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Forum - View topicThis Week in Anime - The Modern Romance of Sasaki and Miyano
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R. Kasahara
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This sounded fantastic going in, but I got to this part and was sold:
It can be hard to find BL that isn't super tropey, so finding such a series which actively confronts tropes like this is refreshing. I'm not a big fan of stereotypical semes and ukes either! |
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SHD
Posts: 1752 |
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Is it hard, though? In my experience it's about as hard as finding regular manga that isn't "super tropey" (definition of "super tropey" can be of course up to the individual). You just have to curate your sources and recs, and have a good sense of your likes and dislikes. There's a ton of really good, non-tropefest BL out there, one just has to look. |
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wolf10
 Posts: 906 |
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I know I'm really harsh on the manga, but that's mostly because it goes into weirdly accurate rabbit-holes, but then refuses to concretely own any of it. Like it never quite knows from chapter-to-chapter if it wants to deconstruct BL romance or play it completely, ahem, "straight," and the framing often gets confused on what parts of Miyano's internal monologue are denial and which parts are "important lessons" aimed squarely at the (assumed cis-het female fujoshi) audience. The anime, on the other hand, is fantastic, and really shows off how much can be accomplished with just a little bit of editorial oversight (the source material was self-published on pixiv, making it not too far removed from the average narou-kei). It's still following the basic linear progression of the manga, but also cutting and shuffling content to better lead up to the baby-steps that count for "plot developments." It's also much more willing to undercut "dramatic" moments and just visually pat Miyano on the head while showing how Sasaki can barely contain himself from doing the same. |
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R. Kasahara
Posts: 661 |
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I don't know about a ton, but things are certainly much better these days than they used to be. One particular sticking point with me is non-con, which I try to avoid whenever possible. That said, I'm grateful for reviewers like Rebecca here on ANN who are willing to point out problematic bits in BL (and other) manga. I guess I am more tolerant of tropes outside of BL, but perhaps it helps that I don't read a lot of non-BL romance *shrug* |
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MagicPolly
 Posts: 1582 |
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I find myself more of the opposite, I tolerate a lot of things in BL that I don't care for in het romance. I can't really explain why other than the fact that as a gay person it's easier to get into gay romance despite tropes vs het romance even if I enjoy the latter at times. Though I have seen people complain about SasaMiya being tropey as well, specifically in relation to the designs. A MAL thread I saw specifically complained that it was always so obvious "who is giving and who is receiving" in BL // Honestly something I like about SasaMiya is the fact that the only shameful thing about being a BL fan is that people will think that you're gay (if you're male) (and yes, Miyano isn't straight in the least). Maybe it's just because I only spend time in western spaces, but BL feels so heavily shamed just for existing (unless your name is Given) I might have gone a bit off topic here, I can't really tell. Apologies if I did |
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wolf10
Posts: 906 |
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Which is so funny, because Sasaki's theme song might as well be "Boy is a Bottom." (Miyano is 100% correct about short top supremacy, I'll give him that.) |
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BluExocet
 Posts: 64 Location: The High Mountain |
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Excuse me, that model iPod shuffle held 2GB and mine's been through the wash by accident at least three times and still works like a champ. |
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SHD
Posts: 1752 |
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Honestly, I think much of that just seems so, partly because the scope of what is considered "BL" has expanded a lot (and is still expanding), and partly because the English speaking fandom has always had a fairly skewed view of BL, with a lot of misinterpretations, misunderstandings (re: the whole "yaoi" vs "shounen ai" thing that never actually existed and was made up by the Anglophone fandom based on a misunderstanding of terms), and of course it was mostly seen through whatever was made available in English. Which wasn't a whole lot, but has been getting better for a while now.
This ties in with the above, so so many people have a completely skewed view of BL, either due to misinformation or just lack of experience with it. If I had a penny for every time I've seen someone saying that BL Manga X "isn't really BL" or that it's "BL but it's special" because it doesn't have the stereotypes that a lot of people seem to think BL is for reason... well, I'd have a lot more money than I do now. And of course there's the fact that a lot of people are only familiar with anime, and BL anime adaptations have always tended to be fairly terrible, either due to poor choice of source material, or low budget, or just plain bad execution. I mean, look at last year's Sankaku Mado, a perfectly good manga, and it got an adaptation that was like its own parody. So something that is not terrible and is "not too gay" for straight guys to watch, gets praised and elevated. |
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wolf10
Posts: 906 |
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There are so many different schools of BL, and "masculine seme and feminine uke" is only one such approach, and a dated one at that. Reversible couples! Service tops and power bottoms! Orientations besides straight! Orientations besides gay! Men dating men for hundreds of pages without mentioning women at all! All this and more.... in all the stuff that never seems to get any real exposure. (Can I repeat that it's an absolute miracle that Seaside Stranger a.k.a. The Stranger by the Shore has a movie? But still unfortunate that it was licensed under two different titles.) |
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skylucario
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Fair enough, but part of that is because it literally isn’t BL. It’s shelved with shōjo manga in Japan. I think it is important to critique it through the lens that it isn’t intended to be BL, for better or worse. |
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SHD
Posts: 1752 |
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The reason it's not shelved with BL manga in Japan is because it's not published under a BL label so it's shelved along with manga published under the same label... that happens to include, among other series, Sahara-sensei to Tosa-kun, Kimi ni wa todokanai, Kore wa akumade fiction dakara, and I could go on and on - all clearly not BL, obviously not intended to be BL, nope, even all those the "BL" labels at pixiv (that Sasaki and Miyano also has) must be just a misunderstanding. Also, not being published under a BL label is a thing that may have meant something ten years ago, but nowadays? It means literally nothing. Not now, when seinen magazines have their own BL series that they call BL and advertise as BL (and treat separately from their other manga that may have m/m relationships). Nowadays the only thing this means is that I could buy Sasaki and Miyano, Kimi ni wa todokanai, etc. at BookWalker if I wanted to, because it's not under the same "oops, we can't let foreigners know that this exists, let alone allow them to buy it!" restriction as even the most innocent m/m romance manga that just happen to have been published under a BL label. Sasaki and Miyano is BL, it's intended to be BL, it has always been. I really don't understand why so many people have trouble accepting this.
