Thoughts on yaoi fangirls: Inspired by Genshiken #5
Posted on | November 20, 2007 | 20 Comments |
| I just love her “Tenma hair” (Or Mahoro-hair if you like – depends on how far back you want to go ^_^)
Well, after many recommendations to see episode 5 of the new season of Genshiken, love and I thoroughly enjoyed it last night (Again). I think Ogiue has to be everyone’s new favourite character by far (probably because they spent the whole of the first season developing the other characters, the only new characters in the second season are Ogiue – the repressed yaoi fangirl, and that other annoying one who is not worth even remembering the name of. Oh yeah, Kucchi or something. And we wouldn’t want to spend significant amounts of screen time developing him, do we?
Ogiue for some reason thinks in a country accent (I can only assume that she’s repressed her accent since coming to the city. Just like how Margaret Thatcher thinks in Yorkshire) but speaks in a usual Tokyo Japanese. Basically, she is like a repressed Ohno whose mind is probably a lot more dirty and twisted but ends up shouting that she hates the people that she is scared of becoming like. Love and I have a theory that she’s probably into more twisted things than Ohno. Basically, since Ohno is very forward about what she likes it’s easy to think that she has more eclectic tastes than in fact she has. Ogiue on the other hand keeps all her fetishes under wraps, so there’s no knowing what lurks beneath that sullen exterior. Felching? Urethral penetration? All-yaoi scat? Daisychaining? All in a days thought for our diminuitive heroine.
I think love and I are probably the pitomy of “you’ve got to look out for the quiet ones”
So basically, episode 5 was Ogiue’s mind randomly putting all the men in Genshiken in various stereotypical yaoi storylines and thinking about drawing a doujinshi about it all with a rather complex triangle about the dashingly bishounen Sasahara and Madarame with the scarily muscular Tanaka as the repressed seme with a trophy fiancee and Kohsaka as the spiteful boy-toy.
It’s made me wonder about the differences between yaoi fangirls and yuri fanboys…
I mean, if Ogiue is to be believed then yaoi fangirls are fairly serious about their obsession such that it even permeates into everyday life. Imagining yaoi pairings amongst your friends is the sign of a true yaoi fangirl; after all, through rose tinted glasses all men are just repressing their bisexuality and are just yearning to get inside each other’s silk boxers. It is a strange thought perhaps, since by means of evolutionary competition, homophobia or just plain ugliness, men are just that little bit more unlikely to be closet bisexuals than women. In massive contrast, of course, most yuri fanboys just look at yuri pairings in anime and think “wow, hawt.” and just get back to their everyday life.
I don’t, of course, but then I am the exception to every rule. Although I’ve never tried to imagine girls I know in a lily-scented embrace…and most yuri fans are just more “visually stimulated” kind of guys. (i.e. Yay! Porns!)
Perhaps we could draw some parallels between the true yuri fanbase to the yaoi fangirls. Perhaps it is the difference in proportion between the casual and serious fans of each that really draws the difference. Yuri it seems, attracts a greater casual fanbase of typical men whereas yaoi doesn’t seem to foster the same general feelings of hawtness amongst the great proportion of girls. In a scientific viewpoint; if we assume that there is a set amount of yuri and yaoi appreciation that is split between all the fans of each, then it is obvious to me that it would be more concentrated in the yaoi fangirls which are fewer in number and have less casual fans than the yuri fanboys and girls.
And so at the end of the day human evolution throws up the Fat Yaoi Fangirl (case in point – the girl that unwittingly ends up following Ogiue around the Winter Comike in episode 6) NOt only a great purveyor of the less shapely and modestly breasted of doujinshi but also a rabid fanfiction author, budding yaoi artist and avid consumer of Benzyl peroxide cream for severe back-ne. Proof of the pudding is shown by the congregation of said FYFs together and the formation of yaoi fanclubs whereas the por yuri pairings have few to fight their battles.
Strange wonder, then, that in most other countries, lesbian pornography far outweighs man-love to the extent of becoming almost strange not to have it in films.
