if i can live, there's no reason not to

The highlights of my J庭 experience were twofold: (1) meeting Fumi Yoshinaga, and (2) winning the giveaway for the J庭58 aioiuo poster. My interactions with these mangaka are something I’ll keep close to my chest - too precious to share publicly - but I can admit that I cried three separate times within the four hours I was there. If you’re looking for a guide to attending J.Garden, this isn’t it. Think of this post instead as a reflection on a genre that continues to evolve and defy expectation. Still, if you ever get the chance to go, I highly recommend attending with friends: plan ahead, debrief afterward, and revel in the shared euphoria of it all.

So, where am I going with all this, you might ask? Probably toward expanding on a quote from a Twitter mutual: “There are as many reasons to love BL as there are fujoshi.” Having experienced J.Garden firsthand, I can say with confidence that this statement is both factual and profound. Whether you’ve been reading BL for three years or two decades, you will probably never exhaust its depths. The sheer abundance of self-published works (many of which will probably never reach commercial circulation) proves how vast and untapped the genre’s creative potential remains. It’s no wonder, then, that the BL Sommelier Exam is notoriously difficult, even by veteran fujoshi standards.

This diversity also explains why BL discourse resurfaces almost every week online. The genre consistently resists being boxed into binaries; its origins were all about defying labels, and it remains a subgenre that can be truly mind-boggling to the unenlightened non-fujoshi brain. All of this makes it a constant topic of conversation in countless online corners. But here’s the thing: there really is a BL for everyone. Even if you’ve never picked up a single title, there’s almost certainly one out there that will speak directly to your tastes, curiosities, or heart. Trying to squeeze BL into pre-set labels does the genre a huge disservice. That kind of reductionism ignores both its complexity and the multiplicity of the people who love it. 

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Recently, Chise Ogawa (Caste Heaven, Red Theatre, vs LOVE) aired their frustration on Twitter:

“Sigh. I feel so frustrated. At times like these, I want to draw erotica. But commercial BL has shifted its focus to being healthy, decent, and appealing to everyone, so there are fewer opportunities to draw erotica. The atmosphere in which manga like Caste Heaven can be drawn no longer exists. I know that. But there are times when I want to draw heart-wrenching erotica...”

I was genuinely stunned. This cannot be… A world without Chise Ogawa’s ‘morally challenging’ BL is a world I could not imagine inhabiting. And I say this as someone who also has affection for ‘more wholesome,’ feel-good works by mangaka like Shikke, Minta Suzumaru, and Amamiya. Yet BL is not BL without the likes of Harada, Asada Nemui, or Psyche Delico. It is what it is because we allow Asumiko Nakamura to create both The Inheritance of Aroma and Doukyuusei. Around the same time, I saw a few people online claiming that Japanese BL was “all about non-consent” and that  they had abandoned it entirely in favor of Korean BL webtoons. The uninformed fujoshi might nod in agreement, but the more discerning one might counter, “Isn’t Jinx the most-read BL webtoon on Lezhin US?” But I digress. 

Why shouldn’t hardcore erotica, morally challenging narratives, and wholesome, sweet stories coexist within the same creative ecosystem? Why do we keep imposing editorial boundaries on a genre that was born precisely because it refused them? BL has always existed at the fringes, shaped by the tension between desire and taboo. The friction between artistic freedom and commercial marketability is nothing new, but it’s disheartening to see the balance tip so sharply toward safer choices, and consequently, sanitization. 

Interestingly, during my recent trip to Tokyo, I also had the opportunity to visit the Pink Heart Jam and Momo and Manji exhibitions, two titles that, while both successful in their own right, are often situated at opposite ends of the contemporary BL spectrum. On a global scale, Pink Heart Jam enjoys broader recognition and readership, largely because it aligns with what is now considered as wholesome storytelling within the genre. Momo and Manji, by contrast, remains stuck in digital hell with the impending shutdown of Futekiya early next year. 

Do not get me wrong. Momo and Manji is by no means devoid of warmth or tenderness. In fact, it’s anything but. Despite the heaviness of both protagonists’ pasts, the story ultimately centers on healing, companionship, and the quiet act of building a shared future, moving forward with the one you love and finding a place to belong, even if that place exists only in each other’s arms. Yet, as an Edo-period BL title, it occupies a particularly precarious position within the English-language market. Historical settings are rarely prioritized for translation, and when combined with the semi-niche status of BL itself, my hope of reading Momo and Manji in its entirety (even digitally…) feels almost futile given the limitations of the current North American manga publishing landscape.

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These thoughts have been circling in my head for months now, especially as I’ve watched BL fandom spaces shift. Enthusiasm has become almost indistinguishable from promotion. Social media has commodified passion, and the result is a strange loop: readers perform joy for traction, while publishers and creators capitalize on that performance. Yet, fandom, at its heart, was built on a culture of exchange, not advertisement: fans writing fics, sharing recommendations, and reactions without the mediation of algorithms. To reclaim that authenticity is to remember that love for certain works doesn’t have to be optimized or monetized. It can simply be.

There is now an overwhelming number of accounts dedicated to BL updates and news, but fewer spaces for personal, reflective engagement. The genre is being documented more than it is being lived. This, I think, marks a key difference between Japanese BL readers and their English-speaking counterparts. In Japan, fujoshi culture still revolves around community and connection, finding others who share similar tastes. Circles form organically around mutual curiosity and conversations emerge from shared experience rather than algorithmic visibility. By contrast, the English-speaking BL sphere often leans toward performance. Readers strive to be the first to discover, categorize, or recommend the next breakout title. The focus shifts from participation to presentation. Of course, this difference is not entirely self-imposed. Unlike Japanese fans, who can physically gather at doujin events, pop-up stores, or author signings, English-speaking BL readers are dispersed across countries and continents. Without a shared physical space for community-building, engagement tends to manifest through influence and speed, metrics that social media readily rewards.

Still, the result is a subtle erosion of the slower, more personal ways of engaging with art. What we lose in the mechanics of digital fandom is a sense of intimacy – an element vital to the genre itself. The messy, unpolished, and deeply personal conversations that once animated fandom have become rare. When every new release is reduced to a press kit, we forget that behind every title lies a reader’s experience. It reminds me that the most meaningful forms of engagement often remain the quietest ones: conversations between friends, late-night pings about favorite scenes, or the simple act of rereading something that once moved you because a friend is reading it, too. What was once a communal exchange of affection has, in many corners, transformed into a performance of expertise. I long for a return to the era of personal blogs and forum discussions when mere love for a story guided what we shared and not analytics.

But of course, it would be naïve, and frankly, silly, to pretend that clout doesn’t shape the BL world today. Popularity metrics now dictate saleability: determining which mangaka are published, which titles are extended, and which are prematurely axed. In some ways, clout has saved series that would otherwise vanish. In others, it has curtailed the kind of creative risk that once made the genre so unpredictable and exciting. This dynamic creates a kind of cognitive dissonance within me that I struggle with everyday: I crave recognition for certain BL, yet mourn the homogenization that popularity brings. The irony is that BL, once considered a niche genre, now wrestles with the same capitalist pressures as mainstream media. The question becomes: Can we sustain sincerity in a system where connection is measured by virality?