#Shōnen-ai

[kaalavg]

Kimera (1996)

Film // Película

[fionabrennanartisttours]

“The Citi exhibition: Manga”exhibition at the British Museum book - 

Shōnen-ai , or "boy's love" manga is an extremely popular genre and is discussed throughout this book. On p.182 there is an essay documenting the history of this genre which also explains "nanshoku"; the acceptable form of male homosexual relationships in Japanese history. This socially-acceptable homoeroticism is portrayed throughout Japanese art, and in particular in the woodblock prints of the Edo period.

[year24groupedits]

Eric Fruheling from the manga "Thomas no Shinzou" or "The Heart of Thomas" (1974) by Moto Hagio

[year24groupedits]

Manga: "Thomas no Shinzou" or "The Heart of Thomas" (1974) by Moto Hagio

if not subtextually a lesbian why named yuri?

[selleryattack]

Hi! I just found your After Christmas comic and I LOVE it! I would love to read your earlier stuff, do you have a link please? Thanks! 😍

Hi! Sure. Here is a list with all of my comics. There are some only available in German.

Good Omens Comics:

Night walk

The betting profit (sequel to the bet)

The bet

After Christmas special (sequel to christmas story)

Christmas story

Some Cocoa

Solving Problems

My own Storys (german)

Cactus & Sunflower

Komplementär

Vom Feuer geküsst

[ask-gardenview-sillies]

what is yaoi

"isnt that like... Gay manga?"

"Boys' love (Japanese: ボーイズ ラブ, Hepburn: bōizu rabu), also known by its abbreviation BL (ビーエル, bīeru), is a genre of fictional media originating in Japan that depicts homoerotic relationships between male characters.[a] It is typically created by women for a female audience, distinguishing it from the equivalent genre of homoerotic media created by and for gay men, though BL does also attract a male audience and can be produced by male creators. BL spans a wide range of media, including manga, anime, drama CDs, novels, video games, television series, films, and fan works.

Though depictions of homosexuality in Japanese media have a history dating to ancient times, contemporary BL traces its origins to male-male romance manga that emerged in the 1970s, and which formed a new subgenre of shōjo manga (comics for girls). Several terms were used for this genre, including shōnen-ai (少年愛, lit. "boy love"), tanbi (耽美, lit. "aesthete" or "aesthetic"), and June (ジュネ, [dʑɯne]). The term yaoi (/ˈjaʊi/ ⓘ YOW-ee; Japanese: やおい [jaꜜo.i]) emerged as a name for the genre in the late 1970s and early 1980s in the context of dōjinshi (self-published works) culture as a portmanteau of yama nashi, ochi nashi, imi nashi ("no climax, no point, no meaning"), where it was used in a self-deprecating manner to refer to amateur fan works that focused on sex to the exclusion of plot and character development, and that often parodied mainstream manga and anime by depicting male characters from popular series in sexual scenarios. "Boys' love" was later adopted by Japanese publications in the 1990s as an umbrella term for male-male romance media marketed to women.

Concepts and themes associated with BL include androgynous men known as bishōnen; diminished female characters; narratives that emphasize homosociality and de-emphasize socio-cultural homophobia; and depictions of rape. A defining characteristic of BL is the practice of pairing characters in relationships according to the roles of seme, the sexual top or active pursuer, and uke, the sexual bottom or passive pursued. BL has a robust global presence, having spread since the 1990s through international licensing and distribution, as well as through unlicensed circulation of works by BL fans online. BL works, culture, and fandom have been studied and discussed by scholars and journalists worldwide."

"uh... gays? boys kissing? i dont know."

[canmom]

dànachd canmom aig worldcon - pàirt 1: diardaoin

I'm at the World Science Fiction Convention! Better known as Worldcon.

Unlike previous adventures, this one didn't take me to any picturesque French towns. In fact it's like 15 minutes bike ride from my house! I managed to move to Glasgow right before Worldcon dropped in my lap.