Perhaps it is the familiarity and almost ordinary sight of borderline yuri in general anime that has become its downfall. For sure girl-girl pairings appeal to most men; probably a greater proportion than that of women that enjoy yaoi; but in a world of cute moe girls and osasanajimi, rather-too-close-girlfriends are just another weapon in the moe arsenal and men just don’t seem to have the depth to want any more out of the relationship than a few fanservice shots and perhaps a forehead kiss. Yaoi, on the other hand, remains niche and fosters so much rabid anxiety in its fans that unlike its much prettier rival, it’s almost elevated to the level of a new culture.
Let the world know, everyone. Yuri needs more attention or risk being unwittingly integrated into the increasingly cutesy and breightly coloured animated media until it befomes as common place as bakunyuu-aliens, humanoid robots who can shoot beams from their foreheads and Kyoto Animations of Key H-games.
Yuri is for life. Not just for fanservice.
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November 21st, 2007 @ 1:34 am
I’m a yaoi fangirl (though not that fat…) and I don’t actually imagine any male friends doing each other. Mainly because they are too ugly to imagine that. But that’s beside to point. I agree. I’d say yuri is pretty common place. It’s thrown about in tons of anime, while yaoi is something that is always pretty rare. That is to me why fangirls latch on to any crumb they get. There was even some yuri fanservice in Clannad recently. There was Simoun (while not yuri, it was yuri), Strawberry Panic and others. Those are always pretty popular. Yaoi anime like Sukisyo and others aren’t talked about, are usually horrible and are shoved off to the corner of the dark depths of aarinfantasy. There are way more yuri anime then yaoi anime. So what more do you want? I’m not too sure most girls are more likely to be bisexual either. More girls are likely to play at being bisexual for street cred or whateve.r
November 21st, 2007 @ 4:46 am
Hm, that’s an interesting point. Actually, I’ve always wondered why girls love Yaoi so darn much. Being a girl that has no interest in the genre, I went ahead and asked some of my friends who are fans. The general consensus is this:
-The guys look all cuddly and bishie
-They have twisted soap opera plots [and who doesn't love soaps?]
-The boys have FEELINGS. They cry, they love, they etc etc…apparently non Yaoi guys are too gruff.
-They are dark and emo, or they are too cute to touch.
I think the general idea is that the guys in Yaoi are always swept up into an emotional torrential affair. Apparently it’s this affair bit that has the girls swooning. That and the bishi part.
I for one do not see any appeal in watching stories about two guys, but that’s just me. I prefer girls in my stories. Girls are ugles. Boys are not.
Cheers
November 21st, 2007 @ 5:38 am
@anne: “I’m a yaoi fangirl (though not that fat…) and I don’t actually imagine any male friends doing each other. Mainly because they are too ugly to imagine that.”
In Genshiken 5, Ogiue’s fantasy was unrealistically spectacular. Each of the ordinary men was incredibly handsome, with the fattest dudes becoming buff and muscular.
However, I’m not sure it’s possible to do something like that in real life. How do you transform one of your plain-looking friends into a knockout?
In any case, yuri is just becoming another cog in the moé machine. It’s clearly a fantasy play, since real life lesbians aren’t usually too glamourous, but it will soon be another vanilla element in animé. Seeing Miu kiss Chika (ON THE LIPS) in the last Ichigo Mashimaro OVA made me do a double take—partially because it was hawt, but mostly because its inclusion made me realise that yuri seemed to be on its way to becoming… trivial.
November 21st, 2007 @ 8:33 am
You all definitely have a point when you say that yuri seems to be becoming another “cog in the moe machine” (great phrase), an “oh by the way” inclusion because there are almost certain to be guys out there who get off on yuri as much as there are guys enjoying the inclusion on meganekko or whatever.
The problem, from our point of view, is that this kind of service yuri isn’t really what we’re after at all. It’s an afterthought, and hardly ever leads to anything. We might get a lesbian (or even two! control yourselves!) included in the ensemble, but if you’re looking for a yuri lead, you’re going to have to look long and hard. I think you can count genuinely yuri series on the fingers of one hand. Honestly, let’s have less girls randomly draping themselves on each other, and actually get some *relationships* going on. I’m definitely getting behind your campaign, Mr. Yuribou!
