Weird Jap stuff thread: "Shounen Ai"

Shinji

Figure this is the best place for this


Japanese videogame stores are full of games you'll never see on the shelves in the west. There are cookery simulators, dating sims, utterly bizarre RPGs by the dozen, ultra-hardcore mech gearhead games, interactive novels... But there's one type of game which looks REALLY alien to western eyes, but which any game shop worth its salt will have several shelves full of - the "shounen ai" game, generally referred to nowadays by its bastardised English equivalent, "Boy's Love".

These games are effectively dating sims - some with a pornographic element, many without - but in them, you either play a girl trying to matchmake a selection of cute guys, or, more frequently, you play a boy trying to date some of the cute blokes in your school/college/workplace/spaceship/dragon farm/whatever.

Weird, eh? Obviously the art is all anime/manga styled, and some of it is very lovely indeed - I was originally drawn to the shounen ai section of one of the big stores in Akihabara by some particularly nice posters advertising a recent release (and because I was bored of watching one of my travelling companions scour the renai (dating) games racks for a few rare ones he was hunting for ). Interestingly, a lot of the games also seem to be very plot heavy and interesting - I ended up picking up a couple on the grounds that their plot and settings looked fascinating, completely aside from being interested to see more about this odd genre.

A bit more investigation reveals that this is a whole industry and marketplace which simply doesn't exist in the west, because Shounen Ai in Japan is huge - and the main consumers of it are young women. Bookstores carry racks and racks of novels and collected manga volumes of stories about boys falling in love with each other - ranging from innocent love stories to dark, hefty tales about war, religion, the occult... name the setting, and the (again generally female) ranks of writers and arists have put a set of male characters falling for each other in it.

Then there's Comiket - a three day long convention in the utterly gigantic Tokyo Big Sight convention centre (when they call something "big" in a city like Tokyo, it really means something) where tens of thousands of amateur manga creators come to sell their wares (known as "doujinshi" to distinguish them from profesionally produced manga, but still incredibly high quality). Well over a half of the exhibitors are female; over a third are producing shounen ai material of some description, often involving well-known characters from videogames, TV anime series, or even J-Rock bands! Over a million people attend Comiket twice a year, and again over half are female - and quite a lot of those are scary "yaoi" (effectively the gay equivalent of hentai) fangirls.

This is even mainstream enough to have made it onto television. The creators of TV anime have latched on to the gigantic female audience demanding cute boys, and if they're cute boys of vaguely ambiguous (or just downright homosexual) persuasion, all the better. The UK gasped when Queer as Folk aired, with real gay people portrayed on screen; Japanese TV has openly gay characters in kids programs.

The reason I'm posting this here is partially because it's something which fascinates me personally, and mostly because I'd like to hear what others thing - especially the ladies, I guess, because while the social acceptance of homosexuality is nice, it's not all that surprising; the sheer level of female interest in male homosexuality, though, is extraordinary to most western eyes. Should it be? Is there a market for this kind of thing in the west? Do women over here want to read books or watch TV series about cute boys in love with each other?

swiss

Where can I pick up these games ?

The phenomenon of women having a fascination with homosexual males is not limited to Japan, albeit I know only a few women who will openly admit to this. Google threw up this link about a woman who admits to prefering the company of gay men.

http://content.gay.com/channels/arts/cho_margaret_book.html

As for the fact that these sort of games being available in Japan, I would suppose that it is due to a more sexually permissive culture with a wider acknowlegement and acceptance of homosexuality. Still, it's interesting that there is a childrens series dedicated to this, minus the pornographic content, I would imagine.

I can just imagine playing this at the next LAN while all the guys
are at Counter Strike or Quake . Do you know where I can pick up a copy?

Shinji

Mmm, well, it'd help if you spoke and read Japanese They're pretty plot and dialogue heavy in general... I'm playing through a particularly odd one which seems to be about angels banished from heaven to live on earth, and my god it's tough going. There's nothing quite like playing a videogame with three dictionaries open in front of you

I don't know where you'd get copies online unfortunately, but I'm sure an email to one of the .jp merchandise import companies would yield results.

By the way, I should clarify.... There isn't, to the best of my knowledge, a kids TV series actually "dedicated" to shounen ai stuff... It's just that it's something even kids TV series aren't afraid to touch upon. Perfect example... You know Pokemon, right? You know James from Team Rocket? Well... He's a LOT more, er, ambiguous in the uncut Japanese version of the series...

That said there are some animated series all about gay characters - Gravitation is a perfect example, basically a (very good) gay romantic comedy. However, the market for animation in Japan skews lots older than over here, so those are mainly aimed at people in their late teens and early twenties.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

and that character in saber marionette J... the blonde fella.. rich chap in love with otaru