Due to Events, the last few weeks before the con ha been some of the most hectic of my goddamn life, but I've been able to secure some time off. Things actually started on Wednesday night, when my friend and I wandered into the hotel at the convention centre on our way home and ended up fast friends with a group of people including a few big authors and editors in the scene, which was kind of wild. That's the con experience though! But things kicked off for real today on Thursday.

Due to a combo of minor medical emergency and then staying up late to finish off work after I finally got home, I got very little sleep that night, and sadly did not arrive at the con in time to catch Dune: The Musical. So most of the day ended up panels, though with an opera and a ceilidh at the end to spice things up, not to mention meeting like 90% of my old friends from uni, which is kinda sick. (Hello to the ones who follow me on here :p)

Here are some artstation-ass cars they had in the uh... the hall where all the little societies have stands.

Nearly every timeslot had multiple things I might want to attend, so I kind of played it by ear... and ended up weebing it up a little bit, attending two panels on anime and a presentation by the Japanese Scifi Writers Association.

The anime panels (on the subjects of food and music in anime respectively) were sadly quite disappointing. The panellists seem to have been chosen kind of arbitrarily - my friend dakkar knows his shit but there were a lot of banal 'what's your favourite x' type questions and a couple of panelists who either just wanted to bang on about basic shōnen shit as if it's all anime is, or were constantly mispronouncing Japanese words in a kinda painful way ("ai-sekai" being the worst). I was really hoping the food in anime panel might go into, for example, the historical context for why anime has such lavish depictions of food, or the technicalities of how food is portrayed. The discussion ended up going on to subjects like cooking recipes from anime and manga but honestly didn't really have a lot to say about it!

The way the panels seem to have been organised is, so far as I can infer... someone would pitch a description, and then the organisers would assign some people to be on that panel from a big pool? Which... idk, doesn't seem like it necessarily leads to selecting people with a lot to say on that subject!

I think I would have been wiser, in retrospect, to have gone to talks about sff lit, since in the end it's just not an anime con - something I'll bear in mind tomorrow. On that front, I did go to the presentation on Japanese scifi, which included the presentation of the Seiun ('nebula') awards to a couple of people whose works in translation were popular in Japan. In a bizarre quirk of programming, this one was run right next door to a panel on Chinese scifi, which is a real move lol.

Sadly this panel was marred by some pretty severe tech issues. Two of the panelists couldn't come to the UK due to visa bullshit, but the video call wasn't working, so Takayuki Tatsumi had to deliver a talk without being able to see his slides, and the slides were slightly in a different order than his talk. Still, I collected a nice list of JP SF authors whose works are available in translation, so looking forward to getting into that. Worse, there were other tech issues, like audio bleeding from another panel; a couple of the panelists struggled with English and the moderator ended up interpreting, which really isn't his job. Compared to the anime talks at Annecy, which had some very talented and fast interpreters, it was a bit of a disaster.

Due to all these issues, I didn't really get to figure out much of what Mari Kotani had to say about the links between shōjo manga and science fiction, a topic which sounds really interesting. Perhaps I can find her books.

The Seiun awards were given to John Scalzi, who showed up and got his prize for The Kaiju Preservation Society and was very polite about it...

...and Alastair Reynolds, who didn't show up to receive his giant fan.

I haven't read any of Scalzi's books, tbh they probably aren't my thing, but he seems like a really sweet guy from my encounters with him and his daughter yesterday and today. And I respect that he insisted on sharing credit with his JP translator.

The other panel I went to was a talk on magnets. This one was properly prepared - I learned a little about the geopolitics of rare earth production, and some of the cool new uses of magnets, though sadly at a fairly surface level. The presenter - who turned out to be a former aerospace industry guy who worked on the fucking Eurofighter Typhoon, now at some society that uhh promotes magnetism or something - mentioned that this is a talk he often gives at schools, and it did kinda feel like being back at uni. There wasn't a lot of good picks for this slot, but maybe the rocketry anecdotes panel would have been better. It was fun to play with the neodynium magnets and similar demos after the talk at least! I probably should have realised that having a physics degree meant I wouldn't learn very much from this talk.

