Otaku Champloo

Tag: 801

  • Fujojocast #8: 801 Special, Beautiful Things in BL

    Busamen danshi

    Hey fujojo! Happy Yaoi no Hi!

    As always, I wish you all the best when it comes to BL! It’s been a good year for BL with many exciting titles released in English, Japanese, and online! But as BL fans, we’re probably familiar with a lot of criticism with regards to our beloved genre. We’ve seen it here and there how BL is unsophisticated because it’s all about sex. Sometimes, we as readers are also seen as virginal women who have no critical thought because we enjoy shameless boy bonking. And the list goes on and on and it even spreads within the community. We are critical of what is good and in the eyes of many, BL is not good.

    Somehow, that got me thinking. Actually, Alan McKee’s book called Beautiful Things in Popular Culture made me think of the situation of BL and how popular culture’s position in the grand scheme of things is similar to BL’s position in the grand scheme of manga. So I got some of my closest fujoshi friends, Ami of Hazukashii kedo and Airin, and we discussed these criticisms in BL and discover if Boys Love has more to say than boy bonking. We’re discussing the Beautiful Things in BL and hopefully you can join us in this discussion through the comments on what you think makes beautiful BL.

    So for those who will be listening, you might want to think about the following questions. These are the same questions I raised to Airin and Ami and let’s see if we all thought of the same thing.

    1.) Think of a BL title that you believe is beautiful. If you can’t think of a title, think of the best BL author out there. if that’s still hard, just think what makes you want to keep a title in your shelf or give it away?
    2.) Why do you think this title is beautiful? What are the criterias in which you name this title as the best or beautiful? Do you use this criteria for other titles?
    3.) How does your selection fare with other fans? Is it just as popular?
    4.) Do you think that BL fans also have particular criteria in selecting some of the most popular titles in Japan and outside of Japan?
    5.) Do you think that our perspective/position as foreign fans change our appreciation of BL? Do we consume BL as the Japanese do? Or are we different?
    6.) What are the things that makes BL reading shameful to you?

    As much as you’d love to listen to our responses, I’d also love to hear your answers to these questions too! Yaoi no Hi is a good day to reflect on the genre that we love and why we continue to love this genre.

    Podcast: Play in new window | Download

    OP/EP Music: Odore, Amars from the Kuragehime Soundtrack

    Like what you heard? Subscribe to Fujojocast in itunes or our RSS feed

  • #801MMF: The Fujoshi Bible

    In Eureka’s Fujoshi Manga Compendium, there’s this interesting section where they list down the things a fujoshi must read.　They called it the Fujoshi Manga Bible.  I thought it’d be best to share the list down here for fujoshi to check what these women think are titles that we fujojos must read. I’ll also try to append what’s available in English!

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  • #801MMF Giveaway No. 1: We want new webcomics!

    I’ve done this last year and we’re doing this again! 😀

    Last year was so much fun and with all your recs, all of us spent some sweet time reading those awesome BL recs.

    But we know that that there’s more out there. And there’s more that we haven’t read. As such, I’m putting up the polls again and pooling all your powers so that we can make a 2013 BL Webcomic Rec List! 😀

    How to join?

    Simply reply in the comments section below or tweet @khursten in twitter with the hashtag #801BLwebrec. You can also use the same hashtag in tumblr (or you can reblog my tumblr post with your answer) 

    Like last year,  I’ll be giving away a copy of my favorite comic from last year’s list: Tripping Over You’s The Blue Book & Love Bites to a randomly selected contributor to this list! The contributor can write down as many webcomics as he/she likes however he/she will only receive 1 entry in the raffle. 

    The contest will run from today, 24 July 2013 until 5 August 2013 at 12:00 a.m. (EST/NEW York). That would probably be 2 p.m. in Sydney on 6 August or 12 p.m. in Manila.

    So bring in your recs! Make sure that they haven’t been recc’d before! Check the previous list!

  • 801 MMF: A Fujojo Fiyaysta!

    801. Yaoi. Boy’s Love. Tanbi. Shounen-Ai. BL. Pr0n. 

    Call it whatever you want.

    Fujoshi. Fudanshi. Fujojo.

    Call us whatever you want.

    We probably wouldn’t care because all we know is that 8/01 is our special day and here in Otaku Champloo we’ll be celebrating a fiesta for what we fujoshi love: Boy’s Love manga.

    From 8/01 until 8/10 (OMG YES!) Otaku Champloo will be celebrating Boy’s Love manga with all you fujojos and curious bypassers out there. For ten days (FO REALS!), we’ll be talking about those comics where boys who like boys who do boys like they’re girls or like boys! We’ll be talking about our favorite titles, our favorite ships, and our favorite kinks.

