If you follow a lot of BL artists and publishers, there’s a good chance you’ve been seeing the #BLキャラ総選挙2024 hashtag floating around Twitter over the last couple weeks, along with little profiles of BL characters belonging to the artist or publisher. When I first started seeing them about a week and a half ago, I initially assumed it was just a fun new Twitter trend among mangaka, but boy was I wrong (and also super behind on commercial BL news—I guess you can really tell the Renta! office has been super busy these last couple months).
BLキャラ総選挙2024, or the “2024 BL Character General Election,” is another effort by the wonderful BL site ChillChill to spread the love for commercial BL. It was initially announced in early May with the following blurb (loosely translated by yours truly):
For the amazing commercial BL characters who make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside!
This BL election was brought forth in order to shine a spotlight on those wonderful BL characters, spread the love of the BL series they’re from, and introduce new stories to an even wider audience!
This is really interesting, since the ChillChill BL Awards already used to have a seme/uke character section. So in this BLog post I’ll give a brief rundown of the ChillChill BL Awards character ranking history, before showcasing the BL characters whose stories you can read on Renta!, how to vote, and a little chatter about some of my personal Best Boys.
In 2009, the year of the first awards, the category was just “Character Ranking” and included nine characters listed with an attribute:
Seme – top
Uke – bottom
Oyaji (オヤジ) – old dudes
Teen – self-explanatory…
Salaryman – self-explanatory…
Hetare (ヘタレ) – characters who’re clumsy or just can’t take care of themselves
Kichiku (鬼畜) – sadistic guys, more frequently referred to as ドS now
Kenage (健気) – characters who’re particularly admirable, kind, and overall Good
Kiwamono (キワモノ) – weird perverts
Kiwamono was given the boot by year two (2010). I actually wasn’t really sure what the word meant so I sought council with our wonderful coworker “Snow” (originally featured in the 2023 Renta! Staff BL Awards), and she said “weird over-the-top perverts, characters similar to those you’d see in an Jake Akahoshi manga” which painted a very vivid picture. (She also said the word can feel kind of unintentionally negative, so it’s gone out of vogue.)
Similar to other aspects of the BL Awards, you can track trends through the years by which categories are included, how they’re phrased, etc. In 2010 kiwamono was changed to aho no ko (アホの子, or dumb boys) before being scrapped altogether. The 2011 Awards did away with almost all the sub-categories outside seme and uke but added iya na yatsu (嫌な奴, or unlikable guys). 2012 did away with iya na yatsu, brought back salarymen, and added ero (エロ, or sexy) and oresama (俺様, or arrogant). These categories remained for one more cycle through the 2014 Awards (2013 was skipped) before, finally, in 2015 the categories were done away with altogether and only uke and seme remained and were now allowed multiple characters to fill the top slots.
The seme and uke rankings continued to be a part of the BL Awards through many different changes, from the move away from being highly site-specific to becoming the massive industry-wide event it is today. (If you want to learn more about the importance of the ChillChill BL Awards, I recommend reading my post about the 2024 BL Awards nominees!) I actually got to go to the 2024 BL Awards acceptance ceremony as a representative of Renta!, which was a trip… I was too shy to talk to any of the mangaka (my beloved… Kishimoto-sensei…), but all the food was amazing and a friend from Futekiya was there. 
In 2023, however, the seme and uke categories were removed entirely. This may have been for a variety of reasons. First, as BL as a genre continues to achieve widespread acceptance, it’s slowly being treated a bit less like a niche fandom space and more like an actual expression of artistry, so it makes more sense to showcase more titles rather than characters and other BL-fan-specific concepts and tropes. Another reason could be that, with the proliferation of digital publishing in Japan, BL is just becoming such a massive genre that they needed those category spaces for more sub-genres. It could also be both, or neither. Either way, the seme and uke ranking disappeared, and with the 2024 BL Awards not welcoming it back with open arms, it seemed gone forever.
But, it’s actually back… as its own general election!
So now, let’s break down exactly what the 2024 BL Character General Election actually is.
