More thoughts on legitimate ero’s commercial failure, on treating yaoi fans as indignant children, more NHK reviews

I’ve been doing more thinking on the question of yaoi versus ero-manga that was first posed by Ms. Corlath, then MangaBlog.  I wrote an essay that’s a confluence of internet conspiracies, angry tirades against the system, biased polemics without evidence, and pseudo-science jabberwocky.  Intardweb gold, in other words.

But I just can’t post any of my conclusions, because no matter what, they’ll end up sounding like I pulled them straight out of my nether regions… and that’s pretty close to the truth.  Which leads me to my next post…

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The Beat has her thoughts on the recent yaoi article which received generally high marks around the blogs, spending a little time on the short psychoanalytical portion of the article that seems to be requisite for all mainstream news on yaoi manga.

The following screed is not in direct response to Heidi’s post or the specific article, which I think is quite well done; rather it gave me the urge to address the overall tone that permeates much of mainstream media on the subject of yaoi…

Now, I’m not necessarily against serious research into why girls are turning to yaoi in droves, nor do I discount that there are benefits to be had by identifying the universal qualities of yaoi that make it so appealling to its fans… but isn’t everyone bored by this already?  Yaoicon is in its sixth iteration, and still the majority of mainstream reporting obsess over finding a justification for yaoi.  Reporters grill attendees for an answer like an angry schoolmaster corraling unruly children at the end of recess, refusing to see the phenomenon as a matter of taste, desperately looking for signs of sinister witchcraft that aren’t there to make sense of something they simply cannot accept at face value.

Taste does not need to be explained, hence the saying that there is no accounting for it.  Is there any logic to asking someone why he may prefer country music to rap?  Malt over a milkshake?  Blue instead of yellow?  It’s a futile exercise in tedium, placing a microscope to a macrocosmic world.  The tendency of some reporters to focus solely on every ancilliary aspect of yaoi… the romance, the art style, the storytelling… betrays a shame which blinds them to what’s plainly in sight… the nubile bodies intertwined and writhing ecstatically in mid-passion.

For once, I’d like to see an academic paper truely focusing on the subject of yaoi – its birth in doujinshi, its stylistic heritage, the most influential magazines and creators throughout its history – rather than more of the same anecdotal psychobabble that has been repeated ad nauseum.  Do fans really need to see its alluring mystique destroyed through having all of its aspects compartmentalized and clinically defined as if it were some kind of paraphilia psychosis?  To the readers of yaoi, please keep this in mind… you are not children, and you have no obligation to justify your passions to anyone else, only to express them as honestly as you please*.  If the sex is what endears yaoi to you, feel no guilt.  Should you ever come across a journalist asking you to explain why you could possibly like that book with two gay men making out on the cover, don’t say a word and just hand him or her a copy.  If they like it, they’ll understand.  If they feel only revulsion, then they will never get it.

(*Except you shota fans.  Keep that to yourselves for now.)

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Jack Tse at MangaCast also reviews NHK, the “XXX version of Genshiken.”  It cracks him up, which means it’s already too late for him to return to normal society.