Forum - View topicAnswerman - Why Doesn't Yaoi Anime Get Dubbed?
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lebrel
Posts: 374 |
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I think you don't understand how seme-uke coding works. It is gendered, but gender is such an all-encompassing force in our and Japan's culture that there are many ways that axis can be drawn. In the case of YOI, the axis is mature/sophisticated/seductive vs. boyish/naive/inexperienced, and that's compatible with the seme being androgynous and having feminine traits.
Pichitt sees the rings and says something along the lines of "my good friends got married!", and then Victor says those lines. So it could him just riffing off Pichitt's line as a joke. And yes, it takes some special pleading to not see them as a couple, but that's how Technically Not BL stuff works.
If all you care about is that it's not officially labeled as BL, then great, knock yourself out. But it's not a generic gay relationship; it doesn't work like what gay Japanese men create for themselves, or like mainstream (non-otaku) Japanese fiction that has gay characters. It works like BL.
Again, if what really matters to you is that it's not labeled as BL, then fine. But the existence of YOI doesn't do much for the visibility or mainstreaming of non-BL-influenced gay fiction. For that, you'd be better off looking at What Did You Eat Yesterday, or even better My Brother's Husband (which is by an actual gay man and gei comi mangaka) or My Lesbian Experience With Lonliness (by an actual lesbian) (seriously, everybody who is interested in actual Japanese gay manga and wants to see more in translation should go buy them!) |
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MissT
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Except that's not what it is at all and this misinformation needs to stop. ANN has it explained here: animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/lexicon.php?id=23
BL is part of demographics / publishing categories. BL is not just about m/m content it's specifically about target audience, in this case women, not unlike shoujo or josei. So I repeat, something being classified as BL does not make it any less of a historical, action or whatever it might be. But we are arguing about semantics here. With that said yoi is targeted towards women, just like BL is. If they had made an anime out of Kinou Nani Tabeta? I would not be sitting here calling it a "BL in everything but name". Because the demographic would have clearly not catered towards fujoshi, unlike yoi.
It matters because I dislike giving creators credit where it's not due. It's like when I'm reading posts thanking Marvel for adding queer representation in the MCU and pointing towards Stucky. Like, no. Don't praise creators for things they have not done or never intended. Especially not Kubo who has made homophobic comments in the past.
I don't really understand how you can say that most BL are full of rape and dub-con when a large portion of BL doesn't even contain any sexual content at all. Lots of BL barely make it past the kissing stage and it's a bit hard to discern heteronormative seme-uke dynamics from that. Seven Days, for example, has no sexual content, no seme-uke dynamic, no rape/dubcon or anything like that, and it's still a BL.
You do realize that lots of creators say this? That lots of seiyuu's, many who have dedicated fangirls themselves, like to tease about these things? The point is, Kubo/Yamamoto did not confirm the relationship. They left it ambiguous, which is only slightly better than outright denying it, and IMO not worthy of praise. |
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musouka
Posts: 718 |
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Do you even know the five top selling BL manga in Japan right now? How about the top reviewed by readers? You've read every novel on the top twenty list on chiruchiru and can document that the vast majority of the popular ones contain rape because you're just THAT familiar with BL trends? What did you think of the choices for "Kono BL ga Yabai" last year? I really hate it when people feel totally comfortable pigeonholing an entire genre based on their own limitations in exposure to the material in question. Reading or watching a few BL titles gives you the right to make a personal decision about whether this genre is "your thing"; it does not suddenly make you an expert in the genre at large. |
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BlueOla
Posts: 161 |
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Omfg the "homophobic comments" must be one of the most BS arguments I've seen people use. It was one, single comment that she posted in a Tweet SIX YEARS AGO. We don't even know the context of what she was saying. And let me remind you it was six years ago. I probably said something homophobic six years ago AND I'M GAY. You know why? Because tweets someone posted six years ago are no longer representative of the person. Because people change. And I want everyone who hasn't posted something stupid or something they regret on social media to step up. “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” Had Kubo ever said anything problematic in her life? I'd be surprised if she hadn't, being a human being and all. But the funny thing that seems to escape many of the perpetrators of call-out culture: people make mistakes, they say and do ignorant and ugly things, yet amazingly they can also learn, grow, and change. If Kubo has said anything heteronormative or homophobic, she now is ready to create and defend a world in which men love men, or people of any gender identity love whomever they want. Special bonus: she said this about YOI. She's also a fan of John Cameron Mitchell who is gay and his works (which are LGBT themed) which partly inspired YOI. But nah, she's just a homophobe, isn't she? People deserve credit for changing their views. Not to mention that Yamamoto has presented LGBT themes in her previous works and I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of YOI came out of her influence. It was Yamamoto who fought to have the airport scene in YOI and it was both Kubo and Yamamoto that wanted to have a final same-sex pair skate, which they KNOW is a political statement. But no, they had no such intentions and they never did anything did they? Riiight.