After the project was announced in May, nominations were opened up from May 10th to May 19th. Initially, the nominations opened up with three categories: seme, uke, and sub-chara. Anyone with a ChillChill account could nominate one character per category. Characters who’d won best seme/uke in previous ChillChill Awards were automatically included. However, once all the nominees were in, ChillChill ultimately broke them up into five categories instead:
King of Seme: seme characters from series published before April 2019
King of Uke: uke characters from series published before April 2019
Prince of Seme: seme characters from series published after April 2019
Prince of Uke: uke characters from series published after April 2019
Knight of Sub-chara: any characters who’re not in the main couple of the main story
There were some other rules and caveats as well. Any nominees had to be from a book published in print sometime before March 31st, 2024. For reversible characters, they would be placed in whatever category they happened to get the most nominations in. (For instance, Yoshiyuki from Happy Shitty Life was placed in the uke category while Kyotaro didn’t make the cut at all—which is surely a massive blow to Kyotaro’s ego. R.I.P.)
Voting is actually open currently! So, go vote!
Nominees were announced the weekend of July 26th, and voting will remain open until August 12th! Anyone with a ChillChill account can vote once in each category per day, so make sure to visit the site daily and cast your vote! (Sorry I’m not making this post sooner…) The 2024 BL Character General Election official Twitter account actually posted a handy image detailing how to vote, so make sure to check it out:
(There’s also automatic JP → EN translation in the upper right-hand corner of the site, so you can change it over to English if you’re having trouble!)
For those who’re interested, I recommend following the official account because they also post election forecasts of the current tallies! So, you can see who your oshi‘s top opponent currently is!
The final results are planned for December 13th, 2024—just in time for the 2025 BL Awards to start ramping up!
As for books you can read in English, there are actually over 30 titles available on Renta!—which isn’t counting translated works that are only available through print and other platforms. It honestly makes me really happy to see just how many BL works are now being shared on a global scale.
As for the ones on Renta!:
King of Seme
– Inui from Drugless Intercourse
– Wolsey from Lala’s Married Life
– Kousuke from Hitorijime My Hero
– Chiaki from Let’s Be a Family!! and Someday I’ll Fall for You
– Choji from the Lost and Undefiled series
– Megumi from Megumi and Tsugumi
– Atsushi from Brazenly in Love (volume 2)
– Touma from Cosmetic Playlover
– Tashiro from Tashiro-kun, Why’re You Like This?
– Tengoku from Heaven and Demon
– Chikara from Twittering Birds Never Fly
– Shin from My Dearest Cop
– Hira from My Beautiful Man
King of Uke
– Takeru from the Lost and Undefiled series
– Tatsuyuki from Tatsuyuki Oyamato the 4th
– Kiyoi from My Beautiful Man
– Kazuma from Let’s Be a Family!! and Someday I’ll Fall for You
– Mitsuki from Tashiro-kun, Why’re You Like This?
– Seiji from My Dearest Cop
– Tatsumi from Drugless Intercourse
– Satoshi from Satoshi and Kakeru
– Natsume from Cosmetic Playlover
– Yashiro from Twittering Birds Never Fly
– Aoi from His Extra-Large, Ever-So-Lovely…
– Yoshimune from Iberico Pork & Love & Camellia
– Yoru from The Song of Yoru & Asaichi
– Ramdane from Lala’s Married Life
Prince of Seme
– Alto from Lullaby of the Dawn
– Yusei from Smoky Nectar
– Ryousuke from This Poor Beta Doesn’t Know About Love
– Ichii from FANGS
– Ukano from The Foxy Mouse’s Romance
– Sono from Pittosporum
– Naoto from A Romantic Comedy Between Two Ex-Boyfriends
– Takahiro from Mitsuka
– Reiji from I Want to Spoil You
– Tsubaki from The Monster & The Ghost
– Rihito from Same wa Sakura ni Koi o Suru (Upcoming)
– Keiki from Alpha no Hanayome (Upcoming)
– Hazuki from Picked Up By a Sly Man
– Takamada from Hit On By a Kinky Guy
– Ryo from FAKE FACT LIPS
Prince of Uke
– Elva from Lullaby of the Dawn
