Boys Love (or simply BL) has emerged as a mainstream genre in manga, anime, and games for girls and young women. This genre was first developed in Japan in the early 1970s by a group of female artists. By the late 1970s, many amateur women fans were getting involved and creating and self-publishing homoerotic parodies of established male manga characters and popular media figures. The popularity of these encouraged a surge in the number of commercial titles. Today, a wide range of products, produced both by professionals and amateurs, is rapidly gaining a global audience. This book provides an ... More

Boys Love (or simply BL) has emerged as a mainstream genre in manga, anime, and games for girls and young women. This genre was first developed in Japan in the early 1970s by a group of female artists. By the late 1970s, many amateur women fans were getting involved and creating and self-publishing homoerotic parodies of established male manga characters and popular media figures. The popularity of these encouraged a surge in the number of commercial titles. Today, a wide range of products, produced both by professionals and amateurs, is rapidly gaining a global audience. This book provides an overview of the BL phenomenon in Japan, its history and various subgenres and introduces translations of some key Japanese scholarship not otherwise available. The book looks at a range of literary, artistic, and other cultural products that celebrate the beauty of adolescent boys and young men. In Japan, depiction of the “beautiful boy” has long been a romantic and sexualized trope for both sexes and commands a high degree of cultural visibility today across a range of genres from pop music to animation. Drawing from diverse disciplinary homes, the chapters unite in their attention to historical context, analytical precision, and close readings of diverse boys love texts.