I’m watching this yaoi anime on Crunchyroll (finally, Yaoi on Crunchyroll!), Sekai Ichi Hatsukoi – World’s Greatest First Love, and I realized that in so many Yaoi anime and manga, the guys don’t seem to actually want to have sex, at least the ukes don’t. Why is that? Don’t all men want to have sex all the time? If so, shouldn’t it hold true that in our gay male stories, there’s lots of man sex and they’re loving it?
So, I was putting dishes away, because God knows I have nothing better to do on a Sunday morning;) and I’m thinking to myself about why we as straight women like this sort of thing. I mean, we must, right? Or why would the Yaoi powers that be put this stuff out? And why would we watch it so religiously?
In the typical Yaoi manga or anime, you have these two dudes that are attracted to each other, maybe even confess their love for each other, but invariably one chases after the other for sex (usually the seme), while the other runs from it (usually the uke). Then when the seme actually gets the uke, the uke does the, “Oh, stop… please stop”, thing while at the same time obviously getting off on what the seme’s doing.
My question is – could this be a hold over from the traditional romance story days when the heroine in our romance books loved, but hated, but didn’t want to tarnish her reputation by having sex, but got really hot and bothered by the hero? As women, we’re supposed to make guys chase us, guys we like, but we can’t show them we like them or we won’t get chased. Whew, what a wild game, huh? And what a mess… And this does resemble the typical Yaoi story arc, does it not? Hmmm…
Maybe in these stories, since they’re written largely for a straight female audience, this dynamic exists in order to give some sort of semblance of a traditional male/female role that women recognize immediately. And we eat it up, don’t we? It’s that whole forbidden thing. The “I want you, but I shouldn’t, can’t” thing. The whole reason why we love our Yaoi and M/M Romance – forbidden love.
And so the poor uke has to go on wanting sex with his seme, but pretending like he doesn’t. I wonder, what would happen if we made stories that were more true to gay male life? Would we still devour them so hungrily? What do you like?
And now, the trailer:
well fan girls will be fan girls, and the thing is, we want to see usually whats not so common in real life, the guys just get together and that’s it? It’s just so boring then! Although also like in Junjou Romantica, Sekai-ichi Hatsukoi has the same play out… kinda, we’ll watch it because we like to see the multiple get-together, issues and hold-backs of yaoi relationships, real life boys also aren’t as cute OwO
so to answer your question also, i guess because the younger ones are freaked out about relationships and following them, also the confusion of what they want doesn’t help either, especially when both the lovers are men! The older men just go along with their feelings because they know what they want and how they feel.
It’s kinda hard for my mind to wrap around if i think about it too! O_O
I don’t actually like the “No, no, stop” thing much. It’s okay the first time, but it goes on WAY too long (Junjou Romantica being one example that springs to mind). I suppose its purpose is to prolong the chase, but I find it a lazy plot device. Writers should find some other conflict in the relationship besides, “he’s still resisting,” because past a certain point in the story, it’s unrealistic and kind of annoying.
I don’t actually like the “No, no, stop” thing much. It’s okay the first time, but it goes on WAY too long (Junjou Romantica being one example that springs to mind). I suppose its purpose is to prolong the chase, but I find it a lazy plot device. Writers should find some other conflict in the relationship besides, “he’s still resisting,” because past a certain point in the story, it’s unrealistic and kind of annoying.
This comment has nothing to do with the post, sorry. It’s more like a personal comment. I’ve seem your age and it surprised me. I’m also a mature woman and I simply was about to give up yaoi because is considered competely innapropriate for my age. I was never hoping to find ‘adults’ who could understant my love for jrock, yaoi and anime. I’ve been treated like a kid for most of my past years, and frequentely being so mistrated that i chose to hide my opinions and was at the point of retiring to avoid disrespect to the things i like and recover myself reability as an adult.
I feel your pain… I have to admit I’m a bit guarded about my love of anime and all that goes along with it, unless I know the person I’m speaking to fairlly well. Hold your head up high, in my opinion, you just happen to like some of the best artwork, stories and music in the world. Hollywood knows this – why else would they keep copying Japanese anime? 🙂
hmmm thats tricky. You know I never really thought about it, maybe it allows us fan girls to get frustrated at the person and be like “you like him already”. Or maybe the author enjoys tormenting us fellow fan girls. who knows.