I do hear there were some real good panels in other rooms, so I kind of have only myself to blame here. Tomorrow I'll try and learn from it!

Much better than all the panels was the debut performance of the new opera Morrow's Island, about a scientist conducting Cold War experiments to create psychic links with animals. I knew I was in for something great when one of the first lines was a scientist declaring 'There is no contradiction between dialectical materialism and extra-sensory perception' and it did indeed deliver.

I don't listen to a lot of opera, so I don't have a lot of context to analyse it musically, but it sounded great, full of cool polyphony and interesting melodic lines and the texture of repeating phrases, supported by the flowing motions of a group of contemporary dancers. The ending left me a little cold, but honestly it hit so many of the right notes for shit I'm a real nerd about - Soviet stuff, occult stuff, etc. - that I couldn't not love it. My favourite sequence saw the psychics make contact with the overwhelming complexity of ecosystems, summed up by the repeating phrase "there's so much life, there's so much death". The repeating phrases and gradual transitions called to mind Philip Glass to my admittedly very uncultured ear. Absolutely cool shit, definitely my favourite thing I saw today. I think they're putting a recording online.

The ceilidh, run by Science Ceilidh, was pretty intensely crowded at first so I ducked out. Later in the evening it got a bit more manageable so I returned to dance a bit more, and got to witness an astonishingly nerdy and complicated dance based on the life cycle of Dune sandworms. Surprisingly it went pretty smoothly - credit to the caller for making that work somehow.

I also wandered around the stalls a bit. I got some cool booklets about spaceflight, met a guy from the SCA, saw a 3D scanner scanning a vase, and didn't buy any books because I need to come back with a bag lol.

The best part about Worldcon is just meeting people from all over really. The con ribbons tradition is a great trick for encouraging nerds to talk to each other (though i need to get more...), and people have been very approachable for a crowd whose autism quotient must be near saturation lol. I met people from Finland, Australia, South Korea... mostly anglophone or european countries but still it's good shit. I'm starting to recognise more and more people in the crowd as the con goes on.

It really is so goddamn nerdy, like you look at this crowd and you're like damn, but in the best way, honestly. I am definitely no exception. Hopefully I make some better calls on panels tomorrow loll.

If you're in town, give me a shout, would love to meet more internetfriends!

[cruyffista]

Claudio Caniggia was awarded June Magazine's (a Japanese magazine focused on shōnen-ai) Most Beautiful Player title in 1994 (x).

[mariposahxh]

Togashi's "interview" with Jump Ryu magazine & DVD 2016

i found this information and translation from the hxh fandom site - https://hunterxhunter.fandom.com/wiki/User_blog:MrGenial11/Jump_Ryu_Vol.21:_Yoshihiro_Togashi

it’s long so i’m rephrasing and only sharing the Hunter x Hunter stuff & some Togashi facts i found interesting (and y’all too probably) so :

When Togashi was in junior high school, he was fully attracted to Shōjo manga (girls manga) such as Mineo Maya's manga. (Mineo Maya is known for creating LGBT ((shōnen-ai/gay)) manga)

Togashi read manga like "Urusei Yatsura" and learned how to attract female audience.

Although Togashi’s favorite manga genre is Shōnen, he thinks he's suitable for Shōjo manga.

Togashi's first manga serialization was a romantic comedy, Ten de Shōwaru Cupid. Afterwards, he began Yu Yu Hakusho. After YYH, Togashi wanted to create manga that WOULDN'T be popular to show various aspects of his personality as mangaka to his audience. He then created Level E.

After Level E, Togashi began Hunter x Hunter. He changes his style in each arc so his audience can be surprised. Togashi loves surprising his audience.

Togashi thinks characters are sometimes more important than the story itself.

