Author: ames

I love BL manga and cats and cool weather.

Making Love to Santa: chabasu’s “A Gift From Santa Claus”

~ ames ~ 1 Comment

Read on Renta!:
A Gift From Santa Claus by chabasu

Japanese:
Santa Claus ga Ataerumono
サンタクロースが与えるもの

Links:
Twitter (author)
Twitter (Publisher)

It’s that most wonderful time of year again! You the know the one: the season where everyone wants to make love to Santa Claus and fulfill their life-long Christmas dreams! …Wait, what do you mean that’s not what the holiday season is all about? I mean, why else would Reibun Ike’s Twitter account be covered in a wealth of sexy Santas?

For all my true Santafuckers out there, though, I’ve got just the recommendation for you. Two summers ago I was assigned the manga “A Gift From Santa Claus” by chabasu, and at first I was like “no way. There’s no way is this actually a BL manga about Santa Claus.” But you bet your sweet ass it’s a BL manga about Santa Claus. Never ever underestimate the mousou power of a BL artist.

Orphaned as a child, Kiyoshi is an now an adult—a simple man with simple desires, he just wants to spend an incredibly beautiful, romantic Christmas with his partner snuggled up next to the tree, surrounded by candles and presents as they sip champagne and huddle close for warmth while watching snow gently fall outside. But newly single, Kiyoshi is starting to feel like his dream will never be realized. That is, until he happens upon a Santa in the park offering to grant any wish. He wishes for a boyfriend he can spend a romantic Christmas with, thinking he’s just shitposting into the wind, and then heads home.

But then the next night Saint Nick shows up at his doorstep, telling Kiyoshi he can do whatever he desires to his body. 😲

This manga is a rollercoaster from start to finish. In true chabasu “older bottom” fashion, Father Christmas is the one to offer up his body. Discarding his silky fake beard and naughty red suit he reveals himself to be Goh Kiritake—but he’s still very much Kris Kringle at heart. It turns out there are many “Santas” all around the world who discard their selves to become a vessel of happiness for children on Christmas. However, by allowing himself to be seen and desired as a man by Kiyoshi, Santa—Goh—must face his punishment by the board of Santas for his Christmas sins.

I don’t want to spoil too much, since I truly feel like this is a manga that needs to be experienced from start to finish. There’s a lot that’s just mindbogglingly wild, such as… you know… watching Santa get fucked. But there are also some incredibly sweet moments, particularly around the fact that Kiyoshi is an orphan, and watching him finally make the Christmas memories he never got growing up. And I also really enjoyed the lighthearted worldbuilding around why there are actually many Santas around the world of all races and creeds—because these are all men who’ve dedicated their lives to making the children around them happy.

There are also hot reindeer.

Incredibly funny and cute and bizarre and entertaining (and sexy—something I don’t often associate with Christmas), I can’t recommend this enough for a heartwarming and light Christmas read! I know I personally think back to this manga every Christmas since it was first assigned to me. Make this your new holiday tradition—you won’t regret it.

I leave you with a simple question this Christmas: if Santa was exiled because he let you fuck him, would you choose to live the rest of your life with Santa in seclusion in an endless winter? I sure hope you would.

Christmas Gift Recs: BL Style

~ ames ~ 3 Comments

Perhaps it’s a bit late in the month for gift recommendations, but at least with Renta! you don’t have to worry about shipping! (Let’s give those overworked postal workers a break…) Since it’s that giving time of year, I figured why not make a nice list of recs for that BL fan in your life? Or, for yourself? Christmas is still a good time for self-care in the form of BL, surely.

So I decided to take our top ten categories and list my top three for each, and why I think they’re a great option for anyone who’s into those tropes.

1. Older Bottom
2. Delinquents
3. Omegaverse
4. Beast
5. Childhood Friends
6. Younger Top
7. Hosts
8. Businessmen
9. Sadistic Boyfriend
10. Fantasy

Without further ado, read on for thirty of my personal pics that should satisfy and heal any BL fan during this hectic holiday season!

Continue reading “Christmas Gift Recs: BL Style” →

Call Me Daddy: Shizuku Kunichi’s “Dad, My Lover”

~ ames ~ 1 Comment

Read on Renta!
Dad, My Lover

Japanese title:
ダッドマイラバー

Links:
Twitter
Comic Picn (Publisher)

This last father’s day, I asked on Twitter which kind of BL dads our readers prefer, and sugar daddies—referred to in Japan as パパ活 (papa katsu)—got a pretty lukewarm response. Which I guess is understandable, since there’s actually not a lot of BL about sugar daddies. It’s truly an untapped market. If you look up the tag on Chill Chill, even, there are only twelve (!?) hits.

