I was first introduced to the concept of yaoi when I was watching an episode of Sailormoon, that epitome of all magical girl anime. In case you don't know, the story of Sailormoon goes like this - a fourteen-year-old schoolgirl, Tsukino Usagi, is suddenly transformed into a "pretty soldier of justice" named Sailormoon who will punish all bad guys in the name of the moon. She is joined by her senshi, in order of appearance - Ami (Sailormercury), Rei (Sailormars), Makoto (Sailorjupiter) and Minako (Sailorvenus).
The yaoi I mentioned first comes in in the relationship between two of the villains during the first season, Kunzite and Zoisite of the Negaverse. There're four Negaverse generals under a certain Queen Beryl. The first is Jadeite, whose appearance was really kinda brief before he gets sent into an eternal sleep or something. Then comes Nephrite, who's quite cool except for his hair. Then Zoisite, spiteful and vicious and looking very much like a girl, and lastly Kunzite. In the US Zoisite is turned into a girl. In my country, Zoisite is given a really high-pitched, annoying, pseudo-feminine voice, and several scenes are censored so if you blink, you might miss the yaoi overtones entirely. The show was taken off the air after the second season. I'm not surprised, what with all the cross-dressing, sexually-ambiguous characters and lesbians running around. Our morals have to be guarded, after all, and who better to do it than a bunch of old farts armed with scissors, power, politics and an overblown sense of righteousness?
However, that is neither here nor there. When Kunzite X Zoisite hit me between the eyes, I was pretty amazed. I was thinking, wow, homosexuality in a cartoon? Of course, that was before I became really familiar with anime and realized that not only is homosexuality a theme in Japanimation, it is very much a major and popular theme, so much so that it even has its own term for it.
The word "yaoi" (yama nashi, ochi nashi, imi nashi) has very much to do with the sexual relations between two guys, rather than a romantic relationship. In fact, I'm given to understand that a yaoi story is basically a PWP. PWP stands for "Plot? What Plot?". In other words, a yaoi story usually has two guys jumping into bed together and that's it. However, if you look at yaoi fanfics on the net, you'll notice that not all follow this definition. There are fanfics with absolutely no sex in them, but are still labeled yaoi instead of shonen ai (literally boy love) which is more accurate. I suppose that's because yaoi is a more well-known term than the latter. In my anime fanfics page, I've previously labeled the slash fic there as yaoi because that would be the term familiar to most people. But I've since changed it to shonen ai, so as not to mislead (and possibly disappoint) some yaoi fans :).
There are yaoi mangas (comics) in which yaoi is already present in the original storyline. Examples are Kizuna, Ai no Kusabi, Basara and Zetsuai/Bronze (rape almost always figures in them somewhere, I don't know why). And then there's slash, where fans take two (or more) characters from an anime/manga and make them fall in love, or in lust, or whatever. This is usually done by enthusiastic fangirls (a generalization) in the form of fanfiction, fanart, dojinshi (fan comics), etc.
Yuri has much the same definition as yaoi, only it's directed at lesbian relationships. Yuri is not a very widespread concept in anime. In fact, I'm rather hard-pressed to find a single yuri couple anywhere. There are many female yaoi fans who practice double standards and will not even entertain the thought of two women together.
Personally, I regard yaoi/shonen ai/yuri/shojo ai stories the same way I regard "straight" stories. What's the difference? If it's well-written, it's well-written. But as far as anime is concerned, I think I do prefer yaoi (I use this term loosely here, to denote m/m relationship regardless whether it's romantic or sexual or whatever) relationships to hetero ones. This is due largely to the terrible portrayal of female characters in anime. They are usually supporting characters whose purpose seems undefined, or they provide the damsel-in-distress role for the gratification of the hero's ego. For example, Kamiya Kaoru of Rurouni Kenshin (Samurai X), who in the end still needs to be rescued by the hero no matter how good she is with a bokken or how much spunk she shows. By the way, "spunky" is probably one of the most irritating and patronizing descriptions you can bestow on anybody (and I'm not even talking about the British definition). Or they're clumsy, useless dolts like Miaka of Fushigi Yuugi, whose braincells turn to mush when their beloved is anywhere near a two-mile radius.
Miaka:
Tamahome...
Tamahome: Miaka...
Miaka: Tamahome...
Tamahome: Miaka...
