BL Event Report!: ChillChill Festival 2024

On April 6th, Sou and I had the honor of attending two separate talks at ChillChill Festival! What is ChillChill Festival? What did the talks entail? And why the heck were we able to go? Read on and you’ll find out! Morning after party

On a Friday in mid-March, our coworker Snow (also a participant in the Renta! Staff BL Awards 2023) suddenly approached me after the weekly company-wide meeting and asked if I’d heard of “ChillChill Festival.” Spurred on by my confused post-hour-long-meeting look, she brought up the event page and told me tickets were available through work, since our main Japanese branch is a sponsor of the ChillChill BL Awards. We were allowed to pick two talks, and attend them with one friend if we so desired.

While I would have loved to bring my friend Merry (interviewed on the BLog here), she was unable to come. So, I was thinking I’d go alone—until I brought it up with Sou. Since they’re also a huge fan of Kishimoto-sensei (we discuss her adorable tweets regularly), they said they’d be interested in coming with. Thus, I requested two tickets each for “Discussing the Frontlines of BL Trends” (BLトレンド最前線を語る) featuring Kishimoto, Satou Sugar, and Teku Rin, and “BL Fetishism in the Reiwa Era” (令和のBLフェティシズム) featuring Okita Yuuho, Nikuya Inui, bov, and Yukiharu.

However, before we go into the day of the actual event, let’s discuss ChillChill, and the history of ChillChill Festival!

Continue reading BL Event Report!: ChillChill Festival 2024

ChillChill BL Awards 2024, and their Importance in the BL Landscape

It’s that time of year again! This past Friday, ChillChill opened voting for the 2024 BL Awards! But I figured there might be some of our readers asking:

“What is ChillChill?”
“What are the BL Awards?”
“Why does this even matter?”

…which is why I’ve decided to write a post about ChillChill, the BL Awards, the recent history of year-end BL best-of compilations, as well as this year’s nominee pool and what you can actually read on Renta! So let’s just jump right into it!

What is ChillChill (ちるちる)?

I feel like anyone even vaguely versed in Japanese BL fandom has heard of ChillChill—that’s the level of impact and importance the site has in the Japanese market. You can barely search a BL artist or title without the site popping up as one of the top results.

ChillChill came onto the scene in 2008, starting out as an indexing and community site. Essentially, it was the BL version of sites like MyAnimeList. You could build a profile, share your favs, post reviews, take part in discussions, find new recommendations through their intense tagging system (which I’ve also discussed briefly in my post about why our community tagging system is important), make friends with similar tastes, etc.

Continue reading ChillChill BL Awards 2024, and their Importance in the BL Landscape