Random Manga Links!

Random Manga Links!

I absolutely LOVE finding web pages about shoujo manga series, be it a page like mine that briefly discusses several manga series, or other pages that take one great series and explore it in more detail. I love seeing what everyone else out there is reading! I get to learn about all sorts of other series I can run out and get and enjoy! Here are some links to my favorite manga pages (not just shoujo, I like shounen manga too :) that have helped me find new series to spend my money on :)

The Manga Obsession. Similar to my site, this page has lots of general manga summaries about a bunch of series. Many of them are a bit more mainstream, but there are some nice obscure things here too!

Paperthin Pleasures. A lovely page with piles of great pictures and summaries of many other great manga series! And so many wonderful bishounen boys too.

S-Cafe. One of the first manga summary pages I found, this page offers many cool shoujo manga summaries, author bios and info, and more!

Zahara's Shoujo Manga Pages. Of course I should mention Zahara's pages! She has lots of great stuff including image galleries, translations and much more!

Doki-Doki.Org. My friend Rurichan, who has done a few manga summaries for my page, has some pages of her own, including pages on Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne, Nervous Venus, Shin Shirayuki Hime Densetsu Pretear and Mikan no Tsuki.

Keekiland. Doki-Doki isn't Rurichan's only collective ^_^;; She also maintains the shockingly cute Keekiland site! This site has pages on Suki Dakara Suki and Delicious.

Alana's Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne Page. Another friend of mine, Alana, also has a super spiffy Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne page! Such a popular manga!

Artistic Inks. This is a very detailed and comprehensive manga site with lots of manga reviews and summaries for not just shoujo manga, but shounen series as well. They also offer a manga guide, breaking anime and manga news, and prizes!

Everything Kanata Kara. The page that got me interested in this fun fantasy-romance manga series!

Manga Stop. Contains summaries of a few manga series. Looks promising.

d e l i l a h (Angel Sanctuary, etc): A wonderfully designed site with excellent pages containing summaries, images and info for a few series. Worth looking at for the clean design alone!

PRISMS. Ultimate Manga Guide- lots of entries for manga artists and manga titles. A general refrence page.

Mangallaria. Offers a large selection of brief, helpful manga summaries.

Bonet no Manga Deluxe. Team Bonet's excellent site with images and summaries for many beautiful manga series! They have awesome taste in manga!

Tae's 'You Higuri Collection'. My friend Tae's awesome You Higuri pages, containing lots of info on that fabulous manga artist and some of her more famous works including Seimaden, Zeus, and Cutlass! And WOW, look at those Seimaden manga translations! Thank you Tae ^_^

MangaWorld. A site from Indonesia that has several manga summaries in English and with images.

MangaArt. A nice site with lots of stuff- brief manga summaries with some images, shoujo manga desktop wallpaper, E-cards ane more.

Aestheticism. A very pleasing on the eyes site about yaoi and shounen ai manga and anime. Has many informative articles and stories, as well as some doujinshi translations and a cybershop. This is a member-site, but there is plenty to look at in the free areas too!

Invitation. Look! Look! Someone has made a page dedicated to that pretty pretty manga "Alichino"! Yay!

The Shoujo Manga Home Page. The somewhat legendary Matt Thorn's ( ^_- )pages on shoujo manga. These pages are a bit old, but all the information is still relevant. A great resource!

Lijaka's Shoujo Manga Pages. Wai! Wai! more cool manga pages! This is the index to Lijaka's pages on W Pinch, Koisuru 1/4, Akuma no Ororon, Planet Ladder, and more! Look look.

Tokimeki Club. This site has a huge list of manga authors and their works, and a really nice long list of manga author's official pages! Yay! I love mangaka official pages!

SMADAR: Guide to English Web Sites Dedicated to Shoujo Manga and Anime. It's pretty much what the title says it is ^_^ A very nice collection of links and brief descriptions of all sorts of pages out there devoted to shoujo manga. Very cool ^_^

Manga. A page of descriptions and images from various shoujo manga series. Some descriptions are detailed (or even have some translations) others have just a sentence or two.

Manga Translation Garden. This site has the beginnings of translations of chapters from several shoujo manga series. I hope more chapters are translated!

Manga BonBons. A wonderful page that has lots of cover scans and information on piles of shounen ai/yaoi/shoujo manga authors and their works. Great info source!