The Chimera Ant arc ended differently than Togashi first expected.

He creates simulations of the characters and how they will talk with each other and take an action in situations. This allows his audience to feel as if his characters really exist.

Togashi drew his characters acting unexpectedly in desperate situations when they encountered someone accidentally. For example, the encounter between Morel and Shaiapouf, or Killua and Meleoron.

Togashi has been attracted to the dirty side of manga rather than beautiful side ever since he was a junior high school student. (whatever that means..)

Togashi drew Yu Yu Hakusho's art style impressively and Level E realistically. In Hunter x Hunter, he avoids using screentones as much as possible.

Togashi considers the manuscripts of Hisoka and Kastro's fight as "bad quality" . He said that the internet fandom was angry and embarrassed with the chapter at that time. (so he DOES look at fanforums. that's no good)

"Togashi-sensei is very gentle. He remembers what editors said in the past" (a quote from one of his editors)

"Togashi resembles Gon/Ging Freecss in terms of personality" (another quote from his editor) (the hunterpedia page said “Gin” so idk if the translator misspelled “Gon” or forgot the last “g” in “Ging” 😺 i see both tbh)

Togashi scolded an editor only once when they slightly changed a few words in the manga without permission.

Togashi is very confident in his words being interesting. He chooses his words and sticks with them, not letting anyone change them. He is very selective and peculiar about the words he uses. (hm this makes me think of the lines “ja nakya dame nan da”/“shika inai” , “dajina”/“kichō” , “shinjū” , ect.)(dw i’m making a post explaining those lines later)

Togashi's message to mangaka beginners: "Keep in mind the audience. Make every effort to go beyond their expectations.”

[lurkingteapot]

I've been going through my collection of old (pre-2016 for the most part) academic papers on BL and thought, hey, why not re-read some of them and sum them up so folks can see whether they want to check them out in full?

Today's offering:

Beautiful, Borrowed, and Bent: “Boys’ Love” as Girls’ Love in Shōjo Manga by James Welker, originally presented at the Third International Convention of Asia Scholars, August 19–22, 2003, Singapore, and published in Signs, Vol. 31, No. 3, New Feminist Theories of Visual Culture (Spring 2006), pp. 841-870, UChicago Press. [Jstor]

Welker starts off with a brief explanation of what the BL genre is, what terminology he uses ("BL" as an umbrella term that includes the earlier names of tanbi, shōnen ai, yaoi, and the long-form 'boys' love'):

“Boys’ love” manga emerged as a subgenre of shōjo manga (girls’ comics) around 1970 just as women artists were taking over the shōjo market.(*) It quickly became among the most popular shōjo manga genres, and its creators became some of the best-loved artists in the industry. (* First published in the monthly Bessatsu shōjo komikku in December 1970, Keiko Takemiya’s “In the Sunroom” (Sanrūmu nite [1970] 1976) was probably the first boys’ love narrative. See Aoyama 1988, 188.) - Welker 2006:841

He goes on to challenge the common perception of BL as a genre "by straight women for straight women":

[T]he genre is widely considered to offer a liberatory sphere within which presumably heteronormative readers can experiment with romance and sexuality through identification with the beautiful boy characters. […] Members of the Japanese lesbian community have, however, pointed to boys’ love and other gender-bending manga as strong influences on them in their formative years […] Clearly boys’ love manga can be viewed through a different lens from that which most critics and scholars have been using, and hence the full potential of boys’ love is largely overlooked: that of liberating readers not just from patriarchy but from gender dualism and heteronormativity. - Welker 2006:842-843

He introduces the texts he will analyse (Takemiya Keiko's Song of Wind and Trees 風と木の詩 kaze to ki no uta, 1976-1984 and Hagio Motō's Heart of Thomas トーマの心臓 tōma no shinzō, 1974), and concludes the essay's intro section as follows:

This reading will employ lesbian critical theory, visual theory, and reader responses to these and similar texts to show how 1970s boys’ love manga is not merely queer on its surface but how it opened up space for some readers to experiment with marginalized gender and sexual practices and played a role in identity formation. - Welker 2006:843

Welker goes into the questions of applicability of theories that weren't originally developed for this specific context – visual theories were largely developed through film analysis; European and North American models of gender and feminist theory, while also having informed academic discourse in Japan, in their origin operate on culturally specific assumptions and need to be applied with care.