Which is one of the reasons I got really excited when I found Shizuku Kunichi’s “Dad, My Lover.” Full disclosure: I actually read this three years ago when it was originally released in Japanese. One look at the cover sitting on the bookstore shelf, adorned with Shizuku Kunichi’s stunning art with Makoto’s adorable twink face and lopsided pink hair, was all it took for me to know this was going to be one of THOSE manga—you know, the ones where for some reason they just hit all the right buttons and you find yourself rereading them every six months? That’s not just me, right?

So when I saw we got the translated version of the manga via one of our partners, you bet your sweet ass I was going to take advantage and push this book with all my might. So here I am, doing just that. Pushing this book. Directly into your arms. Imagine me with a creepy, crazed look in my eyes as I take your hands in mine and then gently but firmly place this book into them. (Or, in this case, the JPEGs…)

Dad, My Lover is about sweet, innocent (beautiful cinnamon roll too good for this world, too pure) gay university student Makoto. In university on a scholarship with no extra support from his parents, when Makoto loses his arcade job he’s absolutely screwed. He’s living on his friend Ryota’s couch when Ryota, desperate to get Makoto to move out, recommends sugar dating. Makoto, without thinking too much about it (sweetie… baby… please…) agrees and joins a sugaring app. From there, he’s contacted by a man who calls himself “Sako.”

Continue reading “Call Me Daddy: Shizuku Kunichi’s “Dad, My Lover”” →

BL and its place in LGBTQ media.

~ ames ~ 6 Comments

From Japan’s やおい論争 (Yaoi Ronso, or Yaoi Debates) to the online discourse of today, the most common question surrounding BL in media and social criticism is “what is BL’s place in the larger sphere of LGBTQ media?” Does it belong there at all? Is it a genre that, while revolving around MLM, remains entirely separate from LGBTQ culture? Does it mostly being written by and for (supposedly) straight cis women fully disengage it from being LGBTQ? Is BL a force for good, or does it only exist to promote stereotypes of queer men? And what about BL’s treatment of women? Which supersedes the other: the queer men who’re uncomfortable with the content in some BL, or the fans who use BL as a reprieve from the stifling nature of the heteronormative media landscape? Or is BL, in itself, heteronormative?

Those are just a handful of the questions discussed at the Meiji University symposium “BLの国際的な広がりと名国のLGBTQ,” or “LGBTQ Issues and the Globalization of ‘BL’.” Hosted by around twenty scholars, academics, fans, and community members from around the world, this symposium aimed to share research around how global queer communities interact with and shape BL in their own image post-import.

First, a little background. Taking place on November 25th and 26th, the event was hosted at Meiji University, which is often at the forefront of manga studies and research in Japan. The actual lectures were held at the Nakano campus, which just seemed right considering Nakano is also home to Nakano Broadway, a huge multi-level otaku hub for used manga, doujinshi, and goods. It’s been years since I was personally on a university campus and, being a huge nerd (I probably would have tried for my graduate degree if I hadn’t landed my dream job), I was pretty excited to feel those academic vibes again. Especially since the temps recently finally took a turn in Tokyo, so not only was it academic vibes, but cold weather, fall leaves, grab-a-huge-ass-coffee-before-class vibes. The perfect atmosphere to nerd out about BL manga for two days straight. (And get paid for it… 😏 I love my job.)

Continue reading “BL and its place in LGBTQ media.” →

Healing From Trauma’s Scars: tapon’s “Entwined in Red”

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Read on Renta!:
Entwined in Red by tapon

Japanese Title:
Karamaru Himo no Akai Ato
絡まる紐の赤い痕

tapon (author)
moment (publishing line)
ShuCream Official EN

TW: emotional, physical, and sexual abuse

A complaint I see frequently regarding BL manga is that it’s too short. Compared to shonen or shojo series, which can go on for tens (and sometimes hundreds) or volumes, BL is often kept to between one and three volumes, and only goes beyond that for extremely popular series. (Though, I’ve noticed this is changing a bit with the proliferation of digital publishing in the BL space, but that’s a tangent for another day.) I personally like this aspect of BL, however—it forces the artist to write a concise story that makes a big impact with as few pages as possible. And, in the case of today’s review subject, sometimes you come across a manga that fits a full coming of age story in as few as four chapters.

