The word Yaoi (pronounced /jaoi/, sound like "Yah-Oh-ee" rather than "Yow-ee" or "Ya-oy", all three vowels are pronounced) was originally used to refer to fan manga (such as doujinshi) that focused on homosexual relationships between male characters, especially two bishōnen - the manga equivalent of slash. The Speech Assessment Methods Phonetic Alphabet (SAMPA) is a computer-readable phonetic script using 7-bit printable ASCII characters, based on the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). ... Rurouni Kenshin manga, volume 1 (English version) Manga (漫画) is the Japanese word for comics; outside of Japan, it usually refers specifically to Japanese comics. ... Dōjinshi (; also romanized as doujinshi) are Japanese comic books (manga), often drawn by amateurs rather than by professional artists. ... Homosexuality is a sexual orientation characterized by esthetic attraction, romantic love, or sexual desire exclusively for another of the same sex. ... Bishōnen (美少年. ... Slash fiction is fan fiction, describing gay pairings between media characters, often in explicit detail, and very frequently outside the canon of the source. ...

The term is an acronym derived from the Japanese phrase 「ヤマなし、オチなし、意味なし」 ( yama nashi, ochi nashi, imi nashi ), meaning "no climax, no resolution, no meaning." Its target audience, readership and creators are almost exclusively young to middle-age women. Acronyms and initialisms are abbreviations formed from the initial letter or letters of words, such as NATO and XHTML, and are pronounced in a way that is distinct from the full pronunciation of what the letters stand for. ...

A common reason as to why many females are attracted to yaoi is that it is said to be a means for females to fully enjoy romance without feeling pressure or competition from the presence of a romantic/sexual female character in the story, not necessarily because they are supporters of gay rights.

Nowadays, the term is often used in a general way to refer to male-male sexual or romantic content anywhere in the galaxy of anime, manga and fan fiction based on these; usually of a more hard-core nature than the now-obsolete shōnen-ai. Rurouni Kenshin manga, volume 1 (English version) Manga (漫画) is the Japanese word for comics; outside of Japan, it usually refers specifically to Japanese comics. ... Fan fiction (also spelled fanfiction and commonly abbreviated to fanfic) is fiction written by people who enjoy a film, novel, television show or other media work, using the characters and situations developed in it and developing new plots in which to use these characters. ... Shōnen-ai (少年愛 from 少年 shōnen young man + 愛 ai love) refers to anime or manga that deals with love between young men, especially of the bishonen variety. ...

The term "BL" (Boy's Love) is more often used in Japan than the term Yaoi. There exists a large mainstream market for Boys' Love comics in Japan, as well as a flourishing dōjinshi market. In recent years several popular Japanese BL works have been commercially translated and imported to English-speaking countries by companies such as Be Beautiful and Digital Manga Publishing. Currently-available works include Kazuma Kodaka's Kizuna, and Only the Ring Finger Knows by Satoru Kinnagi and Hotaru Odagiri. Whether such works will have comparable poplarity in English-speaking countries remains to be seen. Dōjinshi (; also romanized as doujinshi) are self-published Japanese works, including but not limited to comic books ( manga), novels, fan guides, art collections, and games. ...

Over the years, gay-themed comic strips inspired by and referred to as yaoi have been adapted as a sub-culture in North America, with writings and art displayed on websites devoted to it. Notable American yaoi comics include the web comic Boy Meets Boy by K. Sandra Fuhr, hosted on Keenspot. Web comics are comics that are available on the web. ... Boy Meets Boy is a yaoi web comic by K. Sandra Fuhr. ... Keenspot (short for KeenSpot Entertainment) is the largest single publisher of exclusive webcomics on the Internet. ...

