Anyway if people want to read a manga about girlhood and coming of age written by a woman for girls, Ai Yazawa’s Neighborhood Story is finally out in English and the translation is pretty good.
Shoujo and mecha have historically been what moves the medium forward and as studios have stopped investing in both, we’ve seen stagnation and a lot of mediocrity.
People call Banana Fish a BL because it’s a BL. It’s also a shoujo manga. The terms are not mutually exclusive (in fact this is a “not all squares” situation like 85% of the time). And considering “BL” to be an insult is weird, ahistorical, homophobic, and probs misogynistic.
i have never seen a mangaka making so many restrictions about their art and people who want to color it like the mangaka of sasaki to miyano is doing .. what the hell is this
Politely—
Describing an entire demographic of media primarily written by women for girls and women as “sucks in writing complex and diverse female characters” tells me you’ve got some bad bad misogyny to work through and also haven’t read much shoujo.
@Dubirap
@chsmpsycho
Also most shoujo sucks in writing complex and diverse female characters or any characters lmao or in exploring themes beyond love triangles 😭😭😭 like my guy sit down we all are in this together
Oh also reminder that in the context of anime tropes “otoko no ko” is somewhat analogous to “femboy”. But like outside of that context it just means “boy”. Like a kid who is a boy. So tread carefully! And understand that Japanese is a pretty context-heavy language.
I think the thing that’s most annoying as a feminine person who has been around fandom for a good 25 years is like… you have fandoms thanks to women and slash fiction. You would not have modern fandom without the girlies and Spirk.
I think we need to remove the term “decenter men” from online discourse until y’all can figure out the difference between media consumption and how you relate to your fellow human beings in actual, real life relationships.
It needs to go on the top shelf again.
To add insult to injury here (and I do believe it’s an insult)—
They know shoujo built the industry in the US. Multiple industry folks confirmed it in multiple panels at NYCC. There’s a very real case that shoujo manga girlies in the early 2000s saved all comics and yet.
also maybe this is a crazy thought but why do the FANS have to be the one marketing shoujo in a non-confrontational way when the onus should be on these companies or your own google search bars to do that
we aren't a free service for yall to just sit back and wait
Oh also also. X gender isn’t exactly the same thing as non-binary (cause I’ve seen that one come up related to this show as well). As a first language English-speaker who is also ~okay at Japanese, I’d put it under the trans —> non-binary umbrella.
The Kyoto International Manga Museum notes in their “What is Manga” exhibit that fan translations/pirated content built the industry overseas.
Also isn’t this title licensed by an actual company with human translators already? (Seven Seas.)
To clarify misinformation that has been spread, I would like to provide some additional information.
Firstly, regarding "AI-assisted translation," we have implemented a system from Mantra Corporation (). This system combines their unique machine
i see sooo many guides on how to search for what u want on ao3 that suggest to sort by kudos because "you'll get the best fics by looking for the most popular" WHAT A SAD WAY TO LIVE!!! some of the best writing i have ever read ever is by authors with 30 kudos and a dream
Things my 5th & 6th grade was reading and loved? OHSHC, Sailor Moon, Spy x Family, Princess Knight (granted I’m the one who supplied that one cause classics), Cardcaptor Sakura, Naruto, Dragonball
You are not penalized for being feminine in a way that appeals to men. But being too into girlie shit that is specifically for girls will make both men and women look down on you, perceive you as stupid, etc.
If you’re going to be accepted for femininity, it has to be fuckable.
I’m about to mute this but honestly I’m going to say that this “Banana Fish isn’t BL” is just an updated version of the “Banana Fish is too good to be shoujo” and A Lot of you need to check your misogyny regarding traditionally feminized media.
People call Banana Fish a BL because it’s a BL. It’s also a shoujo manga. The terms are not mutually exclusive (in fact this is a “not all squares” situation like 85% of the time). And considering “BL” to be an insult is weird, ahistorical, homophobic, and probs misogynistic.
But it’s also kind of its own thing and that is okay. I have a few friends who use X gender over non-binary cause it better fits their conception of gender/opting out of gender as a paradigm. As a fellow non-binary person, I’ve use it in Japanese to get my point across.
CW— it’s all just women being SA’d, sometimes by animals/anthropomorphic creatures
Is Berserk an important manga? Yeah sure. Do I think OP and a lot of other dudes hype it for the wrong reasons? Yeahhhhh.
