It’s 2016. The hype is real for Yuri on Ice!! and initially people didn’t know what to expect. The show comes out. There are a lot of opinions about the show, which I will not discuss here, but one that stood out to me was this: “I usually don’t like yaoi, but I don’t mind YOI!!” Pause. Ok, I am a fan of smutty anime and manga, so I am very familiar with the concept of yaoi and yuri. They are gay porn for otaku. They specifically focus on erotic material that revolves around a same sex partnership. YOI!! has fan service, but it is hardly erotic.
A few things. There is another genre that covers less erotic same-sex romances - shonen and shoujo ai. This is where you find Loveless, Gravitation, Maria-sama, Junjo Romantica, Yagate Kimi ni Naru, and Strawberry Panic.The plot heavily revolves around the same sex couple, often highlighting the fact that they are gay and that’s divergent from the societal norm perceived in Japan. Sometimes, it occasionally brushes past intimacy and erotisiscm, since it is natural for people in a relationship to want to be intimate. Sometimes there is fanservice - that’s just something that comes with the medium. A variety of anime focus on the sex appeal of certain characters to entice viewers, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that Nami, Tsunade, and Lucy make their respective stories fall under the smut or hentai genre.
That leads me to my next point - why are same sex couples automatically denoted as erotic? Some of the shows I think of when I discuss depictions of same sex couples (like No. 6, Revolutionary Girl Utena, or YOI!!) don’t actually fall under the shonen or shoujo ai banner. That’s because it is understood that the relationship is secondary to the rest of what is going on. YOI!! is primarily about ice skating, and Yuri and Victor’s relationship blossoms out of a mutual love for the art of the sport. No. 6 is considered to be sci-fi fantasy. My Anime List doesn’t mention the fact that the main duo are attracted to one another. But, the immediate reaction is to label these two shows as yaoi, simply because two boys fall in love. In reality, why does there need to be a separate category for shows that would otherwise be considered “normal,” except for the fact that is contains a same sex relationship? There isn’t a label for hetero specific romance (we just call it romance), while we specifically need to warn people, “Hey, two girls kiss in this manga, but it’s not in a smutty way, so beware.”
I understand the delineation of porn - not everyone is gonna like certain things. The main goal of porn is to satisfy a very specific goal, but other media can vary greatly. In my view, it’s similar to disliking any other relationship in a story. It’s your prerogative if you dislike it because it’s two guys, but I really don’t like Asuna and Kirito together for my own reasons, so I don’t go out of my way to watch every iteration of Sword Art Online. As a woman who loves a woman, it is frustrating that characters that are like me are placed into a box as to not disturb viewers that are not normalized to the existence of same sex relationships. I don’t see my relationship as being different from my other friends in opposite sex relationships. That isn’t to say that Japan’s normalization of same sex couples is the same as the US, but I definitely think we can make changes in the Western fandom. There have been other series that have had same sex couples as supporting characters, like Cardcaptor Sakura or Sailor Moon and I don’t see these shows being labelled as yaoi or yuri, so why should we label other shows that have these couples as leads any differently?
Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card-hen
Recently, Darling in the Franxx had post ending buzz about the fact that Ikuno, one of the main supporting characters, was shown to have strong feelings for her teammate Ichigo and the series ended with her finding a girlfriend - she maintained her orientation through to the end of the show, finding love like the rest of the main cast. Other Western shows have slowly begun to normalize the inclusion of same sex couples, like Steven Universe. We wouldn’t call any of these yaoi or yuri, nor are these shows aimed specifically at a LGBT+ audience. These are developed for a general audience, and so are a great deal of the shows that I have heard labelled as yuri or yaoi in discussions and reviews. If anything, we need to look at the language we use to describe these shows. At least if you say that YOI!! has elements of shonen-ai, I can get behind that; however, you really look silly if you call a show about boys ice skating a gay porn because of Victor and Yuri’s relationship. I think we need to check on our understanding of how people act and function: remember “ai” means love and there isn’t anything inherently erotic in that.
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