    The 801 MMF will be a celebration of a genre that has been around for forty years and has given countless of women thousands of feels which eventually transformed manga conventions by producing works that challenge Japanese concepts of aesthetics, fiction, and sexuality.

    It’s an exciting time to be a fujoshi! So if you have some thoughts and feels about Boy’s Love, feel free to join us in the 801 MMF!

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  • [801] And so the pr0n goes to….

    So before I make the reveal on this, I first want to thank the following lovely ladies who replied to my call for BL Webcomics on time (meaning before 3 PM NY/Easter Time – 3 AM in Manila): Lamborg (@neuromantically),  Jocelyne Allen (@brainvsbook),  Melinda (@mbeasi),  Ellestrois (tumblr), Kimiko (@ShroudedDancer), Cathe/Tiny Taikodrum (tumblr), Elibard/Corallini (tumblr), Anne Lee (@apricotsushi). Thanks to all of you, we made an awesome list and more and more people are even suggesting that I should look into other titles!

    At the same time, I want to thank those who gave their recs much later than the contest time: fishydotlove (tumblr), montflorit (tumblr), tachixneko (tumblr), @Oshioki_koneko, @Kanzen_Ron. Do know that recs came in time and I will actually append Parallet in a few minutes!

    So ladies, without your efforts we probably would be in the dark as to where we will turn for our BL webcomics. And for those who are just chiming in, you might as well bookmark that list because I’ll try to update that post for any recommendations. Maybe I’ll be doing this as a yearly thing.

    Anyhu, on to the winner (the first girl in the randomized list as randomized by Random.org):

    So congratulations to @neuromantically!! I’ll probably be calling you or DMing you in a minute to arrange how we’re going to bring your bacon hoem!

    Again! Thank you so much for all your recs and keep on recommending BL webcomics you’ve been reading online!

  • Spotlight (801 Special): Est Em

    Spotlight (801 Special): Est Em

    I have this horrible habit of figuring out the lives of people I see when I’m traveling. I love to do this in airports since people hold many stories in such a small space.

    A woman walks by, clutching her Berkin bag. Probably a trophy wife of some Asian business magnate and she just arrived from shopping trip in New York. A tall lean guy with long legs, tattered jeans, and a Real Madrid jersey felt like a backpacker on his way home. If he had the hipster glasses, it’s either his boyfriend’s jersey or just something he wore to impress someone.

    Sometimes there are people who become alive just by what they wear. A Spanish guy in a plain white shirt and fitted jeans walks to a coffeeshop. He sits cross legged, reading the newspaper he got from the plane, sipping his coffee with such elegance. God knows why my eyes are drawn to him, but in my head, that man must have been a matador once. Or a painter. Probably the hero of an Est Em novel.

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  • [801] The Ultimate BL Webcomic Rec List

    Can you believe that Boy’s Love comics has been around for more than 40 years?

    One would think that Shounen Ai, Yaoi, Boy’s Love is just a passing fancy among girls but its continued influence not only in Japanese otaku subculture but in the global subculture shows the power of the genre.

    Yes. Yaoi is all over the globe. There’s a book on Boy’s Love that speaks about Yaoi fans in Indonesia, Germany, Italy, and Chine. And there are scholars in Japan who study other fujoshi subcultures in the Philippines and even Latin America. The internet has made yaoi accessible and day by day, girls like you and me become aware of their fujoshi goggles.

    In the last few years I’ve become more and more aware of emerging BL artists outside of Japan. What was once amateur efforts in writing BL have eventually involved in a BL that’s quite mature and very different from Japan’s. It’s fantastic how many of these artists are yet unpublished and find the internet as the space for their works. If I had money, I’d get these artist to publish in an anthology because they all deserve a shot in getting their stories more available to the public.

    To pull this list of BL Webcomics, I asked fujojos and fudanshis to give me their recs for a prize! Many gave the same recs which proves that there are those who have made a name out there. The prize I’m giving away is also from an artist who made a name drawing BL for Suikoden and Devil May Cry, Jo Chen. In These Words was a comic she drew for her doujin circle Guilt|Pleasure. Initially a webcomic, Guilt|Pleasure’s efforts eventually gave them enough fan base and chapters to make a volume before it was published by DMP and now published in Japan under Libre’s BeBoy Gold. Isn’t that fantastic?

    But I’m quite sure outside of here there are many BL webcomics online. Here are your recommendations (in alphabetical order)!

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