On yaoi – yeah, I’m a not-into-yaoi girl as well. I don’t actively dislike it, it just doesn’t interest me. I am rather puzzled by the whole yaoi fandom situation though, since by the way everyone talks, it seems to be endemic to anime fandom, yet I think I’ve only ever been exposed to one yaoi anime. Are they hidden away? Are they all porn? If the fandom is so large and vocal, why the lack of official material? Or is the point that it’s all unofficial – doujinshi and fanfics?
November 21st, 2007 @ 11:27 am
Hear hear! I agree that most yuri nowadays is pretty shallow. I believe that yuri is actually suffering from much the same problem as yaoi, only the results are different due to the circumstances. Both seem to have followers searching for deeper relationships and such, it’s just that the roadblocks are different. For yaoi, the fanbase is rather evident; few do not know what the term “yaoi fangirl” entails. However, it appears to be a rather specific genre with limited appeal, sort of like a fetish, and thus relevant material, while existent, may be hard to find. Think oasis in desert. Good luck getting there without GPS. Yuri, on the other hand, has a much larger audience. While a counterpart to the yaoi fanbase exists (the visitors of this website make good examples), it is swamped by the majority that desires fluff and no more, and the content suffers accordingly. In this case the infamous needle(s) in the haystack example comes to mind. Finding the haystack is easy, but separating the needles from the straw is another matter entirely. Makes you wish you had a magnet doesn’t it?
November 21st, 2007 @ 12:39 pm
I’m glad so many people seem to agree with me on this issue…As to where all the yaoi ends up – I agree that most of it is fan-made doujinshi, but there are also a fair few yaoi only mangas out there, such as the classic “FAKE” and various others (look for the two men in a clinch on the front cover)
Wish I could say the same for yuri. Come on Strawberry Panic V1 ^_^
November 21st, 2007 @ 7:31 pm
I’m a fat yaoi fangirl with mildly bad acne! T_T
More importantly, though, from my modest experience of Yaoi and Yuri, they’re on an equal basis among my RPgroup. Hell, our boys RP Yaoi, and the lovley girl who I do most of my pairing RP with is always looking for good yuri couples with me.
And someone mentioned Strawberry Panic and Sukisho. I’m having a hard time likeing Sukisho AND Strawberry Panic was horribly disapointing for me (not to mention poor Yaya reminds me of myself).
Bah, I don’t know if that was a very good reply to this, sorr if I wasn’t quite on topic. x3;;
November 22nd, 2007 @ 7:54 am
Yeah, but imho, Yuribou, Strawberry Panic was absolutely horrible. It did not have anything original in it at all.
…
That does NOT mean, however, that I didn’t enjoy for its own trashy merits. I would be lying if I didn’t say I loved it. I’m just saying there is better out there, just harder to find.
In any case, I’ll go back to the whole ‘Yaoi’ bit.
I regularly frequent a comic book shop that knows that Yaoi is a huge business, and so they have an entire corner of their store dedicated to such stuff. I’m talking manga, DVD’s, artbooks, etc etc–and this isn’t doujin stuff, this is official stuff. So I know there is tons of the material there.
On the other hand, the same store does not have a ‘Yuri’ section at all. Then again, if you look around at the various manga/comic covers, alot of them have girls draped over other girls. This brings it back to what MegaVolt said earlier- it’s just becoming ‘fantasy play’.
This is good or bad, I wouldn’t know.
November 22nd, 2007 @ 9:27 am
While the phrase “fat yaoi fangirl” is funny, stereotyping people is not a good thing.
November 22nd, 2007 @ 8:30 pm
Squids – good to hear from you! Interesting to hear that there are similar yuri fangirls existant. When you say RP do you mean “role play” or “real life pairing”?
Incidentally, I don’t agree with the term FYF – I myself am a TYF (thin yuri fanboy). Just for your information…
November 23rd, 2007 @ 5:50 am
I mean Role Play. Though as of late, we’ve been pairing, amusingly enough. XD;
I am also determined to lose weight. *resolute*
(So happy to find a Yuri-centric website…
November 23rd, 2007 @ 10:07 am
I’m a mildly-overweight yaoi fangirl with no achne. Hope somebody enjoys my longwinded, insomnia-influenced rambling :)
I’ll admit to having written one yaoi fanfic, and done a couple of half-finished yaoi sketches. That’s about it.