He talks about the tradition of androgynous and cross-dressing heroines of early shōjo manga and their connection to the earliest BL manga, the dilemma of the "beautiful boy" characters' gender and sex and how to read these – are they boys? idealised self-images of girls drawn onto boys' bodies? neither male nor female? sexless altogether?, and the way Japanese readers in the 1970s, already culturally familiar with gender performance through kabuki or the all-female Takarazuka Revue and similar troupes, received the gender-bending nature of BL stories. He also comments on the role fan interaction via magazines, and the way readers were learning about queer life in Japan:

By the early to mid-1980s, the magazines’ readers were learning in real terms about the world of Shinjuku ni-chōme, Tokyo’s well-known gay district, described as a world full of “beautiful boys like those in the world of shōjo manga” (Aran 1983, 15), as well as various aspects of lesbian life in Japan (Gekkō 1985). In spite of the connections drawn on the pages of these magazines, the possibility that these narratives might be seen to actually depict homosexuality remains broadly denied. To allow that the narratives might truly be about homosexuality—between these girls-cum-beautiful boys—would be an apparently unthinkable invitation to read the narratives as lesbian. - Welker 2006:857

Welker briefly explores how the example texts of Song of Wind and Trees and Heart of Thomas "serve many of the functions lesbian critics and theorists have outlined as roles of lesbian texts" (Welker 2006:858), then goes on to analyse the flower imagery of roses and lilies that is very prevalent in both titles, the intertextuality of these stories with European and French literature (and how the readers were expected to catch on to this intertextuality). On the transgressive and queering nature of writing and reading BL, he says:

[T]hrough acculturation to gender performance in Takarazuka and kabuki and by such cross-dressing manga icons as Sapphire and Oscar, as well as the deliberate ambiguity of the beautiful boy, the reader is encouraged to see not just a girl but herself within the world of boys’ love and, ultimately, is encouraged to explore homoerotic desire, either as a beautiful boy or as herself, either alone or with others, either as her fantasy or as her reality. […] Regardless of whether boys’ love manga were created merely to offer heterosexual readers a temporary respite from patriarchal restrictions on their desire, some readers found in identifying with the beautiful boy a way through the looking glass to a world outside the patriarchy. And regardless of whether he is read as a boy or a girl, the beautiful boy can be read as a lesbian. […] For readers whose experience of sexuality and gender contravenes heteronormativity, works like Song and Thomas offer narrative safe havens where they can experiment with identity, find affirmation, and develop the strength necessary to find others like themselves and a sense of belonging. - Welker 2006:865-866

I've been out of academia so long that I've lost any sense of what a good proportion of direct quotes to original text is, or whether it's even appropriate to quote as much as I did here. This is emphatically NOT an academic article in and of itself -- I'm posting on bloody tumblr. If anyone wants to add to this, I'll be thrilled.

One of the most commonly voiced criticisms of BL is that it's about, but not (or did not in significant part used to be) by or for gay men. This article does not address this point further—Welker does go into this in his more recent articles, iirc; if you've got beef with this aspect, @ him not me. I do however think it's worth noting that this 17-year-old article already recognises that the genre is queer, and has been since its inception.