– Eito from Omae no Hou kara Kiss Shite Kure yo (Upcoming)
– Yoshiyuki from Happy Shitty Life
– Sachio from The Foxy Mouse’s Romance
– Mizuki from Eat Me Up, My Husband
– Sayama from Mask Danshi: This Shouldn’t Lead to Love
– Jun from Breathless Momentum
– Zen from FAKE FACT LIPS
– Suzuharu from This Poor Beta Doesn’t Know About Love
– Hisaya from Pittosporum
Knight of Sub-Chara
– Asahi from A Romantic Comedy Between Two Ex-Boyfriends
– Giichi from Twilight Out of Focus
– Akihiro from Same wa Sakura ni Koi o Suru (Upcoming)
– God from Happy Shitty Life
– Iriya from Alpha no Hanayome (Upcoming)
– Kobayashi from Omae no Hou kara Kiss Shite Kure yo (Upcoming)
– Koyama from My Beautiful Man
– Tsuruga from Mask Danshi: This Shouldn’t Lead to Love
– Ibitsu from The Monster & The Ghost
One thing I found really interesting while I was noting down all the nominees was just how varied they were. In previous years, the top seme and uke were usually just the main couple from the current most popular series, and I expected this to be no different. But, as we saw with Yoshiyuki from Happy Shitty Life getting in without his reluctant reversible soulmate Kyotaro, people weren’t necessarily just picking both characters from their favorite manga. One that stood out to me, personally, was the fact that only Yakumo (seme) from Haruyosi Hiro‘s Naisho no Stalker-san was nominated—but not my precious, perfect, wonderful, beloved Sumiya (uke). But, really, it just shows how charming Yakumo is—the gap between his work persona and his stalker persona (and the fact that they’re tightly tied together with his intense love for Sumiya aaaaaaaa) is SO GOOD, so I can see why he specifically stood out to a lot of people. I feel like this also shows that the fandoms around BL characters themselves—not just their ties to specific titles or couplings—has been increasing in recent years, giving a space to celebrate the wonderful character writing by BL artists. (It’s also been increasingly common to see itabags specifically for BL characters in places like Tik Tok or during events, which has been wonderful.)
For me, personally, voting for the 2024 BL Character General Election is very difficult. The Prince of Uke category, in particular, is rough—I love Kanae from SHIKKE’s Pink Heart Jam, but I also adore Toki from Makine Kureta‘s Hajimete, Hajimemashita, but Mizuki from Yukiharu’s My Beautiful Man is my wife, but Hajime from Fuyushima Shigure’s Junjou de Nani ga Warui is my girlfriend, but Sui-senpai from Amekiri’s Chotto Matou yo, Harutora-kun is my sweet baby angel, but Yuzuriha from Momose An‘s Naka Made Aishite is my little meow-meow, but Shio-chan from Mayu Haru’s Chirijiri Yukuno is my EVERYTHING… and that’s just the ones I LOVE, not even the ones I just Really Like. The Prince of Seme category isn’t much easier, with having to choose between so many truly wonderful (albeit not wife-level) characters.
How in the world am I supposed to choose??????? I guess at least this means that no matter who wins, I’ll be satisfied.
Overall, I think this is a really fun addition to the BL Awards cycle! It’s great to be able to celebrate the BL you love—titles, tropes, characters, and all—year round. I’m always game for more ways to share the love of BL, and I can’t wait to be introduced to even more wonderful BL series and characters I haven’t even had a chance to read yet. Maybe next time I’ll make it my goal to know every single uke on the list.
Any character you’re definitely voting for? Or characters you’re surprised didn’t make the cut? I’d love to hear what everyone else thinks about the 2024 BL Character General Election, whether in the comments or on Twitter!
Until then, I highly recommend checking the election hashtag and reading all the cute, silly character profiles the artists lovingly filled out for their “candidates.” As a fan of these boys, it’s been really cute seeing their profiles which include their usual amount of sleep, how easily they cry, and their “top three” (usually filled in with favorite aspects of their boyfriend). The usual stuff you ask a candidate up for election!
rentaBLog 
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