It was Eve who was tempted with the apple. Are all women curious? I myself definitely am. I have to try out every new yoghurt flavour that appears in the supermarkets. So maybe it is not that surprising that I just had to find out about yaoi and shounen ai mangas myself.
For all the people out there who don't know yet: I have said it before, there are all kinds of mangas out there. But surprisingly popular are mangas about male gay couples. Shonen Ai literally means boys love and that's exactly what the mangas are about. Usually a young teen couple discovering their first gay love. Yaoi are a bit more mature in their themes and in their target group and may also have some explicit content. The most curious thing about Shonen Ai and Yaoi are that they are primarily made by women for women. Yes, you have not misread this. It's a woman mangaka making up a story about two boys or men falling in love and it's a wide female audience these stories are meant for. I could not quite see the fascination, but as I said before, I am of a curious nature and I also don't like to condemn something without knowing more about it, so I went and tried it out. And I could not have been more surprised as I was when I realized that I found it appealing.
I can't help asking myself why that is so. I like love stories. So there is already one point. Because in the end, shonen ai and yaoi are still mostly about love. Then of course it should be mentioned that where in a conventional love story you have the girl and one (or possibly more) very good looking, or sweet, or cool or for-whatever-else-reason appealing hero. Well, do the maths - in the shounen ai and yaoi stories the number of yummy hunks is easily doubled. Also the story lines provide new ankles for every one who is fed up with the always same old warmed up dish: there is the fear to become gay, the embarrassment and problems of "coming out" and the scourn of society to just name a few. I found the art so far generally also better in average - or rather, I have not seen any shounen ai or yaoi mangas that had their popularity obviously based only on story lines and characters - so far the art has always been at least up to par. And to come to the point of sexual content, as with all mangas it really all depends on the mangaka and the story - even if it is yaoi it may be so mild that there is practically nothing, on the other side the next yaoi may ruin your appetite. I also sometimes really helps that there isn't a female heroine here - because let's be honest, there aren't many female manga characters that really do it for me. Most of them are weak, doormattish, boring and sickeningly good - there are few exceptions to that rule (like in Kimi wa petto - see my blog mistress and pet from last month). So overall having no female lead character really isn't a big loss.
I would not go so far as to say that shounen ai and yaoi mangas are my new obsession or that I would even generally love them, but they have proved an enjoyable side dish to my normal manga menu and I'll definitely keep trying out some more.
