The "Boys' Love" Tradition

Anime and manga are the popular culture in Japan. As a fan, I’m not into reading manga because it’s a pain in my eyes to read, read, and read.. I only tried it once. But the thing that makes me wonder is about the depiction of gender in those anime. When we speak of male and female, we talk about sex but when we talk about gender, we are talking about the characteristics of males and females on how each function in the society. In order for a man to be a real man, he must develop masculine traits while in order to be a real woman, then she must develop feminine traits which is sometimes not depicted in Anime.

According to an article Manga, Anime and the "Boys' Love" Tradition by Tanya Darlington, anime and manga has been the ground for experimentation for cultural taboos. She said that it started with the boys' love, or shônen ai, genre wherein there is a feature of male cross dressing. 

One example of a cross dresser is Nuriko of Fushigi Yugi. He is a man but he dress like a woman and acts as a woman.

It does not revolve around beautiful girls but on beautiful boys or what is termed as “bishonen”. He is visually and physically neither male nor female and his interests are directed at other beautiful boys, but his tastes are not exclusively homosexual. The use of boys’ school settings was used to emphasized the Bishonen. While shonen-ai was still gaining popularity, the “Shoujo-ai” or female-to-male cross-dressing genre is coming into the scene.

It was also stated in the article that after more than thirty years, critics (particularly those in the West) still struggle to understand the popularity of shônen-ai manga and the bishônen with young girls. Because of that, 3 theories emerged as widely accepted:

Largely Feminist Reading

This theory indicates that young women beginning to struggle with the circumscribed gender roles laid out for them by the highly patriarchal structure of Japanese society displace their fantasies of power and liberation onto feminized male characters who display female personality traits yet enjoy the freedoms of the traditional male. 

In my understanding, this case has something to do with the role of women in the society. Traditionally, women are described as a person who is conservative and somewhat submissive to men in some cases. Women do not act like they are stronger than men which I think is the reason which contributes to young women’s interest on shonen-ai manga. Young women think that by acting like a man, they will no longer be degraded in the society.

More Practical Concern

This theory states that Shônen-ai began to gain popularity during a period when sexualization of the adolescent female was considered highly taboo, that made it impossible to depict relationships between heterosexual teenagers and forcing the mangaka(anime artist) to utilize (specifically male) homosexual pairings if she wished to deal with physical relationships.

In my understanding of this theory, shonen-ai gain popularity on young women because even before, there was already a taboo which appears now to young women like there is nothing wrong to have homosexual relationship.

Coming-of-Age

This theory suggests that shonen-ai manga becomes much more attractive to the young female reader because adolescent girls are afraid to face their own sexuality.

I think this has something to do with whatever they see on T.Vs’ or in the society. They are being influenced by what they see in the society which is the reason why they become afraid of their own personality wherein instead of having a heterosexual relationship, they will much prefer to have a homosexual relationship. They are scared to get hurt by men so they prefer same sex.

In my understanding of the article, Anime and manga were being used for experimentation of different genres portraying different gender relationships and it is clear that cross-dressing and shônen-ai manga are capable of profoundly affecting readers' sense of sexual identity, which destabilize Japan's strict sexual and gender roles. An anime which portrays a different relationship between females and males like female-to-male cross dressing and male-to-female cross dressing has an impact to a viewer and contributes to the continuous emergence of people of third sex.

Moreover, the anime influence on sexual identity will still depend on the person if he/she will be influenced or not.