Girl Yaoi, Boy Yuri: Or, Things Too Convoluted to Explain in a Twitter Thread

[mozaikmage]

 Pi using Dreamwidth has inspired me to start using Dreamwidth. So uh, hello world, and so on. Let's go.

So I have this group chat with 3 friends where we talk about topics such as queer animanga fandom trends, zine discourse, indie comics, and other fun things. One of the things that I made the groupchat to discuss and that we've continued to discuss because it's inherently hilarious is "girl yaoi", the idea that the strongly codified seme/uke dynamics, tropes and visual language of the late 90s/early 2000s yaoi manga subgenre can be applied to a relationship between two female characters. And as every action has an equal and opposite reaction, "girl yaoi" must have a counterpart in "boy yuri."

And I believe I have found examples of both of these things!  Allow me to present my findings to the court.

Kase-san and Yamada by Hiromi Takashima (specifically the sequel manga to the original Kase-san, where the yaoi-like traits become more prominent) is an example of "Girl Yaoi" by depicting a tall, athletically gifted and posessive brunette courting a petite, submissive and passive blonde. This echoes the classical seme/uke dynamic common in old-fashioned yaoi manga. In the story, Kase is constantly jealous of Yamada interacting with new friends or random boys, and while her jealousy does negatively affect both of their lives, it's never presented as a flaw Kase needs to overcome.

But where Kase-san's yaoiesque nature truly shines is in its commitment to "no climax, no plot, no meaning".
The story drifts through Kase and Yamada's college days with little in the way of overarching plot tensions-- events happen, people feel things, but there's no urgency that keeps the reader engaged. It's a manga for people who like to see cute girls doing cute homoerotic things, which is valid. There's better comics for that out there, but I am not here to judge other people's tastes. I am here to argue that in replicating tropes and dynamics common in yaoi in this GL manga, Takashima has created the rare and elusive "girl yaoi".

Now for the "Boy Yuri."

Old-Fashioned Cupcake by Sagan Sagan is "boy yuri" because I read it and thought "Wow, this is exactly like every manga tagged with both 'OL' and 'yuri' I've read on dynasty-scans in the past month but with two dudes." As I am conscious other people do not compulsively check the front page of dynasty-scans on a near-daily basis, I shall elaborate on what I mean by this. Old-Fashioned Cupcake is a fairly obscure, short BL manga about two office workers who start going out to eat fancy sweet treats in cafes popular with young girls in an attempt to make one of them, who's approaching forty, feel young again. (The younger guy is 29). The things that make Cupcake "boy yuri" are its preoccupation with balance and reciprocity in a way that reminds me of working-woman-yuris like Still Sick or Donuts Under a Crescent Moon, the slow build of sexual and romantic tension, and the unexpected recurring thread of Gender that comes up in Nozue and Togawa's conversations with each other. Nozue doesn't just want to be young again, he wants to be a young girl, silly and frivolous, taking selfies and having girl talk.

It's a very unusual angle for a BL to take, which is why it feels more like yuri, and also, like yuri for lesbians. 

This concludes my presentation for the day. Thank you for reading. I will be back with more takes too niche for professional media criticism sites and too long and weird for twitter threads... eventually.

Comments

[clanging_symbols]

revealing the girl yaoi boy yuri agenda to the world...

[memorizingthedigitsofpi]

I am honoured to have helped this post exist, in whatever small way I might have contributed

also, I've never read any manga but this analysis was still fascinating!

[virgomoon]

you-know-who here, this is so delightful!!! to read!!!! somehow even with my tortoise pace of manga reading i've read both of these mangas and your tweet was brain fodder without understanding properly why, and you laying it out clearly is so nice. i love your point about the plot progressing thing, though i feel like yaoi invested in seme/uke dynamics does tend to have uh semblance of a plot? mostly the plot is them coming together via flirty shenanigans. though i guess it IS meaningless lol when you consider old fashioned cupcake's investment in the theme of youth and wanting youth and weaving that into the yaoi of it all. anyway, really glad you expanded this :D