One thing younger folks don’t get maybe is how relatively new queer acceptance is. The 90s through mid to late-00s was a homophobic and isolating time if you were queer. A lot of this behavior needs to be understood in that context.
Here's the thing, this behaviour HAS happened, especially in the early 00s. Because that's when BL really start gaining a presence in the US via anime and more manga was being brought over.
Were there annoying fans into BL? Yes, did they harass cosplayers and couples? Yes.
Asking women to compromise on their rights and autonomy for the benefit of men isn’t “meeting in the middle”. It’s asking women to accept limited citizenship for… A shorter life span and worse economic outcomes.
So perhaps the gap here will be closed by both sides meeting in the middle. That would be very good! Almost certainly better for solution cohesion than one side doing all the legwork.
Time will tell.
Porn is significantly less prevalent online now than in any other time on the internet. Like as someone who would like a venue to discuss nsfw doujin, it’s hard to find a place where even doujin aren’t kinda sorta (or like, actually) against the TOS.
Point is, there’s a lot of language around gender and gender expression that will be a little bit particular to difference linguistic and social contexts and that’s okay and in fact pretty logical as gender itself is largely socially constructed.
For the first time in 69 years, Shogakukan has abolished the demographic categories shonen, shoujo, children and general from the Shogakukan Manga Awards.
They claim that nowadays manga is much more widespread across genders & ages and that's why they made this decision.
I think this is a joke, however—
美少年 - bishounen
Bi 美 beautiful
Shounen 少年 few years/youth
A bishounen has nothing to do with sexuality and is/was a design trope term that just means “beautiful young man”. It was v popular in the 90s and is somewhat parallel to bishoujo.
For those who don't get it yet, the BI in Bishounen stands for Bisexual. Let me get this in a sentence "as a Bi, i would f#
@k
, no matter what's between those paradise door legs". 👌😎👍
Everyone using “bishie” get it though. Congrats on making it this far and I’m sorry for your back pain, fellow olds. Remember to take your multivitamin this morning.
But I’m also aware I don’t fully get the nuances (and maybe epistemically can’t, cause we are coming from different linguistic contexts) so I usually try to default to non-binary when people do get it/ask.
@seamuspt88
@DigitAlex
Perhaps it’s because men and women have different shapes and require differing supportive garments for athletic activity. Sports bras are fab too, but I wouldn’t suggest them to my guy friends. And tbh y’all do wear yoga pants. You just don’t call them that. (Because marketing.)
Shuichi “Char Aznable” Ikeda spends a good chunk of his interviews about Gundam being like “please ask me about communist youth movements,” you dumb dumbs just aren’t politically literate enough to get it.
The amount of people who haven't watched and/or read Gundam in these comments is astonishing.
Gundam hasn't always been Woke, it's about war, brotherhood/sisterhood, the good and evil of people and political figures. It's about giant damn mechs first of all.
If a native speaker, especially someone who is queer or trans fem has more insight and disagrees, or knows what would be more respectful/appropriate, please please default to them.
You are parroting misogynistic and exclusionary rhetoric. The “rotten” in “rotten girl” was because fans of BL and other media that caters to women “ruined” themselves for relationships with typical c*s het guys. They were “rotten” because they had interests of their own.
This is in the process of escaping contagion—
Please understand that I’m a Japanese language learner and though I’ve been at it for 20 years, do come off like I’m permanently trapped in 90s kansai slang. Like it’s a bit funny.
@ParthVenkat
@MsVanillaRose
@ProfaneFeminist
Again, he can apparently afford to get into a legal battle with a corporation. Somehow, even an expensive copay for a teeth cleaning, seems within his budget.
NCOSE is also behind a lot of “porn bad” rhetoric that has seeped into fandom. It’s fine to not personally be into nsfw content. To want it driven off of social media aligns you with these lovely people and you should take a breath to consider that.
The
@guardian
has published a blockbuster piece exposing antip*rn group
@NCOSE
's relationship in supporting violent, homophobic policies and regimes in Africa.
NCOSE, a rebrand of the tainted, faith-based "Morality in Media" has been up to no good. 🧵
Because this person is young and has the capacity to grow, I’m going to respond in good faith (for the moment).
“Fujoshi” was a derogatory term for female fans of BL and bishounen-oriented animanga. When you use it negatively…
I genuinely think people (including women) are so deep into misogyny that they don’t realize women have complex and deeply fucked up inner worlds that can be reflected or represented in fiction for and by women.
CSA survivor here—
Fictional incest doesn’t harm me nor does it “encourage” irl abuse. If you want to stop abuse, advocate for age-appropriate sex ed classes that emphasize consent.
