Shõnen is marketed for boys between 10-17, with Shõjo being its female equivalent. The first misconception in the term lies in its target audience. In the end the parody was meant to poke fun of the fact that this 'new' shõnen-ai was hard to understand for its age group and so yaoi focused on the other half of this, also known as all the good guy on guy action.īefore the term Yaoi was coined there was Shõnen-ai. Since this form of shõnen-ai mimicked actual shõnen-ai (the action/adventure and comedy manga marketed towards young boys) it featured mostly male leads/characters. Though some fans understand it as Yamette! Atashi no Oshiri Itai!, translated: Stop it! My butt hurts! Yaoi was basically a 'parody' of Shõnen-ai that was produced in the 70's and 80's in which people would write sexually explicit fan fictions of manga that were aimed for (pre-)pubescent girls. It is commonly used as a female-oriented term with regard to the genre's demographics, but the genre attracts a range of audiences.Īs for the word itself, it stands for Yamanashi, Ochinashi, Iminashi, meaning No climax, no point, no meaning. Yaoi is a term for media created in Japan that focuses on the homoerotic relationships between male characters and has heavy sexual content. 1.3 Shōnen-ai (for works created in the 70's & 80's).