I love this because it proves that no matter what the voice of God says or what happens in the anime, someone will always be there to deny it or trivialize it or turn it on its head to make it sound like a bad thing. They could full-on get married and I bet some people would still complain and act like "it's not real" or whatever. Because yeah, that's beyond the point of "teasing", that could work as a confirmation if you looked at it the right way. And yeah, I'm not saying that I wouldn't have wanted it to be explicit but just because the characters aren't yelling "i love you" in each others' faces every five minutes doesn't make it "not real". And again, why would they go so far in creating something and putting in so many elements if they didn't want it to be gay? I mean surely, you can "bait" your viewers without showing a same-sex engagement? I don't understand how that's not worthy of praise, especially considering how few anime have done this in the past. I think there's a huge difference between keeping something ambiguous (and let's face it - yoi loses most of its ambiguity by ep 12) and outright denying it. But maybe that's just me because I prefer to appreciate the few positive LGBT things we get in anime rather than complaining that it's not enough. |
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MissT
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@BlueOla: Of course people change and of course people say dumb things. A lot of people also apologize for dumb things they have said instead of deleting the tweet and pretending it never existed, but hey. I'm not claiming Kubo is a homophobe who hates gay people, I don't think she is that, but she made a homophobic tweet and then tried to sweep it under the rug, which yoi fans are way too defensive about. And c'mon, she looks up to a gay director so she can't be homophobic? Are we using the "I have black friends" argument here now?
Look here. I'm not anti yoi. I'm not against people liking this show or its characters. I'm also not against people feeling represented by this show (even though sadly so few of them seems to actually be japanese). What I am against is yoi fans calling this show the second coming of anime jesus that has done something that no manga or anime has ever dared to do before, because it's not true. Yoi has done nothing that No.6, Doukyuusei, Sailor Moon, Utena, Evangelion, Cardcaptor Sakura, Shinsekai Yori, Paradise Kiss, Nabari No Ou and Wandering Son haven't already done. Kubo/Yamamoto hasn't done anything Hagio Moto, Yasuko Aoike, Keiko Takemiya, Fumi Yoshinaga, Gengoroh Tagame, Kamatani Yuhki hasn't already done. All of them have done works with LGBT characters in non BL manga predating yoi by years. |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11534 |
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I'm still not updated on this. Google only returns fanfics which I don't intend to read and which don't say what happened at the event, and Tumblr is an impenetrable maze to me, so I'm afraid following a discussion there to find out is beyond my limited powers. |
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BlueOla
Posts: 161 |
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Can you blame her for not wanting to start drama? Especially about a six year old tweet which people should know doesn't represent her anymore? You know very well how people react to that sort of shit, I mean, look at how you're reacting. People would be blaming her for making the tweet in the first place, perhaps even attacking her in private for it. They wouldn't give a shit about the apology. Some Japanese fans on Twitter already harassed her for the tweet around the airing of episode 10, I think enough is enough. Can we blame her for not wanting to be bullied and trying to make sure that no one found out by simply deleting the source of the issue? It's one thing if a normal person makes a mistake - it's something completely different when someone with a large following does the same. Or rather, if an author of a pretty openly gay anime had made a mistake long time ago that people still try to hold them accountable for. I think this is where we should empathize with her instead of blaming her for being a coward or something. Man, I'm sorry she didn't want to compromise everything she achieved over a stupid tweet, I guess it would have been better if she took the "morally better" path and lost everything she worked for, right? There is nothing wrong in wanting to sweep your shameful past under the rug - it shouldn't matter to anyone anyway. It's one thing if she'd killed a person but she just said something stupid. People don't forgive famous people if they said something stupid ages ago. It's better that few people know. It's a pity that she's apparently "morally inferior" but try to understand the woman's position. And can you blame the fans for getting defensive? It's a pretty offensive statement to say "The author of your gay anime is actually homophobic because of something she said half a decade ago". Understandably, people would want to explain the situation. And no - I'm saying that through looking up to a gay director she probably ended up doing research about the LGBT community and changing her mind. Because people actually do that, and it's not just about the "I have black friends" argument; Sometimes looking up to someone may actually change your worldview. I doubt she would create YOI if she still held homophobic views. I appreciate that you're not against yoi, and I understand your concern about Japanese gay men not feeling represented by the anime, and I think that a time SHOULD come when that is possible and even common, but if all we get for now is Western audiences feeling represented then that's at least a starting point. And no, I agree, yoi isn't the second coming of anime Jesus, and it didn't do anything that hasn't been done before. But the reason why it matters and why so many people consider it important is that it's the first practically mainstream anime to do those things, and to make the combination of those things work so well. None of the anime you mentioned gained this sort of popularity and praise for the LGBT aspect alone and none of their works reached so many people. I mean, I'm talking about Evangelion and Sailor Moon and such, but the praise it got usually wasn't regarding the gay aspect, or the praise came years after the animes originally aired. It's not really about YOI doing something original, but it's about doing things right in the right place, in the right time. We're probably living in the most tolerant times in modern history and in times with the easiest, fastest access to the internet. YOI is a product of these times and it's most likely what caused its popularity and success. But I think that the fact that it was technically the first sports anime to ever go that far into LGBT romance territory (and normalized LGBT romance at that) without labeling itself as BL is important too. I think just like me, it gives people hope for the future. And damn, it was just a well-done anime. I know that fans tend to exaggerate but give them some slack. It's rare that we get such things, and while I know it's annoying, just try to understand where we're coming from. |
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MissT
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@BlueOla: Well I'm glad we seem to have reached some form of understanding or middle ground at least. I still don't really agree with everything you've said (and you probably don't agree with everything I've said) but that's fine. This discussion has been going on quite long enough and I think neither of us are probably going to change our opinions on this matter any further. I'd say we might just have to agree to disagree about some things here and move on.
