IME a lot of WLW will read BL/yaoi stuff too because there is just SO MUCH MORE of it out there, and while it's not necessarily their personal flavor of gay, it's still GAY and not straight. Same goes for like, porn in general. Because lesbian porn (at least in the US) is almost 100% filmed with straight men/the straight male gaze in mind, so is... pretty cringe-y and not likable for gay ladies.

Also I don't really see them both being fujoshi to be that big of a deal, unless you really hate yaoi for some reason. The series will probably(hopefully) acknowledge himejoshi later on anyways.

The thing with fujoshi is that they can be rather extreme. (There is a reason the term means rotten).
Please don't mind if I have my doubts. I haven't seen himejoshi addressed properly in any manga before. At best there are avid yuri fans, but that is always disconnected from otaku culture or the term isn't even acknowledged.

I really don't understand why so many yuri fans are against yaoi

LIke I said in my previous post, most yuri fans in Japan are into both.
But if you are specifically in a yuri community you will have more hardliners who enjoy only one genre. I still see a lot of people on Dynasty who are totally fine with yaoi and even endorse it being released here.

Yaoi has a lot of downsides (like predatory dynamics, "yaoi hands", tiny head, ridiculous fetishization, complete misrepresentation of homosexual men in general and so on). But there is no genre without such flaws I would say. I won't make a difference between a yuri or yaoi rape doujin... they are both the worst.

But the stark truth is that fujoshis are the majority of female otaku. Another painful truth is that most Japanese girls who like yuri are straight girls and they tend to also like BL.

These are stereotypes, not truths, especially the latter claim! The little information that's available on the demographics of the yuri subculture (both in the "West" and in Japan) suggests that heterosexual women are outnumbered by non-heterosexual women. (Ex.) Unless the "most female yuri fans are straight fujoshi" argument has any supporting evidence, I don't think it's fair to take it as truth by default.

I think we got something mixed up there. In general the main audience for both yuri and yaoi are straight girls. It's aimed at them, because they are the biggest customer base and for Japanese girls yuri is not too extreme to read most of the time. I just straight up don't believe that non-hetero women outnumber straight girls in this case, because that's not what the magazines aim for.

Most female otaku being fujoshi was an entirely seperate point. Combining them will lead to more issues. Most girls reading either are not fujoshi. I was specifically talking about heavy otaku culture.

That said, the overlap between the BL and yuri subcultures does seem to exist, in my personal experience, and I've seen a lot of queer girls and women online who are into both.

That is because they do. In certain ways the genres are not too different to an outsider and give just a slightly different kick from the other.

last edited at Sep 12, 2019 4:03AM

I loved the expression of the background characters in the lats page.

Also I don't really see them both being fujoshi to be that big of a deal, unless you really hate yaoi for some reason. The series will probably(hopefully) acknowledge himejoshi later on anyways.

The thing with fujoshi is that they can be rather extreme. (There is a reason the term means rotten).
Please don't mind if I have my doubts. I haven't seen himejoshi addressed properly in any manga before. At best there are avid yuri fans, but that is always disconnected from otaku culture or the term isn't even acknowledged.

I really don't understand why so many yuri fans are against yaoi

LIke I said in my previous post, most yuri fans in Japan are into both.
But if you are specifically in a yuri community you will have more hardliners who enjoy only one genre. I still see a lot of people on Dynasty who are totally fine with yaoi and even endorse it being released here.

Yaoi has a lot of downsides (like predatory dynamics, "yaoi hands", tiny head, ridiculous fetishization, complete misrepresentation of homosexual men in general and so on). But there is no genre without such flaws I would say. I won't make a difference between a yuri or yaoi rape doujin... they are both the worst.

But the stark truth is that fujoshis are the majority of female otaku. Another painful truth is that most Japanese girls who like yuri are straight girls and they tend to also like BL.

These are stereotypes, not truths, especially the latter claim! The little information that's available on the demographics of the yuri subculture (both in the "West" and in Japan) suggests that heterosexual women are outnumbered by non-heterosexual women. (Ex.) Unless the "most female yuri fans are straight fujoshi" argument has any supporting evidence, I don't think it's fair to take it as truth by default.