tapon’s Entwined in Red condenses a story about abuse, trauma, and shame into just over one hundred pages. Our main character, Asai, is a Very Good Boy whose entire personality and motto are heavily based on the idea that it’s best to live a “normal” life. Good in school, a wonderful son and big brother, and popular with all his female classmates, Asai seems like the perfect example of what a teenage boy should be. However, he’s harboring a secret—ever since elementary school, when he and some fellow classmates stumbled on a porn mag with women in full shibari, he’s been obsessed with the idea of beautiful red ropes marking pale skin. From his classmates’ exclamations of disgust, however, it was made clear that liking shibari isn’t “normal.”

Enter his beautiful classmate Rui. Consistently truant, to the point that most of his classmates only remember his existence through rumors about him being a player and son of a yakuza, Rui is a complete mystery to Asai. So when Rui is suggested as the pianist for their class choir contest (evidently a staple in Japanese middle and high schools), Asai is asked as the class rep to visit Rui’s apartment, tell him about the contest, and deliver some paperwork. What he walks in on, however is Rui in the middle of prostituting himself to an older man, his beautiful pale skin covered in red rope.

When Asai tries to chastise Rui for doing “stuff like that,” Rui gets annoyed and points out Asai got hard from seeing him all tied up, so what right does he have to act superior? When Rui tells Asai to take responsibility for constantly interrupting his time with his clients, Asai can’t resist the allure of these desires he’s been pushing down for half his life, and thus Asai’s squeaky clean image is tarnished—but in its stead starts the blossoming of a relationship tying him to Rui.

Continue reading “Healing From Trauma’s Scars: tapon’s “Entwined in Red”” →

Community Tags, Why They Exist, and Why They Matter

~ ames ~ 2 Comments

While searching on our site, you may have noticed we have two tagging systems:

If these tags appeal to you, they’re for the series Chew Me Up and Teach Me About Love!

For those who’ve ever wondered why in the world we need two tagging systems, or what these two tagging systems are used for, I figured I’d do an explainer. I’ve noticed the community tags in particular seem under-utilized, and since they’re sincerely more helpful the more people actually use them, I was hoping I could “take a Selfish” and talk about why I think the community tags are important.

Continue reading “Community Tags, Why They Exist, and Why They Matter” →

“Why Are Renta’s Titles So Weird?”: Working on Adult-Oriented Content in an Increasingly Anti-Ero Culture

~ ames ~ 2 Comments

The few times I’ve had the joy of reading people’s opinions on Renta!, there’s been a continuing theme: the weird titles. Whether people find them annoying or funny, Renta!’s titles seem to have become an inseparable part of our branding within the BL fandom. So I thought I would talk about why Renta!’s titles sometimes look the way they do, why those changes occur, and the overall culture pressuring us to handle our titles this way.

First, I want to talk about the general manga titling culture in Japan as of late. As discerning eyes may have noticed, manga titles keep getting longer and longer and longer, and more and more… err… upfront (?) about the manga’s themes. “I Was A Struggling Office Worker But Now I’ve Been Reincarnated As The Rich Mean Villainess But I’ve Decided To Go Against My Fate!” etc. I’m sure we’ve all seen them. This is a naming dynamic I like to refer to as “hyper-meta titling,” and it’s been popular in Japan for the last five or so years. I’m not sure what initially caused this trend (that would be its own interesting rabbit hole, and perhaps a blog post for another day), but it means these titles are already quite long and weird in Japanese, and often get even longer and weirder during translation. You also see them semi-frequently in BL, in the direction of “I Met A Hot Guy At The Gym And Now We’re Friends With Benefits and I Want to Lick His Nipples” (not a real title… unfortunately), etc.

But those aren’t the titles I want to talk about with this post. Instead, I want to talk about adult content, SEO, and the pinch of an increasingly anti-porn culture in the West.

Damn. Sounds a lot less sexy now, huh? Hotface

For those who don’t work in fields that have a significant online presence and this is thus something you never have to think about (lucky you!), SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” You might hear your favorite influencers discussing it sometimes in terms of using the best words and phrases to get clicks—things that are currently trending, or are consistently popular. In the case of this blog, for instance, we’d want to include a lot of BL-, manga- and otaku-related phrases, keywords, full titles in a variety of spellings (English, romaji, and Japanese), etc. in order to help the right audience find our content.

