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- Seibundo Shinkosha
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- Idea + Publications
There is a genre of storytelling in Japan known as BL (which stands for Boysʼ Love, a genre depicting homoerotic relationships between male characters). It has now grown into a massive cultural phenomenon, expanding its scope beyond manga and novels to include anime, video games, fan fiction, and social media culture; yet its form of expression continues to evolve. The BL genre has long been discussed primarily from a storytelling perspective. Why do female manga artists draw relationships between men? Why so many female readers? How do these stories relate to issues of gender and sexuality? Questions like these have been discussed time and time again, creating a rich body of scholarship. However, what of the question about how these ʻrelationshipsʼ have been visualized? This feature article is an attempt to examine BL from a design perspective, with a particular focus on manga.
Examples are ripe for the choosing—compositions conveying distance between two people, gazes meeting, negative space, color, typography, the placement of characters on covers, fingertips not quite touching, back-to-back silhouettes. With BL stories, the relationships themselves are often designed as visual elements. This is more than mere decoration—this is the design of emotion. We have examined countless BL manga for this feature, and were struck by the sheer breadth of expression.
The range of style was astonishingly diverse: those that emphasize a subtle vibe, the fashionable and catchy, and even those with a quietness similar to an art book. Yet there was also a certain shared sensibility among them; something more than just making the characters look attractive. There were remnants of contemplations on the best ways to show these interpersonal intimacies. Iʼm not just talking about amorous feelings. Readers also receive a sense of the creatorʼs determination to give form to the relationship itself—tensions, dependence, longing, anxiety, reassurance, and all the other unnameable emotions. Some works emphasize sexual tension, while others meticulously depict ordinary moments in life. Many of the works blur lines between friendship and romance, in attempts to depict “those unnameable moments of intimacy.” These changes are reflected not only in the stories themselves, but also in visual elements, like book design, layout, color schemes, and typography.
Nowadays, depicting an ʻindividualʼ is also a matter of depicting their ʻrelationships.ʼ With social media came a swath of constant visualizations of who is connected to whom, and the nature of our interactions with others. The BL genre culture has consistently depicted these fluctuations and subtleties of emotions in extremely high resolution.
This feature reveals a wide range of cover designs for BL manga, primarily from 2010 onwards. Our goal is to explore the breadth of expression within this genre through designersʼ comments, interviews with authors, and contributions from researchers. How is intimacy visualized? How do we give visual form to relationships? These inquiries lie within the realm of graphic design. We sincerely hope this feature others a fresh perspective into the BL genre.
BL Manga Cover Design
Mone Sorai “Meticulously Depicting the Tiny Stories Hidden in Everyday Life”
Text by Toshinobu Nagata
A Lineage of Boys’ Love: 1970–Present
Supervised by Mari Nishihara
A Guide to Basic BL Terminology
Text by Mari Nishihara
［Essay］
Male on Male Love for Female Readers ̶ From shonen-ai to BL
Text by Yukari Fujimoto
［Essay］
BL: Stories Depicting the Intimacy Between Two Humans
Text by Mari Nishihara
New Trends Accompanying the Rapid Rise of Live-action BL Adaptations
̶ From the perspective of a lesbian saved by the first BLs
Text by Akiko Mizoguchi
Contemporary ‘Boys’ Love’ and Nanshoku in the Edo Period
Text by Timon Screech
Translation by Fraze Craze Inc.
Towards a “Egalitarian” Nanshoku? Cruising in Tokugawa Japan
Text by Gary P. Leupp
Translation by Fraze Craze Inc.
Designers in Society The Design Roles Envisioned by Japanese and Korean Designers
Concept & Design: UMA/design farm (Yuma Harada & Hazuki Osumi) × Shin Shin
Edited by Madoka Nishi
Special Thanks: Seo Hye, index shop
Poetry and Form
Part 1: Things, Words, Form, and the Unknown
Text by Naoya Sawa
Edited & Designed by Toshinobu Nagata
Designing to Live in a Progressive Space
Part 1: Josef Müller-Brockmann and Grid Systems
Text by Ichiro Saga Edited by Toshinobu Nagata Designed by Daisuke Kano
Design Eccentric From the World Collectors’ Room
Vol. 14: The Design Reviewed Archive, part 6
East meets West & West meets East:
Captivated by the Beauty of Wahon (Traditional Japanese Books)
Text by Yuko Nakajima
Design by Kazuhiro Yamada + Akiko Takeo (nipponia)
Translation by Fraze Craze Inc.
The Individual, Society, and the Universal:
In Memory of Kazumasa Nagai
Text by Kiyonori Muroga
Designed by Toshinobu Nagata
As a Casual Question
BOOKS: Akiko Okubo × Jun Kawana and Book Design
Text & Design by Toshinobu Nagata