I think we got something mixed up there. In general the main audience for both yuri and yaoi are straight girls. It's aimed at them, because they are the biggest customer base and for Japanese girls yuri is not too extreme to read most of the time. I just straight up don't believe that non-hetero women outnumber straight girls in this case, because that's not what the magazines aim for.

Actually, there is also a large portion of yuri that is written for and read by a male audiences. That was basically what Yuri Hime S was all about. You can often tell which audience was being targeted by looking at the sort of works being published. Stories like Still Sick, or Bloom into You which are very character and story centric romances are geared more towards women where manga that are less concerned about the actual relationships and more geared towards fan service or cgdct are more likely to be aimed at males. Admittedly there is a ton of overlap but it's disingenuous to suggest there aren't yuri stories out there written for and read by what are basically gender inverted fujoshis.

last edited at Sep 12, 2019 5:05AM

This is 100% wish fulfillment, isn't it.
Not that I'm complaining. It's good so far, and I'll definitely be back for more. I love age gap and have a soft spot for stories revolving around a person who admires another.
(Not at all because I'm low key crushing on someone I admire. No sir.)

last edited at Sep 12, 2019 5:08AM

I think we got something mixed up there. In general the main audience for both yuri and yaoi are straight girls. It's aimed at them, because they are the biggest customer base and for Japanese girls yuri is not too extreme to read most of the time. I just straight up don't believe that non-hetero women outnumber straight girls in this case, because that's not what the magazines aim for.

Actually, there is also a large portion of yuri that is written for and read by a male audiences. That was basically what Yuri Hime S was all about. You can often tell which audience was being targeted by looking at the sort of works being published. Stories like Still Sick, or Bloom into You which are very character and story centric romances are geared more towards women where manga that are less concerned about the actual relationships and more geared towards fan service or cgdct are more likely to be aimed at males. Admittedly there is a ton of overlap but it's disingenuous to suggest there aren't yuri stories out there written for and read by what are basically gender inverted fujoshis.

There are definitely many boys who enjoy yuri too, no doubt about that. And as with lesbians in general, men do fetishize them too, just like fujoshis do gay men. All I am saying is that the main audience for yuri and yaoi are straight girls. Not that there aren't communities of male yuri fans or actual works aimed specifically at lesbian/bi women.

Similarily there are boys who enjoy BL, despite being straight. There are men who watch My Little Pony, a series directed at young girls. Anything is possible and everyone reads what they want. Just purely statistically and target audience wise straight girls will always be the core fanbase for their numbers and general openess to all kinds of sexualities in fiction. Girls who read Shoujo are more likely to be mildly okay with soft yuri, as it spawned from the genre.

PS: Bloom Into You was published in a magazine with boys as the target audience (Dengeki Daioh).

last edited at Sep 12, 2019 5:17AM

I'm just gonna state now that age gap is my favorite sub genre of yuri, and this was an absolute gem of a first chapter. I have no problem with them being BL fujoshi (don't like BL myself), although it is kinda weird in yuri, but whatever. I'm hoping for more of the same in upcoming chapters.
p.s. If you hate age gap don't respond pls (age gap haters are always somewhere lurking here in age gap works comments for some reason)

I thought this chapter was great too and was really surprised by all the whining when I got to the forum. The manga doesn't even show yaoi art from in-universe, which can't be said for other works featuring fujoshi.

Also, people who don't like age gap yuri are insane.

I think we got somathing mixed up there. In general the main audience for both yuri and yaoi are straight girls. It'saimed at them, because they are the biggest customer base and for Japanese girls yuri is not too extreme to read most of the time. I just straight up don't believer that non-hetero women outnumber straight girls in this case, because that's not what the magazines aim for.

The officially recognized, laser focus on one gender and age group is typical of manga magazines, but the focus on straight people is only an implicit one, as straight people are considered the normal, the default. Particularly in the case of yuri magazines, I don't see why the publisher's Ideal Customer is more important for us to recognize than the people who end up reading and caring about the stuff.

Whether you want to recognize them or put more importance on one or the other is not really relevant. As you said, the data is far from conclusive, but the intention of the advertising and sales departments are not. In sheer numbers it's really hard to deny their point either. There are just not enough lesbians/bis out there to honestly believe that they outnumber the straight reader base for something like this. Of course if you compare what straight girls read in the majority compared to what LGBT girls read, you will find that the percentages shift, but that is natural.
Of course that isn't even including the male reader base, which most likely also outnumbers non-hetero girls.

