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Answerman - Why Doesn't Yaoi Anime Get Dubbed?

Slightly OT, but it'd be easier for me to accept English-dubbed bl anime than English-dubbed adaptations of BLCDs though. BLCDs are somewhat of an art, imo. Seiyuu who can act well/convincingly in BLCDs have my utmost respect because you know it ain't easy.

By "better" I mean BL that is, you know, better: better written, more mature, more artistically ambitious, whatever. Typically aimed at an older audience. More on the order of Red Blinds the Foolish rather than Junjo Romantica.

The question regarding shoujo was trying to get a better idea of what it is about YOI that makes it not have the "fetishization" that you propose to be the defining feature of BL. If your objection to BL is unhealthy relationship dynamics, well, a) there's an awful lot of BL that doesn't have unhealthy relationship dynamics, and b) there's an awful lot of stuff that isn't BL that has unhealthy relationship dynamics, in works for every demographic and pairing type, including those aimed specifically at gay men.*

People are kinky and fiction doesn't have to be about healthy prosocial topics to be entertaining (look at all the fetishized-violence action shows out there).

(*If you haven't yet, look up the Massive anthology, which is a sampler pack of manga oneshots and interviews with popular gei comi authors, and shows some of the range that gei comi covers; several of the guys also read or write BL, and they talk a bit about differences between the genres. Be warned the manga parts are 100% NC-17.)

Correct me if I am wrong, but didn't Anime Works eventually dub Loveless?

My issue with BL is what I perceive as a cultural trend towards further marginalizing a population with already limited access to social platforms by appropriating gay male identities and experiences and employing them as fantasy fare for others (namely, women): so, fetishization as a practice of deliberately distancing the audience from the subject in order to foster an idealization that is, in this case, romantic and "safe." Those problematic genre tropes are just a part of this larger process, which is how I understand BL to be relevant as a category or identifier: otherwise, what exists to separate BL from a story (any story) in Japan that features queer male and/or masculine romance?

And for that matter, as I said, I see YOI as a show written by women which makes a conscious effort to do something political and subversive in a manner which would seem to contradict (or, at least, supersede) the explicit design of the BL industry.

From my experience, many "hardcore" BL fans are also fans of Japanese seiyuu and listen to BLCDs, so i doubt dubbed BL anime would appeal to them very much.

BlueOla wrote:

missts wrote: Honestly, all the pro-yoi but anti-bl fans really bugs me, they just reek of moral superiority, all "I'm not like one of those girls!!!11". Especially considering how yoi relies so many BL tropes it's not even funny (okay it's a little bit funny). I don't think it's about "not being one of those girls", it's just that saying that yoi is BL is implying that it's ONLY that, whereas in reality it's mostly a sports show with a gay romance on the side. It's like saying that SAO is a romance anime; I mean sure, it features romance, but that's just part of it and that's not the main selling point and not the only reason why people watch and enjoy it. Apart from that it's the fact that the word BL brings mostly negative connotations whereas I (and many others) consider YOI one of the few anime with good gay representation. Calling it BL cheapens that aspect.

BL series can have more going on than just the romance; in fact, for Not Technically BL stuff it has to, otherwise it loses that crucial plausible deniability.

And whether or not you have negative associations with the term BL is irrelevant to the categorization of the series.

BlueOla wrote:

I also think that it actually relies on very few BL tropes? I mean, I've seen many fujoshi saying "I love yaoi, but I hated YOI" or saying that Victor and Yuuri's relationship is boring etc etc. Really, I'd say it actually used very few tropes and reversed some on their heads.

The central relationship and character dynamics use a lot of BL coding. I didn't notice any tropes it "reversed". It's not BL because the creators were careful not to step over that line, not because it is so different from other BL.

BlueOla wrote:

And I'm surprised about the amount of people saying that YOI was just baiting or that the relationship was too ambiguous or deniable or just not explicit enough. I mean [spoiler]it showed two men exchanging gold rings under a church and later on one of said men referred to them as engagement rings and said they would get married. Oh, and let's not forget that both of the men later explicitly kiss the rings.

Considering that the first BL manga to include a gay wedding, as in "get up in front of all of your friends wearing a tux and exchange vows" wedding, was in 1987, and that there is a ton of modern BL that explicitly discusses the legal status of gay marriage, YOI didn't go very far at all. (Note that it's a side character, not Yuri or Victor, who voices the "marriage" interpretation of the rings.) As you mention, YOI couldn't have been completely explicit about the relationship between the guys without losing a lot of its mainstream appeal; the creators know what they're hinting, the audience knows what the creators are hinting, the creators know the audience knows, but they never come out and say it.

