Fujojocast #11 – Gay Manga Dialogues with Thomas Baudinette (Part 1)

Geshuku no Oniisan by Nohara Kuro

Even when my life since last year has been moving forward like a jet plane, I always make an effort to do something special for Yaoi no Hi! That’s August 1, and that is today!

For this Yaoi no Hi, I decided to upload a podcast featuring my awesome friend and colleague, Thomas Baudinette (or Tom, as I call him in the show) about gay manga in Japan and its place in gay and women’s culture. We brushed on various related topics to gay manga such as gei komi and, of course, boys love.

In this episode

Thomas Baudinette is an anthropologist and Japanese Studies scholar who is currently teaching at Macquarie University in Sydney. We’ve worked together for a couple of conferences and often found ourselves talking about our research which looks at people’s consumption of boys love texts. Finally, I had a chance to invite him on a podcast!

In this show, we talked about so many things about gay manga and BL that I had to divide the show into two parts. The first part deals with Tom’s research on gay manga and how Japanese gay men are defining and consuming this comic genre. We also talked about the subgenres within gay manga, some of which are beyond what I perceive as aesthetically gei komi. Of course, we also brushed upon “bara” and how English discourse packages gay manga through English-translated texts such as Massive and other gay-translated titles.

It was a fun first hour, and hopefully, you learned so much from Tom about Japan’s vibrant gay manga culture.

Fujojocast #11: Gay Manga Dialogues with Thomas Baudinette (Part 1)

Note: The opinions of both Thomas and Khursten do not represent their respective institutions.

Download the episode
OP: Doukyusei BGM 1 by Oshio Kotaro (from the Doukyusei Movie OST)
EP: Doukyusei BGM 1 by Oshio Kotaro (from the Doukyusei Movie OST)

Show notes

Articles

Thomas Baudinette’s “An evaluation of physicality in the bara manga of Badi magazine” and “Japanese gay men’s attitudes towards ‘gay manga’ and the problem of genre” (See Thomas’ academia for more articles).

James Welker’s “Beautiful, Borrowed, and Bent: Boys Love as Girls Love in Shōjo Manga” and “Flower Tribes and Female Desire Complicating Early Female Consumption of Male Homosexuality in Shōjo Manga.” (See James’ academia for more articles)

Wim Lunsing’s “Yaoi Ronsō: Discussing Depictions of Male Homosexuality in Japanese Girls’ Comics, Gay Comics and Gay Pornography”

Gay Manga Artists from Badi

Geshuku no Oniisan by Nohara Kuro

Nijiiro Sunrise by Maeda Poketo

Nijiiro Sunrise by Maeda Poketo (See a sample over on twitter!)

Gay Manga Artists and Works Published in English

Gengoro Tagame’s My Brother’s Husband