When you look at Total Surrender, it seems pretty inoffensive (by my standards, anyway). It really doesn’t contain any of the common yaoi elements that I hate; no one is underage or looks underage, there’s no coerced sex or blackmail, and no one is raped. No, Total Surrender’s mortal sin is something else altogether: it’s boring. Total Surrender is a [...]

Good news for yaoi fans: the Ai no Kusabi novels (which are legendary in yaoi fandom) are getting the anime treatment-for the second time- more than twenty years after the books were first released in Japan. The first Ai no Kusabi anime came out in the early 90′s and consisted of two OAVs; they’ve never been licensed in America. The [...]

[rating:1] Lily Hoshino’s Love Quest begins with that most Japanese of high school traditions: the love confession. Since this is a yaoi manga, it will come as a surprise to readers that the confession is made by a boy, to a…girl?! Never fear though- this is the only brief flicker of heterosexuality anywhere in this manga.   Unfortunately for high [...]

Deb Aoki, who writes About.com’s manga blog, recently chatted with Elfquest creator Wendy Pini about her online yaoi adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe’s Masque of the Red Death. Plague victims and man-love – yummy! Here’s a brief excerpt: Q: How long have you been thinking about doing this story? Wendy Pini: I first floated out the idea about three years [...]

[rating:2 1/2] In the author’s comments section at the end of volume one, mangaka Makoto Tateno claims she didn’t know if Steal Moon would fit in the boys’ love genre, since it is a science fiction manga. She should have no worries on that account. Steal Moon is as much a science fiction story as Brokeback Mountain is a Western; [...]

MSNBC’s Sexploration column discusses the mainstreaming of otaku fetishism, of all things – although they neatly overstep the twin-headed viper that is yaoi / yuri (unlike us, who unceasingly stare into the abyss so that we may spare you the horrors within…). Guess that would’ve really scared the curious onlookers peeking in from the safety of their cubicle farms. When [...]

[rating:4] Never fear, my friends- there is a Yuri Menace review on the way! Until then, hop aboard the man train! In many ways, Fake is a mismatched cop story: the manga is about two NYPD detectives, complete opposites, who are paired up and have to adjust to each other’s different styles. While they often find each other exasperating, they [...]

More news on the yaoi craze threatening to swallow your children whole – this time, from the San Francisco Chronicle (‘Brokeback comics craze‘): “Yaoi allows for a kind of enjoyment – visual stimulation without the self-examination,” says Tina Anderson, a writer whose yaoi is published in the United States and Germany. “It allows you to distance yourself from the fantasy.” [...]

Okay – normally I leave all the yaoi-related stuff to AnaKhouri, but I figured I’d put my toes in the water a little and talk a bit ‘o man-to-man love. About.com’s Deb Aoki notes that yaoi artist Youka Nitta has pulled out of Yaoi-Con, possibly due to claims that she traced a number of fashion photographs for use in her [...]

[rating:1] Well friends, this may very well be the last edition of Yaoi Menace. I think I found the book that will put me off the genre forever. Yaoi: Anthology of Boys’ Love Volume 1 from Yaoi Press is a collection of three short stories brought to life by international teams of writers and artists. Also, it sucks. Hard. No, [...]

[rating:3] If you read my previous ‘Yaoi Menace’ review (on the manga Freefall Romance), you are already familiar with the Three Basic Yaoi Plots. If you haven’t read it, go do so now. I can wait. OK, all finished? Then you’ll know what I mean when I say the first volume of Love Recipe by Kirico Higashizato follows Plot # [...]

[rating:2 1/2] In my life I have found one ironclad rule that it always pays to follow. And that rule is, “Never trust a yaoi fangirl.” The majority of fangirls have brains so addled by their love of gay sex that they are incapable of discriminating between a good story and a bad one. As long as there are drawings [...]