Tanzy's Random Yaoi Manga Page. This is a sister tite to my Random Shoujo Manga page, except it features all shounen ai or yaoi manga. That's manga with male-male relationships. Tanzy has a lot of good reviews there, so go visit!

Shounen Ai and Yaoi Manga. Here is a page with cover images of a LOT of shounen ai and yaoi manga, and some reviews! *_*

Outside the Spotlight. This page seems to have the same goal as this one- highlight lesser-known anime series. None of the ones listed there have been animated. Of course I would like to see more shoujo anime being made, so I hope some of those series will be animated someday :)

Chonmage's Precociously Pink Manga Page. A page devoted to manga. Includes some indivudual pages about manga, some summaries, and a listing of new shoujo manga each month.

What is Yaoi?

What is Yaoi?

I have had a few queries as to what yaoi is and, rather than send people off to consult Professor Google. I thought I would make a (somewhat pathetic) attempt at explaining things here.

In simple terms, yaoi is anime featuring romance between two men but things are rarely simple in anime. There are three terms you may come across when researching gay anime. These are shõnen-ai, which loosely translated means boy love, yaoi – shõnen-ai with sex scenes, and hentai – anime porn. However, just as there is a fine line between Californication and Debbie Does Dallas, so there is a fine line between yaoi and hentai.

One of the biggest differences is that, while hentai has a basic plot, it is there mainly to lead to the sex part. In contrast, while it is quite explicit, the sexual content of yaoi is presented in the context of a romantic relationship – with the emphasis being on the emotions behind the act, more than the act itself.

In TV/Movie terms, shõnen-ai would be on a par with, say, Modern Family or Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (or To Wong Foo for you yanks), yaoi would be on a par with Queer as Folk or…or…Oh Dear, I can’t think of another movie or show on this level – a sad indictment on inequalities in Hollywood. Finally, Hentai is anime porn – both gay and hetero and any other way you can imagine (and a few you can’t – the Japanese are just as creative with their porn as they are with everything else!)

In even more basic terms (and for those who have no clue about the TV Shows listed) – if it can be shown before 9.30pm, it’s probably shõnen-ai; if it can be shown on TV in adult viewing hours, it is probably yaoi; if you have to order online or visit a porn shop, it’s hentai.

Now, having cleared everything up for you, I am going to throw you all back into a state of confusion. In recent years, with the influx of American anime fans (the American tendency to babyfi everything is a topic for another debate altogether), the term shõnen-ai has fallen into disuse, and the term yaoi has come to mean any kind of boy-love anime or manga short of actual hentai (and sometimes even that).

I watch anime more than I read manga so, using the new loose definition of yaoi, here are some of my favourite programs:

Ouran High School Host Club

Recent statements involving Rachel Maddow

Recent statements involving Rachel Maddow

Recent stories featuring Rachel Maddow

Giving thanks for True statements

As you prepare to break bread, we break down 10 statements from the past year that we found to be topical, entertaining or both. They all earned a True rating on the Truth-O-Meter.

Letter from a Rachel Maddow fan

The MSNBC talk show host is unhappy with our Mostly False rating on a claim by the National Right to Life Committee. Here's a letter that a Maddow fan sent to her show about the rating.

Fifty fact checks of Rick Perry for president

Yaoi and Yuri

Yaoi and Yuri

Yaoi and yuri refer to Japanese homoerotic manga (comic books). Yaoi features attractive and feminine-looking boys engaged in same-sex romance, and yuri has stories about love between women. Both genres have a mostly female fan base, and they present Gay-related themes that appeal to more than the LGBTQ community.

Yaoi of two characters from the popular Bleach anime series (fanpop.com/clubs/bleach-yaoi/images/13550114/title/bleach-yaoi-photo, January 2013)

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the manga and anime (animated cartoon) industry in Japan offered many different genres for a variety of age groups. For teenagers, shonen manga was for boys and shojo manga for girls. In shojo manga, the male protagonist was often a bishonen (Japanese: “beautiful boy”), an androgynous and sexually ambiguous figure that attracted the gaze of both sexes. Love between beautiful boys tended to be platonic, and their femininity provided girls and young women an outlet to escape from heteronormal restrictions on gender expression.

Characters from the shojo manga, Sailor Moon (vietnamonline.com/event/women-and-manga-exhibition-in-hanoi-this-march.html, January 2013)

Beautiful Boys, Takarazuka Revue, and Yaoi

Attraction to bishonen in girls’ shojo manga is similar to the popularity of otokoyaku (a female actor playing a male character) in the all-female company, the Takarazuka Revue, who is often shown as a beautiful boy.

