I don’t know the two you mentioned, but if they’re that good I hope someone picks them up. :)

I wonder if English publishers are wary of licensing them because the art is not nearly as pretty, so readers used to shoujo might be turned off.

Actually, the reason why josei doesn’t get licensed much in North America is because it just doesn’t sell well. Companies have tried and tried again and again and with the exception of Nana, it always flounders. My editor friend at TOKYOPOP says that josei does well in Europe though. It just might be a matter of hitting the market at the right time and here in the US, we just haven’t hit that sweet spot yet.

I wonder if English publishers are wary of licensing them because the art is not nearly as pretty, so readers used to shoujo might be turned off. Lots of people like Honey and Clover, which I haven’t read but seems like a cute ensemble manga. It’s kind of in between shoujo and josei…

Which is, honestly, my reaction to the first chapter of The Finder series. That series is getting better, and love is subtly coming into play now as it moves into the 5th volume. Yamane actually mentioned the “L” word, albeit only in cover copy so far. But I find I can forgive a lot when that happens.

I guess I agree with Hannah. :) I too disliked Selfish Love, more because there just weren’t any characters I liked. And while I generally like Motoni Modoru I didn’t enjoy Poison Cherry Drive. Japanese humor is very hit or miss with me, and that missed. Lovely Sick was interesting as a character study of a sick manipulative bastard and his victim, but like the other two gave me no pleasure emotionally in reading it and I found it distasteful overall. They were not romantic to me in the least, so those are three titles I’d recommend anyone interested in romance skip as well.

But really, there are a lot fewer of those than what’s out there that’s good, and I hope to use my reviews here to bring the better ones to people’s attention as the romances they are and get them to give it a shot. I’ve already ventured there with Ichigenme, and I have a number of others lined up.

About the josei, you know, I’ve enjoyed some titles like NANA and Tramps likes Us, but others like Happy Mania leave me cold. Many of the others I’ve managed to find seem to think for adults, romance equals a fleeting happiness but be prepared to kiss it goodbye. That’s anathema to the romance genre, defined as it is by its happy endings. Honestly, it’s why I stick with BL for romance for the most part. But I will try them so I can bring the romances among them to the attention of the people here.

I got into manga because I wanted to find an alternative to the Western romance novel, which I felt was growing stale. So I’d really love to see series that are comparable.

I feel kind of smutty for discussing only the worst aspects of BL in this post. :/ There’s so many better titles…! Actually, I’m really interested in seeing more “Ladies’ Comics” manga as they come out in English, such as Aurora’s LuvLuv line. I know of course that there are many shojo/josei titles which are pretty bodice-ripping (such as the infamous Haoh Airen), and I hope that the translated Ladies’ Comics manage to be, well, both romantic and sex-positive and (at least relatively) consensual.

And I’m sure that for my friends who do like non-con scenes, such a guidebook is equally useful. :^) (My fanfic slash fandom was one with several thriving non-con sub-genres, so I am well used to labelling intended to warn off them as doesn’t and attract them as does.)

Thank you for your response. I did notice that Hannah Santiago was doing some of the reviews and they tended to be closer to my impressions. And I saw that artwork and non-con tended to push your grades down, whereas for me a series like Love Mode which does have a non-con scene at the beginning, and the art could be better (and does get better as she writes) is still a great one because so many parts of it impact me emotionally.

A book like Our Everlasting is the same way in my opinion. Toko Kawai’s story touched me, and the scenes she wrote were very beautiful emotionally. On the other hand, Challengers, while it was witty, did not touch me that way. They both excelled in different things, and I personally grade them about the same.

That emotional connect is, of course, a very individual thing, but it seems to be a thing many BL fans agree on. While we love great art and stories (I adore Yamane and Yoshinaga), when it comes down to it it’s all about adult romance, emotion plus a sexual relationship.

I tend also to have a low tolerance for anything nonconsensual — basically, if something happens to the uke that would cause shock and outrage if it happened to a female lead in a “straight” manga, that’s a deal-breaker for me.

I’ve found that because this is shoujo/BL manga I have a much higher tolerance for what in real life or even in movies and western prose would be entirely unacceptable to me. BL manga is so clearly romantic and sexual fantasy, and the rape fantasy is a popular one among women. So to me it’s not a deal breaker in one of these series so long as it’s playing to that fantasy (a book like Rika the Breeder would be an example of where I just can’t read it).

Though I was just thinking today, if Yamane-sensei’s Finder series were written as a Western heterosexual romance novel I’d throw it across the room. Into a fire. Luckily for me it’s pure bad boy fantasy. ;)

I’ll watch for upcoming issues of Otaku USA.

Thanks for the review of my book! You’re right that there are some things I could have done differently in the yaoi section — I enjoy yaoi, but I did ask my friend Hannah Santiago to do a bunch of the reviews so they wouldn’t all be written by a straight man. ;) I think she did a good job, and in retrospect I wish I’d asked her to do more. For myself, apart from novelty and originality, reviewing a manga is chiefly a question of two things: “does this manga speak to me and ring (emotionally) true to me?” and “how technically well-done is this manga, how good is the art, is the story easy to follow?” Of course, maybe ringing emotionally *true* is not meant to be the defining characteristic of BL manga or of most manga, and surely I am not the target audience, but it’s the same way I look at shonen and shojo romantic manga. For instance, I thought “Level C” was very sweet from a relationship standpoint, but the art is fairly bad, so it failed for me in the second aspect. On the other hand, I found the final plot point of “Our Everlasting” to be rather annoying and predictable, to the point that it sort of ruined the whole manga for me — “Challengers” handled the same plot twist in a much more satisfying way. At least to me — there’s so much subjectivity here. I tend also to have a low tolerance for anything nonconsensual — basically, if something happens to the uke that would cause shock and outrage if it happened to a female lead in a “straight” manga, that’s a deal-breaker for me. (And yet I understand that “Love is Like a Hurricane” is really popular? To each their own…)

Fumi Yoshinaga, Hinako Takanaga, Ayano Yamane — these are among my favorite BL mangaka, because I think they all manage to tell engaging stories and they’re pretty good in the art/tale-telling department (with their ups and downs… Yoshinaga’s art is not the best, and Yamane’s stories are pretty insane, but I do love her work). Recently I have been trying to put together a team of good BL reviewrs in recent issues of “Otaku USA” magazine. Check it out if you get the chance — starting in issue 4 we should have 4 or so pages of BL reviews in every issue, mostly written by folks like Shaenon Garrity, althoughI do contribute the occasional review.

Many thanks! Please feel free to write if you have any questions!