Category: 801

801 · Boys' Love · Japanese · manga · mememe

Taro Don’t Escape!: mememe

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Books bring me a lot of joy in so many ways, not the least of which is paying my rent through my translations of them. It is very nice to have a place to live! But I also love sinking into the world of another person’s mind, finding unnoticed pieces of myself in the story, discovering new ways to view the world around me, or simply getting out of my own head for a while. (It’s so noisy in here!) A somewhat unheralded joy, though, is maybe the communities we create through reading. There are the more structured ones, like book clubs or even BookTok (?? I do not know. I am an Old, and therefore constitutionally unable to pivot to video), and then there are the fandoms and the chance connections we make. I’ve made more than one friend by posting about books I love here or on social media. (Come say hi to me on Bluesky! It’s where I live now.)

One such friend is the brilliant BL scholar Khursten Santos, who just happened to be doing some work in Tokyo while I was there this winter, so naturally we met up to talk all things BL (and some things not BL). She was on a quest to find a book by an artist I’d never heard of, and I was intimately acquainted with a large bookstore that held that book on its shelves. So off we went to score some new books to stuff into our already overstuffed luggage. And today, on this most fujoshi of days, I am here to pass on the BL and spread the good word about mememe. Don’t say I never did anything for you, blog friends.

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801 · Asumiko Nakamura · Boys' Love · Japanese · manga

Warui Otoko: Nakamura Asumiko

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Friends, I have a confession to make. Not only did I not post anything on the smuttiest day of the fujoshi calendar (August 1 because 8/01 can be read as “ya-o-i” in Japanese), I actually forgot about our most holy of high holidays completely. I didn’t realize my crime against all fujoshi until actual days after the fact. I can only assume this is a testament to how much the relentless, unending heat has addled my brain because I would never otherwise forget about the fictional fellas looking for some spicy action. 

So to atone for my sins, I vowed to read more BL, and first up is this hot little snack from Nakamura, creator of the classic BL Dokyusei which she simply cannot leave alone, so a lot of the BL we’ve gotten from her for the last however many years has been in the Dokyusei universe. And sure, I was just as teary-eyed as everyone else when Kusakabe and Sajo [spoiler redacted] and happy for a new book to translate and earn some money to pay for all these books I keep buying, but secretly, I also longed for new BL from Nakamura’s masterful pen. 

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801 · Boys' Love · Itoi Nozo · manga

Koi ka Hakai ka: Itoi Nozo

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It’s that time of year when I step away from the hustle and bustle of the workaday world and devote myself to contemplation of and reverence for the fictional couplings of fictional men. A sacred time of reflection, deliberation, and spice. Yes, 801 is upon us again, fellow fujos. And because time is now a flat circle, it simultaneously feels like only yesterday we were bowing our heads in genuflection before the schmex last year and also like I have not written about BL in twenty years. A quick peek at my archives puts lie to that last part anyway, proving that despite the pandemic’s best efforts, time is still an arrow shooting straight ahead into the future. We will get to a place where we feel like we’re moving forward again, but until then, there are always men loving men in new and unexpected ways to keep us sufficiently spiced and motivated to get out of this flat circle hell. 

This holiday season, I have been reflecting on how so many josei artists I stumble upon have their roots in BL. I know some artists basically spend their entire careers in BL (Kodaka Kazuma comes to mind), but there are many more who pivot from BL to josei, or less frequently seinen. I’m sure there are a lot of reasons for this, like the artists in question want to draw all kinds of things and not just hot dudes, but I feel like the openness of the genre that is BL is what allows this lateral movement from genre to genre. As BL-artist-turned-josei (and seinen) artist est em once told me, BL is wide open story-wise. You can draw any story you want as long as there are hot guys who have some kind of love/sex relationship. It’s a genre that really welcomes experimentation in that sense. Want to write about traditional fabric dying? Sure! Interested in the afterlife? Bring it! Want to get busy in outer space? This BL doesn’t exist yet, but it could! (Someone please write some astronaut BL and send it to me. Thank you.)

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801 · Boys' Love · Japanese · manga · Tamekou

Kakkou no Yume: Tamekou

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And so in this the second Year of Plague, we come again to our most high of all days, 801, a celebration of the truest and most pure love: hot guys getting busy. I had definitely hoped to be lustily perusing the BL shelves of all my favourite Tokyo bookstores to commemorate this year’s schmexy holiday, but alas! Japan is still determined to keep my fully-vaccinated self outside its borders. A true fujoshi, however, does not flinch in the face of such an obstacle to obtaining her one true love: manga of hot guys getting busy. And fortunately for me, I have a man on the inside popping boxes of smut in the post to me two kilos at a time. (EMS post may never again resume, but small packet air mail mysteriously continues.) 

What arrived for me in one of those carefully packed boxes was Kakkou no Yume, a two-volume story from tamekou, who heals my translator soul with My Androgynous Boyfriend. I love their clean art and cute style, and my previous dip into their BL work made me love them in a new and different (schmexy) way, so I was eager to check out anything else they’d done. I’ve seen the covers of these two volumes any number of times, these two incredibly beautiful boys with their shining, parted lips staring back at me from BL displays, but I’ve always resisted picking them up. (Much like Young Bad Education, which I’m sure I will eventually cave to at some point.) For some reason, it felt like the book shelves, PR people, and BL gods were insisting I read this book, and I am nothing if not contrary. The more popular something is, the more I want to run in the opposite direction from it. (This is not a good or healthy trait, but it is there in me, a cursed stubbornness that I work to overcome.)