I don’t think it’s fair to interpet the actions of a character in a show as representative of what real people with similar interests do, in this case. It would be very natural to have Ogiue doing that in order to show the extent of her yaoi-loving traits, rather than to illustrate that that is how yaoi fangirls think. I’ve never thought about anyone I know in real life that way, and I’m pretty sure it’s not very common amongst other fangirls.
I think that yaoi-fangirlism is less widespread than yuri-fanboyism largely due to cultural mindframes, lack of exposure and material. It’s pretty acceptable for men to enjoy watching two girls, there’s heaps of, it, and the common hormone filled guy is going to come across it a fair bit, right? But yaoi? no. In my case, I found yaoi a complete turn-off at first, but after stumbling over it again and again, it first became intrigueing, then definitely attractive.
I have a few ideas on what factors make yaoi appealing to fangirls such as myself.
-in fanfics, our favourite bishounen undergo character development, while showing emotions- and skin :p exactly what a fangirl wants to see from characters, and in real life.
-there’s usualy a disctinctive seme/uke relationship, and a man penetrating another man is conceptually a very nice parallel of heterosexual sex. It can become preferable to replace the often annoying, often dumb, often with better body than us girl with a pretty bishounen to ogle instead.
Bah. that’s enough out me. I’m sleepy now :)
November 23rd, 2007 @ 12:51 pm
This is the first time when yuribou made an article which attracts more yaoi fans than the yuri ones.
November 25th, 2007 @ 12:47 am
This kinda reminds me about what happends at my all girl school. One of my friends is a hardcore yaoitard, while im repressing the fact that I’m extremely weak for yuri…ESPECIALLY KONOSETSU AND SHIZNAT!!!
November 25th, 2007 @ 12:51 am
I’m on a crusade to make it so people accept the fact that several female otaku (including myself) are susceptible and absolutely love hawt yuri secks!!!!
November 25th, 2007 @ 12:08 pm
Within a few manga shops I have visited Yaoi tends to be separated from the rest, in it’s own little ‘Yaoi section’ yet the few yuri titles appear to be intermingled. Is this because they don’t want the poor men to stumble accidentally across Yaoi? Or because they want to make it chear to the fangirls (YAOI IS HERE) … hmm… also, in Japan there are a heap of stores devoted to Yaoi (or at least an entire floor) – I found many by accident while in Tokyo and needless to say I was a happy girl!
Personally, I’m a much larger fan of shounen-ai than I am of hardcore Yaoi – I think I’m just a sucker for the cute and the fluff with a little bit of sexy thrown in for good measure. Sukisho was great – two cute guys who have sexy (and very horny) alter-egos who they can’t control the appearance of? Win.
Although that said… I would’t say no to reading more Love Mode =D
November 27th, 2007 @ 4:33 am
Hmmm… is Yuribou’s readership predominantly female, or just the commenters? This may require some investigation.
December 13th, 2007 @ 2:50 am
A bit off topic but someone requested me to draw a shoujo ai picture and even though I’m not into that stuff, I know that you are, so I figured I’d share the finished product with you:
http://hinan0.deviantart.com/art/Thanks-for-133-333-hits-71982875
December 13th, 2007 @ 3:37 pm
Awesomeness – Thank you Hinano. For information for those of you who are wondering, it’s a kiriban picture of a Konoka/Setsuna nature. And it’s very pretty.
January 22nd, 2008 @ 10:05 pm
Old Post is old, oh well.
Stereotyping people is rude. It’s just as me saying all yuri fans are obese, nerdy momma’s boys who live in the basement.
But I’m not.
Female readers are more prone to Yaoi sometimes because like Satoru Kannagi [writer of Only the Ring Finger Knows] said; when there is a female, they feel a bit jealous, but with two boys; they don’t feel as jealous.
You know what? Some yaoi fans have a hard time too. I’m fucking sick of people shoving their god-awful mary-sue OCs into fanfiction. AND NO I DON’T MEAN NON-CANON PAIRINGS. I DON’T MEAN SOMETHING STUPID LIKE NARUTO/SASUKE OR WHATEVER I MEAN ACTUAL PAIRINGS, LIKE YORU/RAN.