Margaret OConnell’s coverage of the “Brokeback Manga” panel at NYCC in this month’s Sequential Tart goes way beyond your typical con report. This long but well-written article covers a lot of bases, including who reads yaoi, why women like it, and possible controversies involving the subject matter.
Although a BeBeautiful representative claims that only adults are depicted having sex, and the books carry disclaimers to that effect, OConnell casts a suspicious eye on that claim, pointing out that college students in Japan don’t usually wear uniforms, but characters in yaoi often do. And I liked this:
As for BLU Manga, Lillian Diaz-Pryzbyl said, “We don’t edit for content, although we may live to regret it. We try not to license things that may get us in trouble.”
Apparently the folks at Tokyopop learned from CMX’s problems with Tenjho Tenge.
Diaz-Pryzbyl gets extra points for mentioning the similarities between yaoi and slash fiction, and translator Emi Chiusano connects the dots, saying that in Japan, the term “yaoi” refers to slash doujinshi, fan-drawn comics that put two male characters from existing series into a romantic relationship. Because those comics are often amateur productions and more focused on sex than character development, she said,
respected manga-ka like Youka Nitta found it rather disconcerting to hear their work referred to by Western fans as yaoi, which to them carried connotations of something amounting to pure porn with little or no redeeming social value.
Regarding the level of explicitness, this was an interesting insight:
When one panelist suggested that perhaps younger teen readers preferred the milder, less sexually graphic material, yaoi manga-ka Youka Nitta replied that her experience suggested the exact opposite. Judging by the feedback she received from readers of her own work, younger fans wanted harder, more explicit material. As for the more chronologically adult readers, the older they got the more romance they wanted…
Nitta also spoke of the importance of having strong female characters in yaoi manga, saying, “There’s no country with just men.”
OConnell also covers the BeBeautiful panel that followed, although it reads a little differently since the recent news that parent company CPM is having financial difficulties and that Peter Tatara (who showed up for the panel wearing cat ears) is among the many employees who were laid off last week.
