A friend told me she didn’t like Boys Love by Kaim Tachibana at all, so I thought, “I’ll probably like it.”  It’s not that I automatically like things she doesn’t (although it just seems like that in some cases), it’s just that when it comes to the BL genre, I generally like everything.  I joke around and say I’m a Sony fangirl or a nook fangirl sometimes, but it’s not actually true.  I don’t buy all of Sony’s products, don’t even want all of Sony’s products, complain about Sonic Stage, and haven’t even ordered a nook yet; I’m just a normal fan of these things.  When it comes to boys love, however, I am a fangirl; there is practically nothing I don’t like and I will stubbornly defend the greatness of even the most generic or strange titles.  If it’s in English and I don’t own it, it’s because it is one of the following:

Part of the starring couple is so girly that he is indistinguishable from a girl unless naked. Okay, haha, yes, all of them seem girly to you non-BL fans; I’ve heard you snickering in the store.  Just imagine how feminine-like they’d have to be in order to make even a fangirl like me consider them girly then.

It’s too mature for me. By mature, I don’t mean there’s too much sex; the atmosphere of it is too adult.  I can’t feel the all-encompassing, fantastical love that I’m looking for when I read this genre, just the melancholy of life.  Est Em’s works, Let Dai by Sooyeon Won, and possibly Dining Bar Akira by Tomoko Yamashita (based on a quick flip at the store, I’m leaning towards “too mature”, but I’m still contemplating it) are a few examples.

That all being said, I’m not saying I wouldn’t read any of those things; I’m just saying I wouldn’t want to own any of it.  If I bought one not knowing what I was getting into, I’d probably sell it after reading and finding out.  I’d be disappointed, but more so that I spent the money to buy it and made shelf space for it rather than actually having read it.  After all, if I picked it myself, there must be at least a little something I liked in it and I am easily entertained.  If I bought everything that entertained me, however, I’d be more than broke and probably wouldn’t have any empty space left.

I am about to make a not-so-vague comment about the end of the Boys Love graphic novel, which is the same as the end of the Boys Love movie, so if you’d like to not be able to guess the end of either the manga or the movie, you shouldn’t continue reading this post.

Is everyone that would like to be gone, gone?  Last chance~

I always tell my friends I don’t mind angsty, depressing stories as long as the end is happy because all the suffering the characters endured to get to their happy end just makes the ending that much happier.  Well, Boys Love was pretty angsty and depressing and they don’t get the happy ending that makes everything okay.  Also, the best friend glares too much.  Yes, he’s insane, I get it; he is not, however, a supervillain in a campy superhero show.  So why am I still keeping this graphic novel?  The art’s not bad and it has that fantastical, all-encompassing love I require of all my for-keeps BL.

Hrm…would it have been simpler just to say my requirements are art that I like and unreal love?  I do, however, own a few BL graphic novels that have art I’m not that fond of.  Also, just because it claims to be BL and has fantastical, all-encompassing love doesn’t mean there isn’t an extremely feminine guy as part of that fantastical, all-encompassing love.  I guess the long-winded way of explaining it was the best after all.