絶愛ドイツ語版

Shounen-ai - stories about desperate love

With Minami Ozaki's Zetsuai starts the first manga series on the German market, which falls into the "shounen-ai" genre. Because of that we have collected some information on the history of this genre, which will help you to understand some of the background from which Zetsuai was created.

When, during the 70ies, the genre of the "girl's comics" was passed from male to female (artists), a group of female artists entered the comic world, which was called, based on the year of their birth (Showa 24 (1949), the group of 24.

Among those artists was, for example, Riyoko Ikeda, who in 1972, created for her historic epos Lady Oscar (BnB) the well known character Oscar de Jarjays: Ikeda's Oscar, raised as a boy by her father, was Captain of the Guarde of the French queen Marie Antoinette and was, because of her androgynous look, equally admired by men and women. Oscar, divided between her role as being man and woman at the same time, was neither fully one or the other. On one side this brought her pain, but it also enabled her to do things, which were until then exclusively for men.
（中略）
In 1976 Keiko Takemiya caused a great sensation in the Japanese media. She was the first in a long line of female manga aritists, who dared to take the *big* step. Her manga "The song of wind and trees" (Kaze to Ki no Uta) tells the tragic love story between the half-gypsy Serge and the seductive, but cold Gilbert. The story is set in a French boarding school in the late 19th century. The warm-hearted Serge is the first to see through the crumbling facade of the blonde youth, who, apparently without conscience, sells his body at school and from that point on Serge is determined to free him (Gilbert) from this vicious circle.

Even though her "group of 24"-colleague Moto Hagio had, in 1971, with "Gymnasium in November" (11 gatsu no Gymnasium) already told a similar love story, Takamiya took the until then only playfully suggested theme of love between two men and put it into unequivocal words and gentle erotic images. A new genre had been born.

Since that time a large amount of stories has found its way into the mangas. The name "shounen-ai", which can be translated as "boy's love" doesn't apply to a certain line of mangas. Many manga artists such as Kazuma Kodaka (Kizuna, Kimera) or Minami Ozaki have specialized on this genre, but it can also be found in several works of CLAMP, Yuu Watase's fantasy series Fushigi Yugi or Akimi Yoshida's crime story Banana Fish.

Even though appearing in a large variery of series the shounen-ai genre with its androgenous male characters and romantic/tragic stories was (in the past) and still is mostly reduced to female readers and authors/artists. It is certainly neither a portrait of Japanese society nor meant as realistic description of homosexuality. But this was never the intention of this genre.