Images of beautiful effeminate boys in manga and in the Takarazuka Revue (both for the pleasure of primarily female audiences) challenge traditional gender stereotypes and expectations. In the 1970s, the popular shojo manga, The Rose of Versailles . told the story of a French girl, Oscar, disguised as a boy so that she could inherit the position of an imperial guard during the French Revolution. As a boy, Oscar fell in love with her male colleague, Andre, and began a homoerotic romance.

Oscar as anime (domenal.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17228, January 2013)

The story has been performed on the Takarazuka stage.

Oscar, Takarazuka style (s3.excoboard.com/lovetakarazuka/70962/793821, January 2013)

Bishonen in the shojo manga were also imitated by dojinshi (amateur manga) artists. However, dojinshi manga often contained no plots. Consequently, they were called YAOI, an abbreviation of a Japanese three-word phrase: YA manashi (no climax), O chinashi (no punch line), and I minashi (no meaning). As with shojo manga, the audience was still primarily female.

Because of homoerotic relationships in dojinshi/yaoi manga, the acronym “yaoi” was extended in meaning to the love between boys in general. In 1975, dojinshi manga were sold in the first Tokyo Comic Market, which later became an important comic event in Japan.

unable-to-think.deviantart.com, January 2013

Yaoi developed into its own comics genre, and its style changed gradually. In the first stage (the late 1970s to the mid-1980s), it explored men’s sexuality, especially male-male bonding. In the second stage (the mid-1980s to the early 1990s), the focus shifted to the ideal human relationships between individuals. In the third stage (the early 1990s onward), yaoi often contained male homosexual relations and sexual violence. According to the sponsor of the Tokyo Comic Markets in 1997, nearly 70 percent of dojinshi manga were associated with yaoi themes.

The term yuri literally means “lily” in Japanese, and it was coined to indicate lesbian love in 1976. This code word was from the personal advertisement section, “Yuri Tsushin” (“Lily Communication”), in the Lesbian magazine, Allan . Yuri was used in contrast with bara (Japanese: “rose”) in Barasoku . a Gay male magazine. Yuri relationships first emerged in shojo manga without being overtly sexual. However, in dojinshi manga, yuri was overtly portrayed as sexual relationships between women.

Although the subject might appeal to some heterosexual male readers, most readers tend to be young female adults. Most dojinshi and yaoi titles would be categorized as josei (Japanese: “female”) manga, an adult version of shojo manga.

– Chen Yilin

Further Reading:

Brenner, Robin E. Understanding Manga and Anime. Westport: Libraries Unlimited, 2007.

Gravett, Paul. Manga: Sixty Years of Japanese Comics. London: Collins Design, 2004.

Robertson, Jennifer. Takarazuka: Sexual Politics and Popular Culture in Modern Japan. California: University of California, 1998.

Suzuki Kazuko. “Pornography or Therapy? Japanese Girls Creating Yaoi Phenomenon” in Millennium Girls. Ed. Sherrie Inness. London: Roman and Littlefield, 1998.

Welker, James. “Lilies of the Margin: Beautiful Boys and Queer Female Identities in Japan” in AsiaPacificQueer: Rethinking Genders and Sexualities, ed. by Fran Martin, University of Illinois. 2003.

Publishing House Alert Yaoi House LLC

Publishing House Alert: Yaoi House LLC

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Update. Kira Takenochi has alerted people to new changes in her Yaoi publishing role.

Hello Everyone,

For most of you, this is going to come as no surprise, as I’ve been discussing this situation for a few weeks now in my journal at the site.

As of tonight I will be shutting down the Yaoi House site and putting up a new site for my writing.

What may be surprising to some is that I am going to be removing all the yaoi from the site. I will not be continuing those stories at this time. It’s possible I may revisit them and and rework them to be non-yaoi stories, but for now they are going to sleep, until I decide what to do with them. I will only be working on new fiction from this point on.

Tonight I will be putting all future recurring billing on hold. You will continue to have access to the new site and the new fiction through the end of your billing period. I will be putting up a new sign-on page and changing the price to $4.99. This price cut makes sense as there will be less fiction, since I will be building a new fiction archive.

I will not be publishing any of my yaoi books. For those of you who are new to the site and have no idea what is going on, you may email me for a refund, if you like, as I know you purchased access to the site for the yaoi.

For those of you who are going to continue on with me in my new direction, I will see you on the “other side”. To the rest of you, I thank you for your years of support and wish you all the best.

