WORD OF THE DAY – Yaoi vs. Boys’ Love Part 2

"Boys' love (BL) is the common term used by the publishing industry to categorize works focusing on male/male relationships marketed at women. Historically these works were referred to as June, but most commercial works are now called BL. The change in terminology was probably due to the negative connotations of the term yaoi and the association with a specific publication of the term June.

BL is an extension of shoujo and Lady's categories, but is considered a separate category. The BL category is very broad. It is an umbrella term that includes

• both commercial and amateur works
• works with no sex
• works with sex
• doujinshi about adolescents with little or no sex
• works in all types of media – manga, anime, novels, games, and drama CDs
• characters of all ages (not limited to 'boys')
• related terms such as yaoi, shounen-ai, tanbi, June, and original June

However, it does not include gay publications.

Boys' love is not referred to as shounen-ai. Boys' love and shounen-ai are two different terms. Boys' love is also referred to as BL, boys', boys-mono. Punctuation and capitalization vary, so you will see boys love, boys' love, boy's love, bl, BL. We have chosen to standardize on boys' love and BL.

While early fans of BL were probably fans of doujinshi, most Japanese fans on the net these days appear to be fans of commercial BL work – there are over a hundred such works published every month, more than two-thirds of them novels and the rest manga. BL novels are immensely popular – the number of novels published each month outnumbers manga tankoubon by about 2 to 1.

Some Westerners object to the definition of the category as being written for women. The target market is determined by advertising and is primarily women, although there are publications, such as Zettai Reido, which have multiple target audiences. That does not mean that men don't read BL, merely that the audience the advertisers, editors, and authors have in mind is women.

Note that BL can also be used as a content descriptor/trope term. When used this way, BL works cross multiple marketing categories."

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