[daenystheedreamer]

i thoght the yaoi thing was joke? :(

its /hj. tbc i haaaate most yaoi the majority of it is tasteless voyeuristic erotica which isnt like an evil thing to make but still extremely bad. i think its funny and i mostly read it cos its hilarious. more thoughts under the cut

it's misrepresented and #misunderstood especially by western gay people. its not representation, it's not 'led by queer people', and the difference between 'yaoi' and 'boy's love' is marginal. it's predominantly heterosexual women who enjoy writing drawing reading two (or more..) guys fuck which is fine. yaoi vs bl is often used as both a categorical distinction (yaoi is erotica, bl isn't) and a moral one (yaoi is cringe/homophobic/bad and bl is pure/wholesome/untainted) which is like fundamentally so wrong if you know anything about the genre.

the history is really interesting. It's roots are firmly in shojou manga, as in, explicitly for young women. early works are often taboo-breaking and deal with sexual abuse, incest, etc. an early muse for the genre was bjorn andressen as tadzio in the film 'death in venice' and if you know anything about that film and andressen says A Lot. shonen ai (literally boy love) was originally a term which was pederastic in nature but became the name for the genre. to crib from the wikipedia article cos it summarises it well:

While the term shōnen-ai historically connoted ephebophilia or pederasty, beginning in the 1970s it was used to describe a new genre of shōjo manga (girls' manga) featuring romance between bishōnen (lit. "beautiful boys"), a term for androgynous or effeminate male characters. Early shōnen-ai works were inspired by European literature, the writings of Taruho Inagaki, and the Bildungsroman genre Shōnen-ai often features references to literature, history, science, and philosophy; Suzuki describes the genre as being "pedantic" and "difficult to understand", with "philosophical and abstract musings" that challenged young readers who were often only able to understand the references and deeper themes as they grew older.

Yaoi, on the other hand:

Coined in the late 1970s by manga artists Yasuko Sakata and Akiko Hatsu, yaoi is a portmanteau of yama nashi, ochi nashi, imi nashi (山[場]なし、落ちなし、意味なし), which translates to "no climax, no point, no meaning".[f] Initially used by artists as a self-deprecating and ironic euphemism, the portmanteau refers to how early yaoi works typically focused on sex to the exclusion of plot and character development; it is also a subversive reference to the classical Japanese narrative structure of introduction, development, twist, and conclusion

by the way, that [f] note is: "The acronym yamete, oshiri ga itai (やめて お尻が 痛い, "stop, my ass hurts!") is also less commonly used."

Like the term fujoshi, meaning 'rotten girl', is the same it's very silly and self-deprecating. That's so fun! I think the yaoi genre in general is a really interesting phenomena that's rooted so deeply in Japan as a culture. I think it's great that women are able to sincerely enjoy something fun, I think it's great that women were able and continue to have successful careers in writing, and I also think it's mostly bad.

A lot of modern stuff, especially the works getting pumped out of korea by genuinely evil webtoon companies, suffer from the fundamental problems with serialisation. It putters from chapter to chapter and every single one is the same as the other. A lot of Japanese bl/yaoi is in the form of short fiction, about 5-10 chapters, and again there are fundamental problems with this. they often suffer from too much crammed in AND from so little stretched thin.

I also think yes morally or 'representationally' or whatever they are like Pretty cringe. like sorry uke/seme is BAD. sexual assault is not even handled so much as it is kicked around. Women are non-existent at best and horrifically sexist at worst. Also the writing, though ofc i read (often fan-) translated works, just sucks.

You guys don't know how bad it gets. like ok example.... it's hard giving examples cos most of its just boring or bad in a lame way. okay there's this korean rom-com drama webtoon about a boss and his employee and the boss is actually an immortal snake-deity who fell in love with this guy and his employee is the reincarnation of that guy. sounds fine right? well the snake boss has two dicks. So.

[fionabrennanartisttours]

Pride pop-up section in Chester Beatty giftshop

I was very happy to work on a small Pride section, which highlights merchandise in the giftshop reflecting a queer reading of the museum collection.

Here is some info on the selected items in the shop, and their relevance to queer art and culture.