However, in the past ten or so years and for a variety of reasons (some incredibly valid—we don’t want children stumbling across our content, obviously—and some a little… uh… less so), the overlords who have the most sway over the internet have cranked the breaks on SEO when it comes to adult content. Any words generally seen as sexual or pornographic in nature can get your site flagged and pushed pages and pages into the search results, even if your content is exactly what’s being sought out. The same has been happening with social media sites—I’m sure you all remember the Tumblr apocalypse where the site banned porn (and gave birth to the wonderful phrase “female-presenting nipples”) and subsequently lost half their users within the next few years. Twitter, too, has been recently cracking down and issuing shadow bans on adult content—i get hit with a “sensitive content” slap pretty frequently.

(But we keep trucking, because Twitter is all we have left… 🙃)

Renta! actually has entire lists of phrases we can’t use in our titles and synopses specifically because they’re incredibly damaging to SEO. Because I don’t want to severely damage the SEO for our blog, I’ll post a little image here:

However, as has already been established, Japanese artists and publishers as of late love being particularly blunt in their titles, particularly when it comes to porn. So a title like ZOMBIE HIDE SEX (ゾンビ・ハイド・セックス) has to become… Fooling Around While The Zombies Roam. My Love Story as a Slut with a Wet, Needy Hole (恋するビッチのとろ穴事情) becomes A Hole Craving to be Touched. Lost Virgin: how to sex (ロストバージン how to sex) becomes Lost And Undefiled: Lessons in Sensuality. The titles essentially have the same meaning, but using safe, clean words. Using “safe, clean words” can make it feel kind of bizarre, however…

We do our best to retain titles that still convey the Japanese (and the content of the manga itself) while also skirting the regulations on adult content for SEO (and, more recently as you may have read from the issues with DLsite, credit card companies).

And I know what you’re thinking. “But Ames…” you’re about to say with a furrowed brow. “You guys have TONS of stuff on your site that uses those words…” We do. And the answer is simple: those aren’t localized by us. While we also localize lots and lots of great content, we also host lots of content localized by our wonderful partners. (This is what the “Localized by:” tag on the product details means!)

On the one hand, we could take a page out of their book and translate the titles more literally, since there’s a possibility having any of those words on our site removes us from the running in the SEO race, so why not just go ham? But we hope that offsetting it at least a little with our own titles can help the anti-porn situation much of the West has gotten itself stuck in. Also, in line with all the other crack-downs on on adult content, having sexual words in the title makes it impossible to advertise the series in any big way. Womp womp.

Localizing content from a highly porn-positive culture like Japan (though, with strict censorship laws… the contradictions are confusing) for fairly anti-porn cultures in the West comes with a lot of strange, unexpected hurdles (and many an explanation to our JP staff on why we can and can’t do things the same way they’d be done in Japan). But, for us it’s worth it if we can continue bringing the wonderful content we love to an even wider audience. We hope to continue sharing lots more bizarre, silly, cute titles with you in the future, so I hope you all look forward to it!

What are some of your favorite silly Renta! titles? I’d love to hear them on the comments or on Twitter! 🤗

Beast Week Day 3: Embrace the Succubussy

~ ames ~ 3 Comments

I’ve already spoken about Sakana Tojo at length, but when given the opportunity to write a review for “Baby, Sugar, Succubus” (ベイビー、シュガー、サキュバス) I’m obviously going to take it. You just have to check my artist spotlight to know how I feel about their work, and this title is no exception.

Baby, Sugar, Succubus is the story of nearing-30 restaurant owner Arata whose dick is Just Too Big. He’s a nice guy with a heart as big as his junk, but no girls are willing to get serious with him because they fear his monster schlong. (Maybe that’s the real beast in this Beast Week article…) An attempted blowjob, a handy here or there, but actual loving, romantic love making? Nah man, it’s Just Too Big.

Enter sweet, gentle succubus Shinya, who passes out in front of Arata’s shop one night because he’s absolutely starving. Arata makes him a nice meal, but what he doesn’t realize is Shinya doesn’t need food as sustenance, but semen. “Please, sir, can I have some cum?” Shinya asks (not really… kinda…), and while Arata has never been interested in other guys before, he can’t help but be drawn in by Shinya’s kuudere cuteness and the fact that this is the first person who’s seen his dick without flinching away in fear and disgust. “Is it the fact that you’re a succubus, or just the fact that you’re you?” Arata can’t help but wonder, in awe of how attractive he finds Shinya.

