This Week in Anime

We Love Boys' Love

Chris
Nicky, I know most of the kids out there have only been back in school for a month, but it turns out that Graduation is right around the corner.

You know, Crunchyroll missed an opportunity by not licensing that old Vitamin C song to help promote this new Sasaki and Miyano movie.

As you've touched on previously, explicitly confirmed queer relationships in anime can be oddly hard to come by. And while we do recently seem to be amid an uptick in shows featuring girls' love, their dudely counterparts can still seem vanishingly rare at times. This can make shows like Sasaki and Miyano, which not only confirm their boys' same-sex romance but go on to find a modicum of mainstream success, feel all the more like minor miracles.

This is true. Regardless of how commonly it's canonized in anime form, BL as an institution has always woven its way into fandom. Those shelves of manga dedicated to the subject you described remain there. And you bet your bottom (and top) dollar that checking out the fanfiction and fanart tags for all the most popular airing shows will be loaded down with people making their favorite boys from those series smooch.

It begs the question: What attracts fans to this ubiquitous corner of material, including hits like Sasaki and Miyano? And, perhaps more pertinently, what other ones do we think are neat?

Though, to be sure, plenty of BL artists, as with so many manga artists in general, got their start in the doujin world and would continue to dip in there. Go excavate CLAMP's take on JoJo's Bizarre Adventure for one hell of a trip into fandom history.

Ah, one that would have had a new anime out these days, were it not for the cruel (Go)hands of fate.

I know sexual expression is a big element of the popular points of BL. Much of that mentioned manga on shelves is of the especially explicit variety that, when I was coming up in the fandom anyway, was the kind that got termed with that particular Yaoi label. That BBC article mentions the "taboo" aspects of Takemiya's work there. While there were a lot of elements to her manga that fit that description, which shocked readers' systems in 1976, the depiction of same-sex relations seems to have been the most prominent—particularly its placement in a manga primarily targeted at girls.

I remember much of the excitement from fans from back in the day when that new anime was announced. Banana Fish was a perennial favorite of classic BL fandom. And it's easy to see why it worked out well enough, being a tightly constructed thriller with a compelling central character relationship. Yeah, there was material that old fans had to give new fans a heads-up about going in, but that also marks it as an example of the kind of gamut content featuring Boys' Love can run. It's something that's become apparent to me as my manga intake has increased with my contributions to ANN's regular Manga Preview Guides, which include several titles of the Boys' Lovin' variety. And for every cozy workplace rom-com, I'll also be surprised by something like actual-factual published Omegaverse fiction.

Even more surprising? I've Become an Omega Today wound up selling me on the steamy possibilities of that setting I'd never dared dip into.

It's so heartening that even the BL of today can still find time to give their trailblazers a shout-out.

Seriously though, it's interesting how persistent those dynamics continue to be. Even in series with virtually no inkling of sexual explicitness like Sasaki and Miyano, its titular leads still lean into the recognizable, codified seme and uke dynamic.

Granted, a lot of that likely has to do with Sasaki and Miyano being a meta-aware series where talking about BL is a huge part of its proceedings.

That's a point so salient it has itself been satirized in other BL books.

Now, I'm not as preeminent a BL scholar as yourself; I wouldn't awaken to my bisexuality until after my teens, so that material in the backdrop of my anime/manga fandom in the older days wasn't a special part of that. But I can appreciate the variety of content available on shelves and streaming services now. This includes sweet, simpler stories like the discussion-inciting Sasaki and Miyano, or the source of that panel I posted there, Go For It, Nakamura!

See, it stuck out to me because I, like Nakamura, am romantically hopeless and think octopi are cool.

Huh, maybe you were onto something about the value of feeling represented.

To be sure, Nakamura did well enough that Syundei put out another volume. Seven Seas has seen fit to release Go For It Again, Nakamura! here in English, too, which I need to get around to.

And heck, Sho Harusono's spin-off manga Hirano and Kagiura, about another two boys from the same high school in a sweet slow-burn romance, is getting its short film adaptation. It'll be streaming alongside Sasaki and Miyano: Graduation. Hirano and Kagiura is another one I've checked out in manga form, and maybe it's just because I prefer sporty types, but I almost think I like it a bit better than I did Sasaki and Miyano.

Beyond those kinds of smaller works, though, as we've mentioned, there is quite a variety of other BL material today. And some of them even get full-on TV anime adaptations! I was grateful to cover this subject because it finally gave me a reason to go and cross the acclaimed Given off the old seasonal backlog. And I'm so happy I did because Given, if you'll pardon the obvious expression, rocks.

I should have known that Given would be my jam, still coming down as I am from the high that was similarly multilayered music drama BanG Dream It's MyGO!!!!! (with which it shares a writer, by the way). There is something special about how seamlessly this series marries its musical journey with multiple guys' love stories. Only a show like this could go from a powerhouse emotional performance by Mafuyu laying bare his past tragedy to Ritsuka turning into a blushing dope as he suddenly realizes he impulsively planted one on his crush.

They kept the kiss squarely on-screen. That's not always a given (pun intended!)

Getting way too into this series in the lead-up to composing this column meant I unhinged my jaw and was all done with Given within a day. Thankfully, like Sasaki and Miyano, Given seemingly did well enough overall that it received a follow-up movie, which I cannot wait to get to after this.

Look, you've talked with me. You know I appreciate some messiness. Also, for the way many of these BL series we've talked about have centered on high school boys, I appreciated how Given allotted space for slightly older characters navigating more adult gay romances. I can relate to Haruki frustratedly trying to figure himself out in his 20s or wishing he could ever be as cool as Akihiko.

It's just an extremely powerfully composed story on its own, though I don't think it would work on the same level were it about more conventional heterosexual couples. Given doesn't go all-in on the societal pressures and problems that come with being gay (and I think it's better for it). But that aspect, as mentioned earlier, of the taboo, the worry to yourself that there might be something wrong with you as you come to terms with your love, is very much a component that mixes in to make its characters' arcs compelling.

That's not something I think all BL stories need, to be sure, but it serves as one more example of why it's valuable to have more works that utilize non-normative viewpoints like this.

It speaks to the power of quality direction that can make a difference. There are places where Given doesn't have the resources of many of its other mainstream seasonal anime brethren. But thanks to the directing job on it you mentioned earlier, by Hikaru Yamaguchi, it manages to do a lot with relatively little at times. Compare that to The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window, which infamously wound up more awkward than erotic.

Something like Otherside Picnic didn't look amazing, but as far as shows about gay ghost hunters go, the girls' side worked out better.

As someone who appreciates trashy content, I can't criticize BL for delivering on its audience's demand for fanservice and erotic elements. Hell, the sexy side stuff was probably the part I enjoyed the most about something like Manner of Death, which otherwise quickly turned into a pretty meandering, messy attempt at a thriller.

You've got the likes of Manner of Death, which I just mentioned. But Japan has been producing plenty of home-grown live-action adaptations of BL manga. The show based on Harada's One Room Angel is one of the more recent announcements. Though the presence of Kamen Rider Build's Eiji Asako (who also popped up in the recent live-action Zom 100) will always make me particularly curious about the live-action drama take on the ridiculously titled Cherry Magic! Thirty Years of Virginity Can Make You a Wizard?!. Because Build fans know this guy can handle some Heated Drama Between Men.

And wouldn't you know it, you can even stream Cherry Magic on Crunchyroll! Looks like I've got more BL homework to do!

As we've gone over, a wealth of material is out there just waiting to be mined. Hopefully, the previous success of something like Given and the Sasaki and Miyano movie proves that BL still has a long love life ahead of it.