"Poetry of Oscar Wilde", "Best Loved Oscar Wilde" & "Stories for Children" books - Oscar Wilde is probably the most famous queer person in Irish history! Because of his fame and popularity, he changed the way that people of the late 19th century thought about LGBTQ people.

Aleistor Crowley tarot deck - Crowley was a notorious individualist social critic, bisexual, counterculture icon of the 1960s and Western esoteric. Several biographers connect Crowley's queerness with his expertise in magick, stating that his first mystical experience was the result of his first romantic same-sex experience, which enabled him to recognize his bisexuality. Like other artists in the Pride section, Crowley's queerness gave him a rebel spirit, and the strict society of the time gave him the title of "The Wickedest Man Alive". Also, his tarot cards are rainbow-coloured!

“The Citi exhibition: Manga” book -  Shōnen-ai , or "boy's love" manga is an extremely popular genre and is discussed throughout this book. On p.182 there is an essay documenting the history of this genre which also explains "nanshoku"; the acceptable form of male homosexual relationships in Japanese history.

Unprotected Texts is an academic text discussing what the bible actually says about monogamy, homosexuality and sex. E.G. the same-sex marriage debate is discussed on p. 48; homosexuality being incorrectly linked to the story of Sodom & Gommorah is on p.163 - 167. 

George Barbier fashion plates pack - Barbier is referred to by modern art historians as a Queer artist. The figures in his illustrations are often depicted as gender nonconforming or nonbinary. His fashion plates also emphasise female figures, with male figures relegated to the background if they are shown at all. This reversal of gender dynamics was unusual in early 20th century France.

hand-fans - folding fans have become popular within the LGBTQ community recently, most notably among drag performers. Fans made their way to North America, from Europe via Japan, where they served the same purpose whether they were being held by an affluent straight woman or a gay man: to convey opulence and elegance. They also keep you cool in a nightclub!

p.177 of The City as Anthology, under the sub-heading “illustrating Female Friendships”- discusses a historical journal which depicts an intimate relationship between the writer and another woman. We held a talk about this subject during the "Meeting in Isfahan" exhibition.

p.115 Edo in Colour catalogue (“Two Youths Playing Flutes”) - a depiction of the Japanese practice of "nanshoku", whereby an older man of higher social status would have an intimate relationship with a younger man or adolescent of lower status. This was an acceptable form of same-sex relationships amongst classes such as samurai and in monastic settings.

More info on Barbier, and “Two Youths Playing Flutes” can be found on the chester Beatty website > learning > videos to enjoy > search "queering the chester beatty"

Queering the Chester Beatty - Chester Beatty

Happy Pride y'all!

[dorothydalmati1]

Obscure Animation Subject #50: Patalliro!

Based on the shōjo manga series by Mineo Maya, which is still ongoing surprisingly, this comedy is about the wacky adventures of Patalliro himself and the entire kingdom of Malynera. An anime adaptation was produced by Toei Animation.

The adaptation aired on Fuji TV from April 8, 1982 to May 13, 1983, with Masaki Tsuji being head writer and Nobutaka Nishizawa as cheif director. A 48-minute film, Patalliro! Stardust Keikaku, would follow the series and was released to theaters on July 10, 1983.

The manga had two spin-offs in the 2000s, Patalliro Saiyuki! and Patalliro Genji Monogatari! Saiyuki ended up getting an anime adaptation, which was produced by Magic Bus and head directed by and Kenichi Maejima. It aired on Kids Station from June 6 to November 29, 2005.

What makes the original anime notable though is that its the first show to feature shōnen-ai themes on television, and is the first animated show with a gay character, that being Jack Barbarosa Bancoran, an agent who loves flirting with and seducing young boys.

He also has the nickname of "Young Boy Killer" as well. Although women have shown interest in him, he shows no interest, though he did show mild interest in Pataliro's mother Etrange. Also he has a lover, Maraich Juschenfe, although appears and sounds feminine, is also male.

As for my thoughts, this show is quite fun. The comedy is pretty strong, but it also has some action in it and can get intense. This animated show, as explained before, is the first to feature gay characters, many years before The Owl House, and the representation is great.