Yuri Hime does survey its audience, but they don't ask about their readers' sexuality (for better or worse). It doesn't seem like they're "aiming" for any gender or sexuality, just people who are interested in yuri (Yuri Hime S, the "For Him" spinoff that ended up being merged with YH, had about 40% female readers, which is a good example of how the official demographic should be taken with a grain of salt).

Naturally no magazine would shun or ignore their other sources of revenue. Having a target audience does not exclude other audiences. What you market to does not reflect entirely what you actually get. When you look at Shounen battle manga however, something aimed at boys, you will find that the majority there is exactly who it is advertised at. This goes for pretty much any genre.

Yuri is gay (hot take alert), so I think it's unfair to assume that most girls/women who read it and care about it are Totally Straight without any evidence, especially when the available data doesn't support that. It's not a competition, obviously, but it wouldn't be fair to dismiss the queer female readers as "not the real demographic" even if they were outnumbered by Totally Straight Women 2:1.

See, that is not exactly what I meant. Yuri is for everyone and of course lesbians would enjoy it more than straight romance or yaoi, as it literally represents their sexuality. I am just saying in sheer numbers, you will find straight girls are just more likely to buy a magazine than a tiny minority of people.

EDIT: I feel this is going really off-topic now, and you can get banned for that. Sooo... let's leave it at that.

last edited at Sep 12, 2019 6:06AM

^ I was just gonna say this lol. The exact same thing applies to anyone being a fan of yuri surely? are you saying us all loving and being fans of yuri is somehow dehumanising and fetishizing a minority unless we are lesbians? Because that certainly isnt how i think about it.

There's a difference between liking something and the kind of dehumanizing obsession I'm talking about. If you act something like the protagonist of Yuri Danshi then you're the yuri fan equivalent of what I'm criticizing.

It should be obvious that there are straight women reading yuri (and straight men reading yaoi) because there are more straight people than queer people.
But we shouldn't generalize about it because we don't know the sexual orientation of every reader and a lot of them don't talk about it or are still closeted.
Can we now talk about the manga please?

This chapter was very cute, I wonder if Sato is going to add a bit more of drama or it will continue as a full yuri comedy.

This "Credits: Page" is such a bad console port. KB shortcuts are not working, mouse clicks - not working either. Do the devs expect everyone to use a gamepad for this?

Unfortunately this is already ruined for me because one time I read a series of doujins with a girl that looked EXACTLY the same as our short haired MC here and I just cant disconnect the two AAAAAA

Unfortunately this is already ruined for me because one time I read a series of doujins with a girl that looked EXACTLY the same as our short haired MC here and I just cant disconnect the two AAAAAA

Oh come on. I guess you are unable to read ANY Mochi Au Lait stuff.

Unfortunately this is already ruined for me because one time I read a series of doujins with a girl that looked EXACTLY the same as our short haired MC here and I just cant disconnect the two AAAAAA

Oh come on. I guess you are unable to read ANY Mochi Au Lait stuff.

No you don't understand. It's not just a doujin-tier design, she looked literally exactly the same. Mochi's artstyle at least makes it pretty hard to connect it to any porn I've read thankfully.

Forgive me if I sound stupid. But what's BL?

Forgive me if I sound stupid. But what's BL?

Boys Love

I think this is the kind of Yuri I've been waiting for a lot of time... <3

Oh, this is fantastic. I love the set-up, and as both a creator of things with which I interact with fans, and a fan of artists I interact with myself, I really get both sides. Plus, the story just missed so strictly - in a good way. No 50+ chapter will they/won't they shit, even if it doesn't work out. Can't wait for more.

Edit: I didn't even realize this was Fragtime's Sato. Now I'm definitely sold on it.

last edited at Sep 12, 2019 12:37PM

Omg I'm hyped to see the next one

Omg I'm hyped to see the next one

IME a lot of WLW will read BL/yaoi stuff too because there is just SO MUCH MORE of it out there, and while it's not necessarily their personal flavor of gay, it's still GAY and not straight. Same goes for like, porn in general. Because lesbian porn (at least in the US) is almost 100% filmed with straight men/the straight male gaze in mind, so is... pretty cringe-y and not likable for gay ladies.

