Metro Weekly

Gay Japanese comic book smut: An Introduction

Yaoi are Japanese manga about male-male relationships, but they’re written and drawn by women, for women…. Antique Bakery is about three gay guys who run a French bakery…. [All Nippon Air Line (ANAL) is] about an airline that only has beautiful boys working as stewards, and occasionally you get to have sex with them…. When I was in Japan, I found these comics called baru, which is bear porn. [Famous illustrator Gengoroh Tagame] draws this erotic-grotesque stuff…. [Beef Jam is furry porn] about a tiger that turns into a hot guy and then has sex with another hot guy, and sometimes the other guy is also part-tiger when they do it. So that’s hot.”

Christopher Butcher, manager of The Beguiling store in Toronto, using his expertise to explain the ins and outs of Japan’s comic book industry — gay to straight, romantic to explicit — and how it transfers to North American audiences. Toronto is hosting the Anime North 2008 convention this weekend. (Eye Weekly)

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