@SXMBERUS
RIGHT?? I literally told them that the people they are harming by making fictional incest are the people who actually suffered from incest. it's literally an insult to them.
Hey besties—
I said “bishounen” specifically because that’s what crossed over to English-speaking fandom circa like 2002. While “ikemen” was def a term that existed, it wasn’t one that we used like that in the early/mid-anglophone fandom.
I feel like I repeat this once every six weeks—
Queers! Especially queers read as generally feminine/women societally!!
You will never be “one of the good ones” and prioritizing not being “cringe/embarrassing/a fetishizer” only helps the fascists who hate us all.
There was usually one or two boys per year who were more into superheroes but they bought TPBs, not single issues. The girls who were into superheroes were mainly into the MCU/whatever could be found on Disney+.
@lingerie_addict
It’s genuinely fascinating to me that folks try to argue with working class NYers on this. At base, working class NYers have a pretty low carbon footprint due to how retro a lot of our housing is. We could swap out the gas stoves, I guess, but that’s on my landlord, not me.
The “all BL is bad” (which Oseman has repeated and not apologized for afaik; happy to hear otherwise if true) comes from crypto-TERFy 2010s tumblr discourse. It is at its core pro-censorship and deeply misogynistic.
We have to be concerned about YouTubers and the manosphere and the alt right pipeline for boys. But there isn’t a similar concern regarding T/ERF & S/WERF rhetoric infiltrating fandom because it’s the girly stuff. Never mind that it’s… a lot of the same stuff ideologically.
Which tells me there is appeal in superhero stories for girls, but the format and characters highlighted by a lot of modern stuff doesn’t speak to them.
I don’t mind romcom elements to a story but the shoujo I read is very very rarely primarily a romcom.
Moreover, when I think romcoms, I actually tend to think of shounen or seinen titles first. Horimiya, Love Hina, Urusei Yatsura, Maison Ikkoku…
And therein lies the rub, right. Because Oseman actually agrees with OP and wrote H*artstopper as “non-fetish mlm unlike that gross yaoi”. But I repeat, feminine-presenting folks expressing interest in sexuality, erotica, or even just interesting stories for themselves…
So you want to buy Vivienne Westwood pieces on Mercari/eBay?
Here is a non-exhaustive list of jewelry and shopping bag/packaging details to look out for.
🧵
The problem with eliminating demographics is that by default all mainstream media is catered to boys and men ages 15-35. Media seeking an audience beyond that has to try to find its own creative space. Taking those spaces away only benefits those already perceived as the default.
I also think there’s a bit of a class barrier. Manga can be $10-15, less used, whereas a TPB with a comparable page count is more expensive due to the size and paper + color pages being the standard. If a kid is using their allowance, manga might win out economically.
@bananabeltbetty
See but after the tattoo session you at least have a tattoo. After the meeting you just have an increased sense of futility and existential dread.
@NotKatieCase
@Isquiring_Minds
This. A lot of people are unwilling to admit they were peer pressured into parenthood and now regret it. Not entirely their fault, societal expectations are a helluva drug. But not actually my problem either.
It’s since been reclaimed (for like the last 20-ish years) and BL media is super normal. I’ve been on my little annual shoujo/BL/josei-muke bookstore safari and one thing I love about our current moment is that you see school girls, OLs, and grandmothers all browsing together.
@SamAburime
Not even limited to LGBTQ stuff. I’ve slowly come to the conclusion that most people have the media literacy and historical knowledge of an overripe avocado and if they like the aesthetic of something, that’s all they need to recommend it.
That perception (that romance = shoujo) is just lazy misogyny and flows from the view that girl’s and women’s stories have to involve some kind of (usually heteronormative) romance.
And actually my favorite arguable romcom, Gravitation, is a BL.
@nehgrei
This. Like so often we have “genderfluid vs non-binary” or “bi vs pan” discourse in English. It’s kind of wild to think we’d be able to translate something from an entirely different social context and land on a consensus view.
@Kitty_Kat0723
@ladytuono
I had lead poisoning at 16 and had a very similar conversation.
“Could you be pregnant?”
“If I am I expect a book and a cult out of it.”
Idk if it was that or the pink hair but the doctor wasn’t amused.
This is what it is, imo. It’s not just that it’s fandom, it’s that it’s particularly feminized spaces in fandom and they perceive those engaging in it as teenage girls with all the associated societal baggage.