I'm a bit curious where you think I (or anyone else) implied that just because something is BL it can only be BL and nothing more. BL is mainly a demographic, it's not a genre. Calling yoi a BL does not make it any less a sports anime. In fact simply calling it BL is awfully vague. Is it a BL fantasy, sports, sci-fi, romance or horror manga? Because all these things exists. That is like saying that a manga is a seinen. Okay, so is it like Berserk or Chi's Sweet Home? They are both seinen but are of completely different genres.

Yoi is called a BL because the target demographic are fujoshis. This is the truth. If people think that Kubo/Yamamoto wrote this with japanese LGBT people in mind they need to rethink.

BlueOla wrote:

Apart from that it's the fact that the word BL brings mostly negative connotations whereas I (and many others) consider YOI one of the few anime with good gay representation. Calling it BL cheapens that aspect.

The reason it brings negative connotations is A) because some yaoi fangirls are/have been very, very annoying and B) because many anti bl people have pretty much never read a BL in their life that wasn't Okane Ga Nai or something similar. Read better BL is my advice.

Some animes bait. A lot. Samurai Flamenco ended with the two male leads promising to get married to each other and the director still insisted that they were not gay. Considering how vague Kubo has been when asked about the kiss, the rings and the final performance it's safe to assume that the relationship was deliberatly done to be vague. Seriously, every interview with Kubo has had her saying this like "the rings are good luck charms" or "why does it matter if it's canon? Why is it so important to know?" and that just says a lot about her actual intentions.

I never said that it can't have more going on, but, as the definition suggest BL stories are "focusing on romantic or sexual relationships between male characters". If the relationships are not the focus, surely the story in question is not BL?

Honestly whether or not you personally categorize the series as BL doesn't change the fact that the creators label it only as "sports". That's it. I think they know their own story?

What sort of BL coding? I feel like Alexis.Anagram already covered this, so I won't go too deep, but it certainly used few tropes and when it did it was more of a self-aware reference than anything else. Even the seemingly "seme-uke" status of the characters stops being relevant (and in fact stops being a thing entirely) around episode 6. It uses certain things to cue the audience in but soon abandons them and does its own thing, creating this large rift between itself and other BL, and showing that things CAN be done differently. I honestly don't understand how someone can watch it and think "oh yeah, that's just like any other BL". I've been consuming BL for years, so it's not like I don't know what I'm talking about.

I feel like the issue again is your own personal categorization and not the official categorization of the anime. It went far because it was the first sports anime, and in fact the first anime with this sort of following that dared to mention and even promise gay marriage. If compared to BL manga then yeah, it didn't go that far, but that's comparing tangerines to oranges. Yeah, they have similar aspects but you can't expect them to do exactly the same things. And tell me of a BL manga covering such topics with such a large following. Exactly. That's what makes YOI a big deal. It's not that it was the first to ever sorta kinda discuss gay marriage in Japanese media, it's that it's the first one that did so and has gotten as close to mainstream as anime ever could (alongside SnK and such).

And really, they never come out and say it? I mean...
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/94/3a/29/943a295a109e5ba4da45960eba642381.jpg
That's pretty unambiguous if you ask me.

And the point is that Victor's comments are juuust ambiguous enough in context that they can be interpreted as a joke. They never say "I love you" to each other, they don't mention marriage when exchanging the rings. That's how Technically Not BL stuff works; no matter how heavily implied...

The character designs. Victor's behavior. Yuri's response to Victor's behavior. The narrative arc of their relationship, and how the romantic bits are framed. It never stops using BL narrative and visual conventions, and it certainly never abandons the seme-uke coding; look at the body language, facial expression, and physical placement in the scene in the hotel room where they talk about their future, or the pairs skate routine at the very end. I don't see this rift you're talking about at all.

BlueOla wrote:

And really, they never come out and say it? I mean... https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/94/3a/29/943a295a109e5ba4da45960eba642381.jpg That's pretty unambiguous if you ask me.

For a mainstream anime, yes, it's the first to (get that close to) going there. But I don't see how YOI being successful and popular somehow means its BL influence can be dismissed.

And the point is that Victor's comments are juuust ambiguous enough in context that they can be interpreted as a joke. They never say "I love you" to each other, they don't mention marriage when exchanging the rings. That's how Technically Not BL stuff works; no matter how heavily implied, there's nothing you can point to that conclusively demonstrates they're a couple.

Your arguments so far, including your response to missts, revolve mainly around "I like it so it's not BL" and "it doesn't have these features I associate with BL but which aren't universal, necessary or definitional for BL". If YOI had placed Victor's arm a few inches lower during the Schrodinger's Kiss, thrown in a couple "I love you"'s and put "an exciting new BL series!" in its marketing, it would have nothing to differentiate itself from reams of BL aside from being an overall top-quality series and having a fat budget for its spectacular animation.