Ask John: Why is Yaoi so Popular Now?

Question:
Why is hentai/yaoi/yuri so popular now? Now all my friends (including myself) are into hentai and those things, but why are those types of anime so popular? And how come more around females?

Answer:
Sex, of course, has been popular for as long as life itself has existed, and it’s only natural that with as broad a range of subjects as what anime covers, there would be anime dealing with all types of sex. Adult anime has been popular since its introduction in the early 1980s, and I recall Cream Lemon, Flare and Urotsukidoji (or “Wandering Kid,” as it was known then) being very popular among hard-core American anime otaku at late night convention screenings as long ago as the late 1980s. However, it’s true that hentai, and especially yaoi have encountered a dramatic increase in awareness and popularity in America recently. I may be off base, but I suspect that there are several reasons behind this surge in awareness and popularity including the introduction of DVD, Gundam Wing, and a swell in the popularity of yaoi in Japan.

Some of the very first anime ever released to the American market were hentai. Central Park Media’s planned but never released first ever title was the lightly hentai “Minna Agechau.” AD Vision’s first release was the mildly ecchi Devil Hunter Yohko; and later on Media Blasters entered the market as Kitty Media, introducing titles like Rei-Lan: Orchid Emblem and Advancer Tina to America. But hentai anime was always kept “hush-hush” in America and relegated to dark corners and late nights until recently. The premier of hentai titles like Kite (in an edited form), and Masaki Kajishima’s “Masquerade” and “Agga Ruter” brought a wider recognition and greater market of “mainstream” anime fans to hentai that had previously never known of or watched pornographic anime. The introduction of the DVD format also helped bring hentai and yaoi to mainstream awareness. The novelty and collector mindset of the DVD revolution has encouraged fans to buy everything, and as a result pick up and view series they had never watched before, including adult anime and yaoi titles such as Kizuna and Fake.

In the same way that the popularity of Tenchi Muyo may have encouraged some fans’ interest in Masaki Kajishima’s adult titles, the Cartoon Network broadcast of Gundam W may have encouraged many new anime fans to seek out yaoi anime. The Cartoon Network broadcast of Gundam Wing introduced anime to a massive audience of female viewers that had never watched or known of anime before. And the beautiful boys of Gundam W no doubt convinced a lot of female and male viewers to interpret homosexual relationships within the series and seek out other similar shows.

Couple with this is the swell of mainstream yaoi in the Japanese market that’s sprung up within the past few years and it becomes easy to see why yaoi anime is ascending to the degree of prominence it has now. Beginning with the introduction of Weiss Kruez in 1998 and progressing through 2000 with Kaikan Phrase, Yami no Matsui, Gravitation, Graduation M and Angelique, the Japanese television and OAV market has had an abundance of beautiful bishonen and yaoi relationships and characters over the past 3 years. Naturally some of these shows have been introduced to the ever increasing American fan community through fansubs, further engendering new awareness and demand for this genre of anime which most of the existing American anime fan community simply never knew existed.