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801 · Ayako Noda · Boys' Love · Japanese · manga · Niboshiko Arai

Inga no Sakana: Arai Niboshiko

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inga_AraiWell, here we are once again in the sweaty throes of summer, turning our attention to some even sweatier throes on the pages of our favourite BL titles. Normally, I would be sweating it out in both the seasonal and bookular ways in Japan, but as we all know, these are not normal times. None of my usual noodling around the bookstores of Tokyo this summer. I, like so many of my fellow fujoshi, am locked up in my apartment and locked out of the country that is my second home with no chances to stumble upon two lithe young men intertwined on the cover of a book in the ever-expanding BL section.

But not even a plague can stop the power of women who love fictional men who love men! Because we are fierce and determined and have shelves of hot man/man action already in our homes, Tokyo bookstores be damned! And in the lead up to this, our most sacred holiday, I discovered a beloved title on my own shelves that I haven’t written about before. So let us celebrate 801 this year with the blushy genius of Arai Niboshiko!

You might remember her as the star of this brain’s 801 celebrations a couple of years ago. Or perhaps you’re more familiar with her mainstream work as Noda Ayako. Either way, there’s always something hot simmering beneath the surface of everything this talented artist touches. Her new series Double might be a stealth BL, but it’s a serious slowburn, so I’m still withholding judgement on that one. But there’s nothing stealthy about Inga no Sakana. These boys are in love! Continue reading “Inga no Sakana: Arai Niboshiko” →

801 · basso · Boys' Love · Japanese · manga · Women

Tonari Ni: basso

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Tonari_bassoRejoice! The annual celebration of smut is upon us! It is our time to shine, fujoshi. And by shine, I mean of course, curl up in our houses and lose ourselves in the world of BL where men can love men in impossible ways, bending the laws of physics with their phantom peens and facing zero of the homophobia that still plagues the real world. Let us give ourselves over to this beautiful, schmexy fantasy, friends. Let us enjoy and celebrate the bountiful harvest of man love this year has brought us.

The prize-winning pig at this year’s festival is perhaps the long-awaited return to BL of Natsume Ono aka basso. Seven years after her last book, Naka-san no Nagare, she brings us this beautiful slice of salaryman love, Tonari Ni. My heart sings just typing those words. I love Ono’s basso work so much. While her artwork remains strong regardless of the genre she writes in, her powers of storytelling are honestly all over the place, and I too often find myself frustrated with her mainstream work, wondering what exactly she is trying to communicate to readers. And when I finally got the chance to translate her work with ACCA 13, that frustration was doubled and tripled as I read and re-read the unnecessarily convoluted tale of political intrigue during the translation process. So many meaningless and weird details that have zero plot impact and only serve to divert the reader in directions that are completely non-story-related. Why the district with the giant food? How can you cross a border and suddenly have strawberries the size of a person’s head? And why does being two metres tall mean you need a strawberry the size of your head? Continue reading “Tonari Ni: basso” →

801 · Ayako Noda · Boys' Love · Japanese · manga · Niboshiko Arai

Moratte Kudasai: Niboshiko Arai

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Moratte_AraiSo often these days, the world seems like a blazing dumpster fire in the middle of a heatwave in summer. The stench! The nightmarish heat! The constant and baffling dehumanization of other human beings for no apparent reason at all! And sure, we all want to (and should) work to make things better for ourselves and our fellow members of a society that is crumbling into the dark void of a bottomless ocean. But all the gloom and doom that greets us every time we open Twitter can really eat away at the soul and make us contemplate never interacting with the world again.

So a holiday like 801 is especially critical in these trying times, a reminder that there is still something pure and good in this world. And that is hot guys making out with other hot guys for our voyeuristic pleasure. Thus I invite you, my fellow fujoshi, to step away from the Nazis on Twitter and the mansplainer who is a Facebook friend of your mom’s friend’s friend who inexplicably replies to your innocuous comment about the recent heatwave to tell you climate change is a liberal conspiracy, and walk into the warm and welcoming world of hot man sex. Let these horny dudes wrap you up in a gentle and possibly sticky hug. Continue reading “Moratte Kudasai: Niboshiko Arai” →

801 · Boys' Love · Japanese · manga · Yuiji Aniya

Kanpenkina Shiiku: Yuiji Aniya

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Kanpekina Shiiku

Happy 801, ladies and gentlemen of the rotten persuasion! I hope you are spending this illicit holiday doing what you love best, reading smutty comics in which men enjoy the pleasure of other men. In case you were wondering what dirty little thing you should pick up on this day of days, I have some words about a particular dirty little thing for you. And it’s pretty dirty!

I actually came across Yuiji Aniya through her non-BL work when she was serialized in Erotics F and liked her style so much that I decided to go and check out what she does with the man love. And wow! She just jumps right in. The first story in this collection of various BL one-shots, “Toyed”, is all pumping and thrusting from the first page. So basically, if you are looking for the sensitive, relationship-type stuff that est em does so well, don’t bother with this one. And normally, I prefer those relationshippy, character-driven stories, but Aniya has such a great style and is not afraid to poke fun at things that I ended up really liking this volume. Continue reading “Kanpenkina Shiiku: Yuiji Aniya” →