A bit of Yaoi history

Yaoi isn’t just a word you hear whispered in the dark corners of anime conventions anymore. Anime boys kissing is big business, and has exploded in mainstream popularity over the past decade. Unlike most hentai, too, you can find even some of the more hardcore yaoi at major booksellers. This gives the cottage industry of anime twinks and the doms that love them a major edge over other erotic manga when it comes to reach and penetration.

Speaking of penetration, yaoi’s got a pretty storied history from its humble origins to its international acclaim today. Even during a more homophobic era brought about largely by Western colonization, it began to bubble out of the shonen manga scene – you know, the one that makes you think of spiky hair and shouting attack names. Back in the ‘50s, that genre was a much different space, and was full of dashing, dapper young lads instead of martial artists or ninjas. Takabatake Kashō was an artist around that time, and among contemporary audiences, he became known for drawing the sorts of effeminate, beautiful men that would come to define yaoi.

*The Heart of Thomas, Moto Hagio.

But shonen actually isn’t where yaoi as we know it came from, believe it or not! Most of what we think of as the quintessential yaoi tropes take root in shonen-ai (literally, “boy’s love”), which itself really took off in shojo magazines of the day. Prolific girls’ manga greats like Moto Hagio cut their teeth weaving beautiful, tragic tales of pretty boys and the even prettier boys who loved them. Throughout the ‘70s and into the ‘80s, these stories did serious numbers for a young female demographic, and led to the proliferation of even more gay content across newsstands across Japan.

It would be the stuff going out way, way outside of mainstream media, however, that would take yaoi into the 21st century. Huge fan events like Comic Market (aka Comiket) gave rise to doujinshi – fan-made comics that provided horny fans with a new platform to express their spiciest fantasies. Creative artists hammered out sexy fan-made comics of both popular characters and real-life figures, like David Bowie. This era not only produced some of the best artists of the ‘80s, ‘90s, and now, but it also let yaoi boom like never before. Now anyone could make yaoi, with the only limitation being access to art supplies and a printing press.

The decades that followed Comiket saw an explosion in both yaoi getting made and yaoi getting consumed. This explosion gave rise to more magazines focused explicitly on gay content – both softcore and hardcore varieties. These serialized works, often made by people who came up during that initial explosion, then went where most serialized manga goes: to tankobon volumes! In the ‘90s and into the aughts, yaoi manga was serialized, collected, then finally localized to global audiences. And once the rest of the world had a taste of it, there was no going back.

Today, yaoi’s more popular than ever. Major fan conventions. References on American TV shows. Mainstream anime informed by yaoi tropes. Every single corner of anime fandom is touched by yaoi in some way, shape, or form, and that’s a good thing by us. While yaoi is very different from the realities faced by gay men and is no substitution for manga by them, it’s nevertheless a fun fantasy to engage with. There’s something special about watching two (or more!) sexy boys that are more sensitive and well-groomed than most real men will ever be go at it and look good while doing it!

At Nutaku, we’re proud to have more than a little yaoi love in our store. You can find the free-to-play mobile experiences you expect from us with titles like Gay Harem and Devil’s Club, which offer hours of sexy gay fun for free! But if you want something with a little more meat on its bones, we’d recommend taking a peek at our premium visual novels. No Thank You! offers dramatic intrigue laced with some of the best yaoi artwork straight from Japan, while Full Service is a beautiful homage to the latest and greatest yaoi with a charming plot that’ll keep you grinning from ear to ear. If you want to take a peek at everything we have to offer, mosey on over to our store and dive into all of our Gay options! We almost guarantee you’ll find something you like.