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Tag: yaoi anime

Famous Yaoi First Encounters – What’s Too Soon and What’s Too Late?

Yaoi Motivational Poster

So this blog post was inspired by this funny Yaoi motivational poster I found on DeviantArt: Yaoi Motivational Poster by SpirosDyingWish00

The poster made me think about all the standard, somewhat cliche first encounters we see in Yaoi – yes, the tripping into someone, the getting drunk, the angry slap followed by kiss, the OMG, you kissed me now I’m going to rape you. Most of which involve the two heros in a compromising close proximity to each other and the “aha!” moment. Oh, how we love these scenes, wait in high anticipation of them and squee with joy when they finally happen, LOL.

I suppose these things happen in a good het romance as well. So we’re following along on the same themes again as in het romances. I also suppose this begs the question -we’re all really pretty much the same when it comes to love then, no matter the gender, right?  And it’s always the discovery that the one dude loves the other dude and low and behold, the other one loves him back. If he didn’t, where would our love story be?

The build up to the love discovery is what’s most important for our first encounter. If we’ve seen a fair amount of each character sighing over the other one, arguing, denying any attraction, then wow, that first kiss is a doozy:) That’s called building the tension. It’s always hard as a writer to know when to let loose of the tension and have that first encounter. You don’t want to do it too soon before there’s a proper build up or that first kiss will hardly be noticed. On the other hand, I’ve read books where I’m more than half way through the book and the characters still haven’t had their first kiss. That makes me wonder if the story arc is only going to be about their first kiss and I get frustrated. And what I really hate? A story line that has the first encounter half way into the book and then, wham, some force takes them apart for a good portion of the book. When I read a romance, I want to read about a romance, dang it. I know each person has their own opinion on this depending on what gets them going. What do you like? What frustrates you in a Yaoi or M/M Romance story line?

Why do the Men in Yaoi not Want Sex?

Sakai Ichi Hatsukoi - World's Greatest First Love - YaoiI’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: