It occurs to me that we don't have much of anything really in the realm of yaoi manga represented in our library collection.
My knowledge of the field is rather small, mainly due to my lack of personal interest (pretty much the only yaoi I've read to much extent is Banana Fish, which I think is actually more likely considered shonen-ai). I could surely pull some titles out of the latest Previews, but I don't really know what is considered to be 'the good stuff'.
So, I'll turn it over to readers of this blog: can you recommend two or three yaoi manga that would serve as good representations for our collection?
Please use the comments of this post to give me your suggestions.
Thanks!
5 comments:
Since I know a little about Yaoi here and there I thought I might jump in here and offer a bit of advice without sounding too impertinent.
I am guessing this is a public library and as such you would probably need to be a little more careful with some of the titles that are currently available, at least they all contain Parental Advisory or Mature Content labels there are probably some titles best to avoid for being a shade too extreme for a casual browser such as Finder's Keepers.
A good place to start possibly would be Skyscrapers of Oz which is part of the Boy Boy range from Kitty Media, its hardcore without being unpleasant and the story around the charcters is a lot of fun.
If your looking for softer gentle introductions, Fake from Toykopop or even Demon Diaries are delightfully suggestive without ever getting to 'nasty' as it were so people can enjoy a teaser. On a similar theme Alone in my King's Harem and Only The Ring Finger Knows from DMP are excellent choices (plus DMP have the novel from Only the Ring Finger Knows in the pipeline) Not only do DMP titles look nice on the shelves, the quality inside is just as impressive. Both of these titles I very much enjoyed reading, and both are about flowering love rather than an already established relationship.
I can't really offer much comment on the Blu Line of Yaoi titles since I only have 1 book and that arrived in the post today, Love Mode. I shied away from the artwork at first but I did enjoy the story when I read it lots of cat and mouse sorts of carrying ons, and possibly another title to add to that category would be Yellow from DMP, in which one guy is gay, the other is hetrosexual and they work together. The content becomes more explicit but isn't really aggressive enough to cause outrage.
Most of those titles would please a casual interestee as well as the hardcore Yaoi fan, but if you wanted something that would be specifically targetted at the established reader, Kizuna: Bonds of Love from the Be Beautiful line could be a good title to think about getting, with plenty of passion in the pages it isn't always easy reading but it is a popular title and would more than likely go down well with a keen Yaoi fan ^.^
Hope this helps a little ^.^ OR I could have just made things all the more confusing *laughs* ^.^
~~~(,, ,,oo)
Thanks Immelda. I've heard of Fake & Demon Diaries, but didn't really know what their standing is.
I should point out that we're an academic research library, not a public library, and we don't need to be concerned about only choosing things that are 'safe'.
Very Good Work. I like your Blog.
Gretings from Portugal.
Oh yeah, Moto Hagio--I read both They Were 11 and A, A' back when Viz released them in floppy format. And you're right, it's a crying shame that there's nothing in print by her these days.
Thanks everyone for your suggestions. I passed a few of them on to our art librarian (who actually makes the purchasing decisions for comics) and she was grateful.
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