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Alexis.Anagram
Posts: 278 Location: Mishopshno |
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I'm also going to pull back from this discussion to avoid beating a dead horse, but I just want to say I really appreciate lebrel and missts for engaging with those of us on the other side of the genre-divide: I learned a lot from you two! My personal experience with BL is largely rooted in the doujinshi/yaoi market, and as a result is somewhat cursory, but as a queer person I still have strong feelings about any form of media I come in contact with which touches upon sex and gender as a topic.
I'd say this sums up more or less where I presently stand: I think for the presentation of queer issues as part of a discussion queer people can access and own, it's important that this show at least on a creative level delineates itself as consciously separate from BL as a model of storytelling. At the same time, I'm willing to recognize that its actual presence in Japan quite possibly doesn't fulfill that objective. Which is why I said at the very beginning that it occupies a weird place for me (or maybe I occupy a weird place in relation to it). It gives me mixed feelings; nevertheless as a queer person I'm quite accustomed to the ways we compromise with and are compromised by the media that comes our way.
Also this stood out to me just because Loveless is a personal favorite of queer-themed manga and it came to mind for me repeatedly as I was considering my perspective, and I kept wanting to ease in something about that interview Yun Kouga did where she rather frankly stated she doesn't consider the series to be yaoi, but her fans do. I realize that could be a whole conversation in and of itself but I just enjoy that the opportunity came up so I took it. |
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Kadmos1
Posts: 13591 Location: In Phoenix but has an 85308 ZIP |
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In "Kizuna", Mike Sinterniklaas played a character lusting for Dan's character. To put that in perspective, that was Dark Magician lusting after Yugi/Atem. I can't look at my second favorite Duel Monsters card (after Stardust Dragon) the same way again. Heck, Dan Green has been in a porno where he was raping the voice of Dark Magician Girl/4Kids Luffy. |
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meowneko
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To me the answer to that is obvious: Whether appropriate or not, most dubbed anime is going to end up in a kids' channel schedule. All anime that i've seen dubbed has in some way ended up being marketed for kids, whether it's simple stuff like Doreamon and Pokémon all the way to gruesome stuff like Another, with regular stuff like Cardcaptor Sakura, Tokyo Mew Mew, Toradora, Naruto, Bleach, One Piece, Fairy Tail, Dragon Ball, Sailor Moon and so on.
Only exception is Black Lagoon, which brings me to my 2nd point. The more gruesome/sensual, adult-themed anime is also going to end up on TV when dubbed. Now, imagine something like Boku no Pico broadcasting openly on Animax. No, right? Gay or not, overly sensual content should be well locked away from the eyes of the general public, yet i agree it should be available on pay-per-view...and dubbed. |
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SilverTalon01
Posts: 2413 |
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Why does this have to be so binary with you? It can be both a BL anime and a sports anime. If YOI dropped the gay thing for a straight relationship, you could say it is romance. The difference is that BL is rare enough that it stands out so that aspect is going to get mentioned more and can be used as an identifying trait. If I were to say 'oh what was that BL anime from last year?' almost every anime fan would return with YOI. If you replace the BL part, you're going to get a lot of different responses. |
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Chrysostomus
Posts: 335 |
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Lord Oink
Posts: 876 |
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Doesn't most anime not get dubbed these days anyway? Unless its some surefire hit like the latest shounen, most shows just get simulcasts
Hey, not all of us care about self identifying as cartoon characters. Can't say I ever did, and I only watch anime, which 99% of the time stars Japanese people, and Im not Japanese and it never bothered me. I was never one of those people whining for more American representation in anime. Likewise, Im not gay, but I enjoyed Yuruyuri which was made by a lesbian Japanese woman. But yeah 'representation in mediA' is a much bigger deal for Americans than Japanese people. Thats why in Japan nobody cares if the MC is a girl or a guy, but in America the strict rule is 'guy shows have to star guys, and girl shows have to star girls' |
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lebrel
Posts: 374 |
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From what I hear from actual Japanese people, this is absolutely not the case. They're just as frustrated about it as Westerners. I would say that Japanese gay men don't expect to be validated in BL/BL-leaning stuff, or female-targeted media in general, so their relative lack of commentary on YOI is par for the course; either they put reality aside and enjoy it for what it is or ignore it as just more fujoshi trash. |
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