Yaoi became extremely popular in Japan’s amateur manga markets and spread to other countries over the course of the 1990s, largely due to fan communities sharing unlicensed copies of the comics and translations via the internet.
Although similar to the earlier published works, yaoi manga appropriated copyright-protected characters and was often more humorous and explicit.
This form of parody became known as “yaoi,” which is often said to be an acronym for “ yama nashi ochi nashi imi nashi,” or “no climax, no ending, no meaning”-that is, manga focused on sexual scenarios, with little to no attention paid to plot or character arc. In the 1980s, Japanese fans began writing a form of amateur male/male homoerotic comics that romantically and sexually paired male characters who appeared in popular anime shows. Terms for this new type of homoerotic manga that were used over the decades included tanbi mono (aesthetic fiction), June mono (fiction of the type published in June magazine), bishōnen manga (beautiful boy comics), shōnen-ai ( shōnen = boys, and ai = love) and kunnaben riibe (derived from the German Knabenliebe, or boy’s love).
Homoerotic male/male manga created primarily by female artists for female consumers originated in the 1970s as a subgenre of shoujo, a manga genre specifically written for a younger female demographic. According to a recent survey conducted by the Yano Research Institute, the yaoi market (including commercial and fan-created products) generated 2.2 billion yen (24.5 million USD) in sales in 2010, and shows no signs of decay in recent years. Yaoi viewers and readers often discuss original yaoi products and distribute fan-created yaoi materials in large online fan groups. Although yaoi is primarily targeted at young, heterosexual women, previous studies have found that bisexual and homosexual male and female enthusiasts also account for a considerable proportion of yaoi viewers/readers. Yaoi and boys’ love (BL) are umbrella terms for commercial and fan-created Japanese media (e.g., anime, comics, short stories, and artwork) that portray the romantic and erotic love between two men. Corresponding with this expansion, yaoi materials have attracted increasingly widespread interest among young women. Japanese media (e.g., anime, manga) have been increasingly popular over the past two decades in the United States and several European countries. These results indicate that the 31-item YCMQ is an appropriate instrument to assess individuals’ motives for consuming yaoi media. The nine-factor YCMQ demonstrated strong psychometric properties in terms of factor structure, internal consistency, and measurement invariance. According to confirmatory factor analyses, the bi-factor model of nine motives yielded closer fit to the data than the theoretically proposed, first-order ten-factor model and a second-order nine-factor model. Using an online survey, 724 yaoi consumers (58% male M age = 30.1 years, SD = 10.4) completed the Yaoi Consumption Motives Questionnaire (YCMQ). The present study aimed to explore and operationalize the motives for yaoi media consumption based on previous qualitative research (Pagliassotti, 2008).
Despite the widespread popularity of this Japanese subgenre, there is a lack of empirical studies on the motives for consuming yaoi media that analyze the full range of motives using reliable research methods. Yaoi is defined as commercial and fan-created media that thematically focus on the romantic love between two men, often in a sexually explicit way. Like the others on this list, the additional items mentioned range from coming-of-age comedies to gore-strewn horror.In recent years, yaoi has been increasingly popular among youth interested in Japanese media such as anime and manga. Updated on July 15th, 2021, by Rich Keller: With decades of programs available, fans of this sub-genre can find a show that fits their style. While the powers, weaknesses, and origin myth/stories of vampires can change over the years according to each creator, what audiences observe in all these list entries is beautiful animation, strong plots, and complex characters. All of which explains the creators' and fans' continuous fascination with the subgenre. RELATED: 10 Hyped Anime Movies That Disappointed Fans Manga, light novels, anime, and OVAs have obviously been part of the great vampire tradition by adding considerable material to the genre (or subgenre of horror and/or fantasy, depending on how one sees it). The lore of vampires has been so insistent and so pervasive, continually rising in popularity over the past couple of decades, that a supernatural creature more adored and more impressive cannot come to mind.