Kira Takenouchi is a Yaoi author who made a name for herself with Ai no Kusabi fanfiction, including a long and popular saga called ‘Taming Riki’. She formed a publishing house called Yaoi House or Yaoi Underground, LLC.

She signed a number of authors including Becca Abbott and took money in form of subscription fee payments by readers anxious to read her Taming Riki work. In March of 2008, Kira found Jesus and decided to stop publishing and declared all contracts null and void. She promised to refund money paid for the Taming Riki work which was never delivered.

On April 8, 2008, other investors in the Yaoi House stepped forward (the first comment), claiming that they would be honoring contracts and resolving the issue of outstanding orders that seemed not be filled.

On May 1, 2008, Kira reappears and claims that she did not find God but was instead suffering hallucinations as a result of bi-polarity.

I know now that God wasn’t acutally talking to me with Divine imperatives..that was in my head. It just seemed so real. And…some things happened to me, that I gues I won’t tell you about, but they go along the lines of hallucinations.

I think that we know, having seen the signs before of bad publisher behavior what happens next. Yep, people voicing their upsets with Kira bailing on them speak out and Kira responds with

Have fun with your rant. Anyone who participates will of course be banned from my site.

On May 4, 2008, in response to what is happening with the contracts and the money that was taken from readers, Kira denies that there has been any transfer of power:

Let me be clear about one thing. Legally I am still the manager of both Yaoi House and Yaoi Underground so what I say goes, with regard to my fiction. I have the power not to sign the final contract that would transfer those rights to Harial, which would mean nothing would change with either company and both would remain in my control.

A number of advisors and business partners leave Yaoi House because of, well, the instability. And Kira responds with accusations toward the people who want their refunds and contracts honored. I mean, the nerve of those people.

I admit I’m very angry about this because it’s clear from the posts in this group that people KNEW or at least SUSPECTED I was not in my right mind and yet everyone was proceeding to take away everything I’d worked on for the past few years, in a matter of DAYS. Almost no one here stood up for me and gave me the benefit of the doubt! No one except Esther! You all FUCKING KNOW ME and you KNOW I would never desert you or my stories or these companies! You KNEW that this “Kira Morningstar” was not the same person as “Kira Takenouchi”. And you didn’t even care that I was mad, that I was all alone in the horror of my mind with no one to help me–my shareholders knew I was sick and yet they deserted me, everyone deserted me and just chose to believe the worst, that I’d actually just thrown everything away and walked away. You didn’t stop to think…Okay wait…she’s bipolar…maybe she’s just ill. Let’s give her a chance to come out of this. And then all you cared about was getting your refunds or getting A BOOK with one of my titles on it, written by anyone else under the sun apparently.

On May 8, 2008, Kira seems to have calmed down and wishes her former business partners the best of luck and actually offers up an apology.

I’ll be dismantling the YH subscription site because I suspect all the writers have gone with Harial to her new domain. I hope so. They got the raw end of the shaft, too. I’ll be too busy with my own writing to try and maintain such a subscription site–and I don’t even want to, because it’s Harial’s baby. To be honest I’ll mostly be focusing on my own books now, unless we’ve signed new contracts with authors I’m not aware of. Or if we have, perhaps they can follow Harial. Maybe she’ll

publish print books too.

Harial…I just want to say publicly that I am so sorry for what I put you through

This olive branch is thrown down and trod upon three days later:

In case some of you are unclear about what has happened, Harial has started her own company.

Apparently some of my investors who joined her thought they could secretly keep shares in my companies while they invested in a competing company! They would be privy to my plans which they could then use to their advantage at their company. They apparently also thought they could take my authors, not realizing that the contracts between Yaoi House and its authors are still legal and have not been legally voided by new signed documents. So, for instance, posting Learning to Serve on their site is completely illegal, because a signed contract with Yaoi House is still in effect.

Other authors are getting threats of legal action if they try to move their works to another subscription service.

Apparently, our contracts are still valid and will be so for two years after we hand in the manuscript. Which goes against what my contract says, but let’s not get into details here. Apparently, what Kira is trying to do is prevent any of the authors to sell the manuscripts or post the stories in question on the new publishing house’s subscription site

It sounds like some Yaoi authors are getting some raw treatment and that Kira Takenouchi is still trying to remain in business. Wonder what ever happened to those unfilled subscription payments?

Update: We’ve opened the comments at this time.