BL Trope Tourney 2025: A Retrospective!

Recently we’ve been trying to brain storm how to change our BL Twitter so it’s more fun and interactive! Over the past year, through conversations with readers and community members, we’ve been doing a lot of trial and error regarding what our followers do and don’t like about our social media presence. “Stop posting the same series over and over and over again”? Got it. “We want more culture and recommendation posts”? Working on it! We want to make the BL Twitter as fun to follow as it is to run.

As part of our push to have a more engaging Twitter presence, this last spring we hosted the “BL Trope Tourney”! This was our take on the incredibly popular March Madness men’s college basketball tournament, which we’d wanted to do for a while. Initially, we wanted to face specific popular series off against each other, but that was understandably shot down by our licensing team since it could potentially be upsetting/negative to the publishers and artists. So we shelved the idea for some time—until we realized there were other ways to have a fun bracket without making our wonderful partners uneasy!

Thus, the BL trope Tourney: 16 popular BL tropes were pitted against each other, and over the course of 15 days we held a poll to slowly eliminate the tropes one by one until only a single trope reigned supreme.

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Renta! Staff BL Awards 2024

It’s already that time of year again, and boy howdy was 2024 a wild ride here at Renta! We changed our logo! We opened a Bluesky! There was much emotional (and physical) edging to be had! We participated in our first ever actual panel! The dongs were unleashed! We collected some samples! We saw beastmen in heat, many a delinquent on the brink, and men impregnated chivalrously! We released our very first cakeverse! We fostered brotherly love! We saw some knot-y boys and some nice ones! And many a popular series saw its end!

As we get ready to make 2025 an even more successful and exciting year filled with tons of great manga, we still wanted to look back on our favorite BL of 2024! That’s right, it’s once again time for our BL Staff Awards!

This time we have the usual Ames (hello), Sou, and Yomogi from the localization team, and then the wonderful Pochi, Snow, and Ann from our sales and marketing teams! So if you want to see what we enjoyed having the opportunity to work alongside this year, please read on!

Same as last year, we have the following categories:

Favorite New Series
Favorite Continuing Series
Favorite Seme
Favorite Uke
Favorite Up-And-Coming Author
Amazing Art
Favorite Renta! Title
Favorite Cover
Favorite Couple

Feel free to click on each category to go directly to that section, or you can meander through from start to finish to get that full 2024 BL experience! We also decided everyone only had to fill out the sections they have an actual response for, so just know you’re getting our true recommendations!

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Pride and “Pedigree”: The Mating Ritual of a Cold Snake and a Fierce Tiger

Read on Renta!
Pedigree by Michi Tange

Japanese Title:
ペディグリー
Pedigree

Links:
Michi Tange Official Website (Author)
Hanaoto Twitter (Publisher)

Here on the Renta! localization team, we get to work quite closely with some of the titles released on the site — particularly the ones whose localizations we produce in-house. This is of course exciting when we’re assigned to work on a series we know and love already, or a new work by one of our favorite BL mangaka. But, another joy that’s just as valuable is getting to discover new creators and series we might not have had the chance to notice otherwise, what with how wide and deep the sea of BL is here in Japan (it’s both a blessing and a curse, I tell ya).

I recently got to experience that kind of BL serendipity in the form of Michi Tange’s “Pedigree.” At first, I was admittedly just dreading the marathon that is the final edit and check of a tankobon (full volume), which are more challenging than chapter-by-chapter releases in terms of the time and stamina they require to work through (though the result is always worth it!). But, as I flipped through the pages and spent time with the characters within, I found a BL story that got me just as emotionally invested as I was professionally.

If you’re a fan of enemies to lovers, arranged marriage, and/or mutual “one-sided” love, this is one I highly recommend — so stick around for some spicy preview images accompanied by my ramblings about why I ended up loving it so much!

Continue reading “Pride and “Pedigree”: The Mating Ritual of a Cold Snake and a Fierce Tiger”