Some common subjects of the American yaoi subculture include the boys of Trigun, Cardcaptor Sakura, Final Fantasy, Gravitation, Gundam Wing, Naruto, Prince of Tennis, Weiss Kreuz, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and Yu Yu Hakusho. Generally speaking, if a series features attractive male characters, it will attract yaoi fans. Thus a large amount actually comes from male-oriented shounen & seinen demographics. This sometimes causes conflict because fanboys are, stereotypically, intensely homophobic and dislike such themes. For example, one resistive force against the yaoi culture, surprisingly, comes not from conservatives but from fans of UC Gundam (fans of original Gundam), which had also self acclaimed as "UC elitist". Trigun manga, volume 1 (English version) Trigun (トライガン) is a 26-episode Anime series which originally aired in 1998 in Japan. ... Cardcaptor Sakura the movie DVD cover Cardcaptor Sakura (カードキャプターさくら kādo kyaputā sakura), also known as Card Captor Sakura (with the space) and often abbreviated to CCS, is a manga series from the well_known all_women artist team CLAMP. It is also an anime show (1998_2000) created from the manga, consisting of... Final Fantasy (Japanese: ファイナルファンタジー Fainaru Fantajii) is a popular series of role-playing video games produced by Square Co. ... Gravitation (グラビテーション) is a shōnen-ai manga and anime series. ... New Mobile Report Gundam W (also known as Mobile Suit Gundam Wing) is a televised Anime series, which ran for 49 episodes beginning in 1995. ... Haruno Sakura, Uzumaki Naruto, and Uchiha Sasuke with the logo of the series they star in. ... The Prince of Tennis (テニスの王子様 Tennis no Ōjisama) is one of the most popular manga and anime titles in Japan. ... Weiß Kreuz (ヴァイスクロイツ Vaisu Kuroitsu, German for white cross), released in the United States as Knight Hunters, is an anime about four assassins that work in a flower shop. ... Yu-Gi-Oh! manga volume 1 (English version) Yu-Gi-Oh! (遊☆戯☆王 yūgiō, Japanese for King of Games) is a popular Japanese anime and manga franchise from Kazuki Takahashi that mainly involves characters who play a card game called Duel Monsters (originally called Magic and Wizards (M&W... YuYu Hakusho logo (English manga) YuYu Hakusho (幽★遊★白書 YūYū Hakusho, literally The Playful Ghost White Paper, meaning Ghost Files/Poltergeist Report) is a manga in Shonen Jump magazine and an anime series by Yoshihiro Togashi. ... Bishōnen (美少年. ... Shōnen (少年), commonly spelled shounen, is a Japanese word usually translated as young boy, although it is commonly used to refer to males of up to high-school age as well. ... Seinen (Japanese: 青年) is a subset of anime or manga that is generally targeted at a 18 - 25 year old male audience, but the audience can be much older with some comics aimed at businessmen well into their 40s. ... Gundam is a collective term for the Universal Century (UC) series like Mobile Suit Gundam and series in alternative timelines, such as Gundam Wing, made by Sunrise Inc. ...

See also

• "Shipping"
• lemon
• yuri
• shota-con
• yaoi games
• slash fiction
• shōnen-ai
• dōjinshi
• Mori Mari
• Boy's Love

Shipping is a general term for emotional and/or intellectual involvement with the ongoing development of romance in a work of fiction. ... Lemon is a term used in reference to anime and manga, especially fanfiction, to describe material with explicit sexual content, such as hentai, yaoi, and yuri. ... For other meanings of Yuri, see Yuri (disambiguation). ... Shotacon (ショタコン,ショタ) is a japanese and animanga term for a sexual complex where an adult, usually male, is attracted to an underage boy. ... Yaoi games, also called boys love games, usually refer to video or computer games that have a large degree of homosexual pornographic sexual animation or graphics within (see hentai). ... Slash fiction is fan fiction, describing gay pairings between media characters, often in explicit detail, and very frequently outside the canon of the source. ... Shōnen-ai (少年愛 from 少年 shōnen young man + 愛 ai love) refers to anime or manga that deals with love between young men, especially of the bishonen variety. ... Dōjinshi (; also romanized as doujinshi) are self-published Japanese works, including but not limited to comic books ( manga), novels, fan guides, art collections, and games. ...

External links

• Yaoicon (http://www.yaoicon.com)
• Penny Arcade on Yaoi (http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2005-04-11)
• Glossary defining Yaoi and other related terms (http://www.aestheticism.com/visitors/reference/aestheticism.htm)