It's interesting to note that probably the biggest and most successful English-language BL/Yaoi 'zine, Shousetsu Bang*Bang is run by what is largely a bunch of lesbians (I know for a fact that two of the four core members are).

As to western porn, there are some really funny reaction videos of lesbians looking at "lesbian" porn for the first time and cringing at stuff like the long nails and such.

This looks like it'll be interesting. I'm surprised it's from Fragtime's author, though. lol
Never read of Fragtime but I've known about it for a long time. I wonder whether I should read the manga already or wait for the anime.

Also, is there's an empty speech bubble in page 30.

last edited at Sep 12, 2019 2:17PM

Ya know, I might be able to stomach fujoshi mangaka this time around. I usually see them as side characters in most yuri works. It was always a 'Meh'.. not really my thing but I'll just go along with it cause it's there but this is completely different now. I can't believe I'm typing this but I hope I get to see a gender swapped version of the main duo through the progression of this series.

last edited at Sep 12, 2019 2:24PM

fujoshit again

When will this fad end?
People read yuri for the cute girls doing cute stuff together and not for the cute girls talking about BL with each other.

You people will bitch about anything lmao

The fetishizing of queer people in fandom culture is one of its most off putting aspects and it's definitely something I tolerate rather than enjoy or want to see media about. Like, I enjoy this manga so far but I'd enjoy it more if it were about basically any other fandom niche.

It’s ironic to see a comment criticizing fetishization of queer people in agreement with one saying “yuri is about cute girls doing cute stuff together”

Also I don't really see them both being fujoshi to be that big of a deal, unless you really hate yaoi for some reason. The series will probably(hopefully) acknowledge himejoshi later on anyways.

The thing with fujoshi is that they can be rather extreme. (There is a reason the term means rotten).
Please don't mind if I have my doubts. I haven't seen himejoshi addressed properly in any manga before. At best there are avid yuri fans, but that is always disconnected from otaku culture or the term isn't even acknowledged.

I really don't understand why so many yuri fans are against yaoi

LIke I said in my previous post, most yuri fans in Japan are into both.
But if you are specifically in a yuri community you will have more hardliners who enjoy only one genre. I still see a lot of people on Dynasty who are totally fine with yaoi and even endorse it being released here.

Yaoi has a lot of downsides (like predatory dynamics, "yaoi hands", tiny head, ridiculous fetishization, complete misrepresentation of homosexual men in general and so on). But there is no genre without such flaws I would say. I won't make a difference between a yuri or yaoi rape doujin... they are both the worst.

But the stark truth is that fujoshis are the majority of female otaku. Another painful truth is that most Japanese girls who like yuri are straight girls and they tend to also like BL.

These are stereotypes, not truths, especially the latter claim! The little information that's available on the demographics of the yuri subculture (both in the "West" and in Japan) suggests that heterosexual women are outnumbered by non-heterosexual women. (Ex.) Unless the "most female yuri fans are straight fujoshi" argument has any supporting evidence, I don't think it's fair to take it as truth by default.

I think we got something mixed up there. In general the main audience for both yuri and yaoi are straight girls. It's aimed at them, because they are the biggest customer base and for Japanese girls yuri is not too extreme to read most of the time. I just straight up don't believe that non-hetero women outnumber straight girls in this case, because that's not what the magazines aim for.

Actually, there is also a large portion of yuri that is written for and read by a male audiences. That was basically what Yuri Hime S was all about. You can often tell which audience was being targeted by looking at the sort of works being published. Stories like Still Sick, or Bloom into You which are very character and story centric romances are geared more towards women where manga that are less concerned about the actual relationships and more geared towards fan service or cgdct are more likely to be aimed at males. Admittedly there is a ton of overlap but it's disingenuous to suggest there aren't yuri stories out there written for and read by what are basically gender inverted fujoshis.

IIRC even though Yuri Hime S was targeted at men it was still mainly purchased by women which is why it was discontinued, I think its more complicated than “cutesy yuri is for boys and deep yuri is for lesbians”