It's also like these people forget there are extremists online, but because it's fandom and about a topic largely considered related to women (shipping) it's a silly joke never to be taken seriously even when people are reporting threats and horrible things people said to them
(This is, incidentally, why I think a lot of manga publishers shouldn’t devote too much of their energy to premium editions. The collector market is great. I also like nice books. But we want the kiddos reading to keep the fandom alive and the kiddos need cheap stuff.)
Really wish contemporary BL fans got this. A lack of shoujo will mean a lack of BL longterm, cause it’s an indicator of the general disregard for women’s media.
The other thing about this is that all BL is rooted in Shoujo, so while titles like these may specifically be marketed as BL they fall under the Shoujo/Josei demographic. Girls love delinquent, serial killer, & organized crime narratives, ok? 😔👌🏽
Using English language sources for Japanese media will usually lead you astray. Banana Fish is a BL just like Tokyo Babylon or X/1999. (Which are both also queer shoujo.)
Just because an 80s title wasn’t in Juné doesn’t mean it wasn’t BL.
3) Again my personal experience is that geikomi (gay manga by gay men) and BL are often sold alongside each other in stores and at doujin events and audiences nowadays don’t really give a shit. Even the magazines can be pretty mixed.
I think what people miss in the discussion of demographics is how difficult it is to actually get your hands on josei-muke monthly anthologies and how the systemic devaluing of media for women and girls is an aspect of an industry that doesn’t value women and girls as consumers.
Manga that is NOT a shoujo but people will leave on shoujo rec tweets without fail:
- Horimiya
- Skip and Loafer
- Apothecary Diaries
- Witch Hat Atelier
- Romantic Killer
Add to this, people who don’t get that a lot of community building in fandom spaces can and should be done for free. The reason people are nostalgic for old conventions and the old internet is that it wasn’t as immediately subject to the same market conditions.
Fandom is entrenched with people using fandom as "activism" but not at all interested in helping anyone. People obsessed with punitive justice for "crimes" that can be easily remedied with education or that do not actually exist. Social conservativism with a leftist veneer.
It’s great.
BL has also gained (or always had but it’s now acknowledged) a significant gay male audience. I’m about to go to Comiket and just looking at the titles and booths, it will be impossible to tell which are “BL” and which are “geikomi”.
4) Oseman is doing an old school racism. Like straight up yellow peril orientalism that dates back to old tropes about demonically sexual East Asian women coming after western men and East Asian men being effete and emasculated. That they don’t get that is wild.
People are dunking but this is the inevitable outcome of thinking any BL that was animated prior to YoI is “cringe” and “problematic” and not considering BL within the context of shoujo generally.
literally 10 minutes into this show and there’s no way it wasn’t inspired by banana fish. the guy who looks like eiji is in the PHOTOGRAPHY department? and the guy who looks like ash has the same voice actor?? you can’t fool me, twilight out of focus. i know what you are
This person also seems to be annoyed that they’re being perceived as a misogynist for being spreading misinformation and bad takes about women’s media despite consuming “BL, Yaoi, and Yuri” and uh. Yeah. You can also fuck women and be a misogynist. That’s often how that one goes.
@jinkei_bunny
Heads up, they’ve also started posting CSAM (explicit abuse of children) in some people’s replies. Stay safe and clear your caches if it happens.
@TinyMochaDeer
I always think of it like killing a mosquito who won’t stop flying too close to my ear. The contributions to the ecosystem were minimal and you were annoying.
“Confrontational” is an interesting way to say “ignorant to the point of being orientalist and baked in r*dfem rhetoric”.
Like I think you need to consider seriously that it is not just the introduction or a few words here and there. It’s the framing of the piece.
Hey AniFam
We've made post-publication edits to this piece. The introduction took an unnecessarily confrontational tone that was unfairly dismissive of both an artist we respect and the genre as the whole, doing a disservice to the interview. We own and deeply regret this error
@shoujoscholar
There’s always the pushback of “but we did (one title from the last 5 years)” and like. Yeah okay. That’s one title from the last 5 years. 🙃
Alarm fatigue is so real because tens of thousands of people in fandom will unironically categorizing a person who likes Hatsune Miku anime hentai as literally no different from convicted child predators who have sexually groomed, trafficked and solicited real living minors.
Collectors had been reading manga in the 80s and 90s, but teen girls were who started the mainstreaming, with boys crossing over due to popular shows like Naruto and Yu-Gi-Oh. And now we’re nearly 25 years into that process.