Do highly recommend checking this show out, it’s very interesting to watch and is even considered a historical piece. I’m sad it isn’t as well known as it should’ve been, but the manga is still ongoing somehow. Maybe another anime adaptation could happen soon who knows.

[khepiari]

Been reading a lot about Manga Companies, including Shōnen Jump, which has decided to use AI to translate. Here are my thoughts, as someone who actively works in the web content space and publishing industry.

This is a quick reminder, multiple Chinese, Korean, and many Singapore-based companies have been using MLT for years, especially for webcomics/web novels/light novels. It is bad news, especially for the manga industry, if AI enters their production. Traditional translation which already suffers in quality due to numerous factors will easily be replaced.

You know, what you can do as a consumer?

Stop consuming “officially translated” content if AI/MLT is used. Again, MLT and AI are not interchangeable terms, but they function on similar training modules.

As a former academic editor who worked with various translations and still works as a translator; people should know this, translating is a tedious time-consuming job. If you are tired of poorly translated subs in your Kdrama? Know this; the time allotted and payment provided for this labour is the reason Netflix subs suck!

Time is what makes the final version of a translation job better from a good one. Sadly, in a weekly publication like Shōnen Jump or Web Novels; MLT/AI looks lucrative when you have multiple stories on board and an international consumer base.

But this issue can be solved by hiring more people!

Instead, people are using AI/MLT and other such tech to cross-cut by not paying fair wages to human labour.

Using MLT/AI to translate is not a big deal; the issue is with the unchecked greed of the publishing/content industry and the people sitting on top of these institutions/industries. Thanks to the “as long as it's functional” attitude that sustains the churning of content/production in a late-stage capitalistic society; craftsmanship, skill-based jobs and attention to detail that they provided are dying.

AI is not bad, it’s the people creating them who are using unethical tactics to train their systems. Many people don’t realize, AI is being fed unchecked collection of data. Technology has its own order of things, just like the process of biological evolution. We cannot speed run to the next stage by force and shady tactics.

Time is the key.

Time is money, so at this moment in technology evolution; AI is the new gold rush, and people are going to use every opportunity to exploit it. So replacing human translators with AI seems profitable, but it will collapse when nuance is replaced with uniformity!

Language is dynamic.

Art is dynamic.

Imagination is revolutionary.

Is there a solution to AI invading publishing practices?

The most radical way— stop purchasing books/manga/gated content/OTT created without human intervention or supervision. Or you just have to wait a few years if you can't stop consuming; because human greed will exploit AI tech until nothing can be distinguished from one another. And when Authenticity becomes the new selling point, for content in a few years, we will see a surge in demand for difference and details.

Sadly, by the time the AI boom dies like the crypto boom; many living, breathing people will be hurt. That’s why be worried, don’t give your hard-earned money to people/institutions who wish to extract maximum profits at the cost of human skills.

Your money supports the system, so control it.

Cut the supply of money, be a better consumer, and ask for better products. If you ask for ethically sourced art, stories, music, comics, and books, you end up supporting the right to liveable wages for people in the creative industry.

[feotakahari]

Reading Wikipedia

In the 1990s, western fans began to use the term shōjo-ai (少女愛, lit. "girl love") to describe yuri works that do not depict explicit sex. Its usage was modeled after the western appropriation of the term shōnen-ai(少年愛, lit. "boy love") to describe yaoi works that do not feature sexually explicit content. In Japan, the term shōjo-ai is not used with this meaning, and instead denotes pedophilic relationships between adult men and girls.

[batri-jopa]

Sorry, we turned your boyfriend into anime character. Yeah, we know he was typical georgian boy but now he's one hell of a bishōnen. And he's a bit tsundere too... Yeah, really sorry about that. All we managed to do was to turn back his old nose shape. But other than that he's all lost into shōnen-ai and yaoi now.