What follows is the most astoundingly cute, raunchy, amaero manga known to mankind, with Arata and Shinya quickly falling more and more in love while also being able to accept the parts of themselves—for Arata it’s his giant dick, and for Shinya it’s his succubus nature—they never thought possible. They can’t keep their hands off each other, constantly whispering sweet nothings and annoying all of the people around them with their flirting and making out.

Plus, it has a really fun twist on the whole succubus trope, with it just being accepted in this world that there are “variants” to humans and Shinya just happens to be one of those. The beautiful ethereal shine he gets to his eyes after feeding is so unbelievably cute (all those sparkles! how is this a porno manga!?), and I can very much understand Arata wanting to treasure and protect Shinya for all eternity. Overall, 100000/10. If you’re in the mood for a super sweet and sexy romp with the horniest type of beast, definitely check this (and Sakana Tojo’s many other manga) out!

Beast Week Day 1: There’s a Vampire in the School

~ ames ~ 2 Comments

Read here:
The Black Cat & the Vampire

Japanese title:
寄宿舎の黒猫は夜をしらない
Kishukusha no Kuroneko wa Yoru wo Shiranai

“If vampires have the power to charm people, that would fit him perfectly.”

Set in a snowy fantasy boarding school in a nonexistent country, Nikke Taino’s “The Black Cat & The Vampire” sets the perfect eerie Halloween mood. Following honor student Yuki who just wants a quiet life of studying, there’s a mystery at the school when fellow student Aula wakes up dazed and weak, two bloody puncture wounds on his neck. Thus starts the rumor that surely there’s a monster on their secluded scenic campus—a vampire.

Almost instantly, Yuki starts to suspect the stunning and charismatic head boy Jean. “Vampires seduce people with their beautiful looks. And then latch onto their necks, so they say.” Vowing to get closer to Jean to find out the truth, Yuki feels himself drawn to the older boy, seeing a yearning and sadness in his flirtations. Jean says Yuki is the only one he can love and trust, specifically because Yuki doesn’t care for him. But what will happen if Yuki finds himself falling for Jean…?

Jean isn’t disgusted by garlic, nor does he avoid human food, and his teeth are as normal as anyone’s. But Yuki can’t shake the feeling that there’s some sort of supernatural allure to Jean. Strange things keep happening at their school and around Jean, but is Jean actually the culprit, or is he just another victim of circumstance?

I LOVE Nikke Taino’s work, and this is no exception. I live for the yearning and drama of Jean being madly in love with the only person who he desperately wants to never love him back. The characters are all so wonderful and have their own endearing personalities, and having such a wide cast of characters—as Nikke Taino generally does—makes the world feel so full and alive.

If you’re in the mood for a wonderful, fantastical winter mystery, I can’t recommend this enough. Is Jean really a vampire, or is he just an ethereally alluring man surrounded by misfortune? You, dear reader, just have to find out for yourself.

J.GARDEN: The Eden of BL

~ ames ~ 7 Comments

J.GARDEN didn’t start until 11AM, but the thing you learn fast with attending events is that you have to get there early. While the staff try to make it fair by holding lottos and raffles to randomize how and when people enter the venue regardless of when you actually show up, etc. you still get there early. There are more than 13 million people living in Tokyo, and even if just a small fraction of them care enough about original BL to want to attend J.GARDEN, you want to up the odds of getting in and getting the books you want as much as you humanly can.

There’s a reason many otaku refer to event days as “war”—you need to go in with a game plan, or you’re going to lose. And Sou and I were already at a rough start, because we’d missed the chance to pick up a pamphlet on pre-order. They’d sold out within the first four days of release, and we hadn’t been given the okay to attend until the fifth day. So we were kind of screwed. Nonetheless, we did what we could with what we had—which was Twitter’s #J庭54 hashtag, the official J.GARDEN site, and tons of passion for BL—and decided we’d torture ourselves getting up at 5AM day-of, come down early, get a pamphlet, and do our best to plan in the time between obtaining it and when doors opened.

Continue reading “J.GARDEN: The Eden of BL” →