Seriously - there's so many variations, that somehow never seem to show up in such conversations about BL. Instead you have people going on about how BL is bad because, eg. [insert old and outdated seme/uke stereotypes], even though there's a whole subgenre at the porny side of BL with hypermasculine uke, but even on the non-porny side there are so many manga where this is just not applicable. (Hell, for a while now "masculine seme/feminine uke" has been more like just one kink among others, than anything. But again, it's always been just an inflated stereotype. Look at some of the most famous granddaddies of what was called "yaoi" in the West, Ai no kusabi or Zetsuai 1989 - how are Riki or Takuto feminine? if anything, Iason and Kouji are more stereotypically feminine, and not just because of the long hair.) |
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wolf10
Posts: 906 |
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Though SasaMyaa is also filed under "slice-of-life" on Pixiv, it's honestly tropier than most of these recommendations (on the surface, anyway). I think the "Boys Life" label is probably meant as a combination of "Boys Love" and "slice-of-life" rather than some kind of rejection of BL as a whole. (Because it's failing rather spectacularly on that front.) |
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SHD
Posts: 1752 |
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Oops, that's what I get for not paying attention and posting while at work... Anyway, heh, this is actually a genre I'm not into (nothing against it, it's simply not my cup of tea) so I couldn't really rec anything from it with any confidence; but these are series I've read enough chapters from, and I also know them to be fairly popular. I assume anyone who enjoys Sasaki & Miyano would enjoy these as well.
Oh I agree, Boys Life is absolutely, most definitely, would-bet-money-on-it, a jokey word play and not a rejection of BL or whatever some people seem to want to believe it to be. Generally, this kind of anti-BL attitude is something I don't think I've seen in Japanese circles at all - yes, there are people who have problems with BL and whatnot, but I don't remember ever seeing the kind of attitude that is so apparent in certain segments of the English-speaking fandom, that essentially boils down to "I decide what BL is and is not" and "BL is m/m manga that I'm embarrassed to read". |
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fencer_x
Posts: 278 |
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I think what might be confusing or surprising the authors of the article as well as many viewers about the pace of this anime is because it ISNT BL. I’m not joking
 this series is not a BL manga and isn’t a BL anime. You will not find it in the BL section of bookshops in Japan (it’s shelved in the shoujo section), and it doesn’t run in a BL magazine. It has never been referred to as BL by the author or publisher and in fact goes out of its way to dub itself a “Boys Life” series. The tagline in its recent promotional campaign called it “A Boys’ Life series about the high-school life of two boys that cannot be reduced down to just ‘BL’l, explicitly eschewing the genre label.
This is because it’s trying to tell a slow, believable romance where the characters’ lives come together while they figure out their feelings for each other. You aren’t meant to apply BL tropes to this series except in a comparison, as it tackles many common tropes and then turns them on it’s head. It’s avoiding the BL label to show you that this is romance just like any typical shoujo series is romance, and pigeon-holing it into a genre like BL removes so much of what it’s built up. It isn’t “one of the good BL anime”, it’s just a romance, involving two boys, that shows you what a really good romance anime involving same-sex couples could be. You don’t have to settle for the trash that is most BL (hey. I love BL, but you’re lying if you’re trying to say it’s not a problematic genre as a whole filled with terrible tropes that has earned a bad reputation deservedly). This is what we could have, and what we should be demanding more of: “love is love”. |
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wolf10
Posts: 906 |
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Honestly, SasaMyaa walks blindly into just as many tropes as it "subverts," and I've probably never read a series more callously disrespectful of my existence as a queer man. I've read "actual" hard BL that was more respectful of queer identities and treated them as something beyond just a vague framework to appropriate without commitment. "Love is love" is a message for after you've proven you don't think it's shameful to be "gay."
And honestly honestly? Modern BL is really not any more or less problematic than any other form of romance fiction. Queer romance written by and for straight women is also far from a specifically Japanese sin. If this series isn't BL, that's only because modern BL has the sense to do it better. Not saying that people aren't allowed to like it (or that I don't for that matter), but the pedestal is really not as high as it looks. |
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