Crunchyroll Expo 2022: The Future of BL & GL Anime

The representation of LGBTQIA+ community is not only a relevant topic in all of our everyday lives, but also in pop culture works ever-increasing importance a.

As part of the Crunchyroll Expo 2022 (CRX) we met during one Boys Love/Girls Love Panels dealt with this topic and of course we don’t want to withhold the content from you.

The availability of such stories used to be an obstacle

A total of five young women moderated the approx 45 minute event and, after a short round of introductions, stated that it used to be had been difficult, Boys Love and Girls Love stories to legally consume in the United States. A problem that also applies to Germany.

denote BL (Yaoi) and GL (Yuri). romance subgenres, which deal with relationships between same-sex partners. Although historically manga stories of this type have existed for many decades, it took a long time for them to become popular semi-mainstream-ready became.

An anime that played an essential role in this is Sailor Moon, which paved the way for further works with its great success. In it was first time in a mainstream production a positive relationship between two lesbian characters (Sailor Neptune & Sailor Uranus) drawn. Positive because her story had a happy ending. This was not a matter of course for a long time.

There has been one in this country in recent years quite remarkable boom all about boys love and girls love manga and anime. works like Adachi & Shimamura, Bloom Into You or A Stranger on the Beach were not only positively received by genre fans.

However, due to the aforementioned difficulties, some fans initially found access to these stories in more of a roundabout way. Sports anime/manga, for example Free or Haikyu!!were presented during the Crunchyroll Expo panel Future of Romance: The BL/GL Genre called.

BL/GL anime and manga are not mainstream yet

Despite this boom, both subgenres are though still far away, to have really arrived in the middle of the mainstream. This is partly due to various prejudiceswhich anime and manga of this kind are quite often confronted with.

They are accused of about a very high proportion of fan servicei.e. a strongly sexualized representation of the characters.

That these scenes are often in the context of the plot play an important role and are not there for their own sake are often overlooked by critics. In addition, according to the moderators of the CRX panel, for many it would simply be not yet “normal” beto pursue love relationships of this kind in manga series or anime series/movies.

One point that should not be overlooked is the cultural differences in different parts of the world.

While same-sex love relationships in Western countries, such as Germany or the USA, nothing too spectacular anymore be, this would be in Asian countries, for example Japandifferent since they more conservative be.

In Asian countries it is difficult to talk about it or to openly admit it, as there would be no similar acceptance within society. Furthermore, it is also because of this challenging, a discourse on LGBTQIA+ issues to lead, since it could lead to censorship.

Are you now interested in a new series? Maybe the GL anime “Bloom Into You” is at anime planet something for you:

Really the future of the romance genre?

Although the panel entitled The Future of Romance, the moderators unfortunately did not go into how BL and GL stories could develop in the coming years. Since this is an extremely exciting fact, we would like to address the following dare to make a rough assessment.

First, let’s start with one further growth of both subgenres out in the next few years. This is mainly related to the ongoing aspirations of members of the LGBTQIA+ community to continue to stand up for their cause. As previously mentioned, it is a social development that continues Entry into pop culture works and other parts of our lives will hold.

In addition, local and foreign publishers seem to have noticed that it is quite there is a market for BL and GL anime and manga.

There is a demand that may lag behind that for major mainstream productions, but it does is big enoughto form a relevant audience. A development that must have been noticed in Japan as well.

But until works with yaoi and yuri focus actually really suitable for the mainstream could be, it will probably take several more years.

This is likely to be primarily due to a certain rethinking in conservative countries, which at the same time economically relevant markets represent, arrive, for example China, Japan itself or Russia and South Korea.

For this reason, we also suspect that Romance stories about heterosexual couples, such as in “Horimiya” or “Shikimori’s Not Just a Cutie” will continue to set the tone in the genre. Accordingly, another should long and arduous way before Boys Love and Girls Love anime/manga until they could actually become the future of the romance genre.