Miaka: TAMAHOME...
Tamahome: MIAKA...
Miaka: TAMAHOME!!!!!
You get the picture. Or they're there to provide fan service to hordes of horny fanboys everywhere. Most anime females are irritating. It's a sad fact. And they get even more irritating when they're in love. By the way, can anyone tell me why that Tenchi nerd has beautiful women worshipping the ground he walks on? He's got the personality of a chewed cardboard and he's ugly as hell. You don't see an ugly anime female having gorgeous guys drooling over her, do you? (Miaka's irritating, but she's not ugly). In fact, you never really see an ugly or even plain anime female, period, as that will defeat the whole purpose of fan service. Again, double standards. One of the very few anime females I like is Makimachi Misao of Rurouni Kenshin. She's kawaii (cute), she's kakkoii (cool), and she kicks major a$$. She reminds me of Jubilee :). And she and Aoshi are totally perfect together.
My point is (do I actually have one? :)) most m/f romances in anime are irritating (how many times have I used this word already?) with a few notable exceptions. Very few. However. Many yaoi/slashed couples are - ahem - irritating as well. For instance, in Hiei and Kurama slash, Kurama is often portrayed as a fragile, sensitive - wimp who cries at the drop of a hat or at a wrong word from Hiei. Sometimes they're so out of character they're hardly recognizable. By the way, Hiei and Kurama (Yu Yu Hakusho) are probably one of the most popular yaoi couples on the net. Hiei's a grumpy, monosyllabic fire demon while Kurama is kind and gentle when he's a human and a cold and ruthless bastard when he's a fox demon. Because of this duality of personality, Kurama's a great character for fanfics. If Togashi Yoshihiro (creator of Yu Yu Hakusho) were into symbolism, I'd say Kurama probably symbolizes the conflicting states of human nature itself. Heh, but we're not here to talk about Kurama. Back on topic. There is a tendency to designate the members of a yaoi relationship into male and female roles. Or seme and uke, dominant and submissive, top and bottom, whatever. Another characteristic of yaoi that I don't much like. If I want to see a dominant-submissive relationship, I'd have gone look at hetero anime couples.
And just as some "straight" fanfics are hentai (pornographic), so are some yaoi fics. But there is a tendency of some people to think of all yaoi and shonen ai fics as hentai. I've come across some fanfickers who write shonen ai fics - not even a hint of a kiss - yet these people say that they're morally obligated to warn the visitors to their site, etc. Morally obligated? Sounds like reading a love story is positively hazardous to the state of our moral being. If it were up to me, I'd do away with labels altogether, but that probably won't happen anytime in the near future, society being as it is. And then there are those who go around protesting against smutty fics. Personally, I dislike smutty fics and lemons and I think long, endless graphical description of sex in fics is rather pointless and boring, and I fail to see how it could turn anyone on, but that's just my personal opinion. I don't think anyone has the right to go around flaming other people about the lemon content in their fanfics. It's the Internet, after all, and it's just fanfics, after all. If you don't like them, don't read them!
There are good and bad yaoi stories, just as there are good and bad m/f ones.That's basically it. I think it's silly to go around avoiding yaoi stories just because they're yaoi. That, of course, is one's own prerogative, but you'll be missing some very good fics out there. As far as fanfics are concerned, there're only three fanfickers on the net who are my favorites, two of them writes slash and only one writes anime fics, specifically Kurama X Hiei slash. It's funny, but even though I don't much like HXK (orKXH), some of the best yaoi fics out there seem to be about those two (actually, some of those most overdone, rehashed yaoi fics are about those two too). A good one is the above mentioned, and you can find some really sweet, touching, funny KXH dojinshi at the Aestheticism general website. I suppose I can't be all that surprised, since there are loads of them in existence (I think about 99% of all YYH fic sites are yaoi). On the other hand, there are those yaoi fans who reads yaoi exclusively and avoid non-yaoi like the plague. Which is basically the same thing as anti-yaoists (this is a silly term, actually) avoiding yaoi fics.
Okay! Whew! That was a long piece of rambling, even for me. *sheepish
grin* Anyway, that's it. Well, actually, there's more, but I don't want
to bore you to death. Agree, disagree, wanna talk about it, just drop me
an e-mail.
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Copyright 1999 Amis Lee
29/3/99
