Japanese Comics With Gay Themes Attracting Young Female Readers

Japanese Comics With Gay Themes Attracting Young Female Readers

Hottest manga subgenre is guy-guy romance stories written for female audiences.

Here’s an unexpected turn of events: A lot of comic books these days are for girls — especially when they’re about boys in love with each other.

At the New York Comic-Con last month, the power of comics to bring in young female readers was in full force. That pull had nothing to do with superheroes and everything to do with manga, those small, thick digest comics that originally hail from Japan and these days dominate the graphic-novel bestseller list. Much of manga’s focus on relationships and the lives of young people — rather than men in tights — have brought girls to comics in a way that Superman and the X-Men never did.

At the convention, girls were all over the manga booths for companies like Tokyopop and Viz and more than happy to testify to their manga passion.

“Basically in every crack in my room you can find manga,” said college freshman Christine Rodriguez, 18, who came to the con with her 12-year-old sister, Danielle. The girls said they are avid readers of Tokyopop’s “Fruits Basket,” a long-running series about a girl who lives with people who can turn into animals, and Viz’s “Naruto,” an ongoing adventure about a boy in ninja school.

“I started getting into them more and more, and now I started a whole club in my school,” said Danielle.

“Yes, I tainted her,” added Christine.