Tag: Yan

Renta! Staff BL Awards 2025

~ Admin ~ Leave a comment

2025 was another big year for Renta!—a bit of a whirlwind, really! We’ve been so busy, in fact, I couldn’t remember 99% of what we did, and Sou and Yomogi had to step in with a bunch of ideas. So here’s a quick year in review!

We did multiple BL projects over the course of the year! We were able to do two more mangaka interviews: Jiro Kawaii and Nobiru Hoshi. One thing you might not know is that the BL Team actually gets to choose who we interview, and we get to write the questions as fans of the artist, so these are always very exciting for us with many an afternoon meeting where we just go through Sensei’s socials and reread their work and jot down our burning questions. So we really hope you all enjoy the interviews as much as we do!

We also did a fanletter campaign for the wonderful Yamayade! A HUGE thank you to Sensei for being willing to participate in the project while they were working hard on the OmaKiss continuation (which we’re in the process of translating and getting into your hands ASAP 😎). Staff member Agedashi mentions it in one of their award picks, but Sensei’s illustration of UeKan in high school was too cute. I can’t recommend checking out the linked page enough! You can also read the handwritten mini Q&A!

We were able to do some really fun mini events on our socials this year, which gave us a wonderful opportunity to interact with our users a lot more! It’s been so fun getting to know some of you! In March we hosted the BL Trope Tourney, pitting popular BL tropes against each other, which was a blast. We actually wrote an entire retrospective, but just know that we heard you all loud and clear: you want more older guys (and more mutual pining)! We also did Kinktober on the Twitter, where we decided to go all in on some more raunchy stuff, so we really appreciate everyone being so supportive! Hopefully our fellow perverts got some good recommendations.

For conventions, in 2025 we went all in on Citrus Con! We participated both as major sponsors and with more panels than ever, and tried to stay active all weekend in our Discord chat. We played the BL Sugoroku we made for our users, discussed 2025 BL trends, and hosted a Live Drawing by the wonderful Pokerou-sensei! You can read our full retrospective here: CLICK! We also participated in our FIRST EVER in-person convention with a booth at AnimeNYC where we also debuted the wonderful R-kun! It was such a joy to finally get to meet so many of our users in person, not to mention all the wonderful fellow industry people who stopped by, and we really hope we can go back again next year!

Closer to home, this year was also our parent company‘s 30th anniversary, and we’re so proud to continue as part of the larger Renta! family. We refreshed our BL Homepage this last spring, and have also have started dabbling more and more with lightly censored (and—soon!—entirely uncensored) licenses in-house! We also attended J.GARDEN 58 as the full BL Team (Yomogi’s first time!), and then met up with some great BL industry friends afterward, which was a blast!

As for what’s coming in 2026… 😇 Just know that we have a lot of amazing BL waiting in the wings, and some projects we worked on ALL through 2025 that we can’t wait to debut this coming year. Trust me when I say the BL team—and the entire English Renta! staff—have been working extremely hard behind the scenes. Thank you so much for all your support through 2025, and we can’t wait to bring you more and more wonderful BL in 2026!

Anyway, enough about what we did in 2025—what about BL manga we loved? We have the usual categories with some new guest stars. You can either click the links below to go directly to each section, or just read the full recommendations.

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

Don’t forget to check out the previous years as well: 2023 ＆ 2024!

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What We’re Thankful For This Year

~ sou ~ Leave a comment
It’s never a bad time to take a moment and appreciate all that yaoi has given us…

It’s that time of year again — at least for the folks who celebrate Thanksgiving 🦃 — where we fill our bellies with all kinds of festive delights, spend just enough time with family for some sort of decades-brewing drama to surface, and promptly retreat to a secluded space to continue reading that BL you’ve been meaning to get around to.

Sou after Thanksgiving dinner, or after a large serving of big tiddy BL

Whether it be personal relationships or developments in the world at large, there’s never a shortage of sources of stress and despair. Luckily, I’ve found that BL is a reliable mood lifter in both the good times and bad — it’s just the thing I need to make me go, “Maybe this Chungus life isn’t so bad after all.” (Well, that and pumpkin pie piled high with Cool Whip, but sadly neither of those things are exactly common in our corner of Japan.)

When I proposed this post theme to my fellow BLog members, they asked whether “things to give thanks for in the BL sphere” meant BL tropes, changes in trends, specific BL series or characters, or recent BL news. I decided not to limit the theme so as to release as much BL gratitude from the depths of our hearts as possible — so get ready for our unfiltered gracious yaoi ramblings.

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Renta!’s BL Team Sorts BL Tropes

~ ames ~ 3 Comments

One thing that I really love about our current BL Team is that we have all the bases covered. While there is some overlap between the three of us, we all have pretty different taste in terms of characters, stories, and tropes—to the point where sometimes if I’m completely uninterested in something, Yomogi knows that he should probably check it out. This vast difference in our taste means we can give a variety of recommendations to a much larger audience. I’m sure those who’ve been watching our socials, have attended our panels, visited us at conventions, or sat down to business lunch with us already have a fair understanding of what we like: Sou likes “milfs” and mpreg, Yomogi likes strong eyebrows and ojisan uke, and I (Ames) like my characters ultra femme, a little sad, and extremely slutty.

So when I saw this tier maker going viral while I was making my daily coffee break Twitter rounds, I thought it would be fun/interesting to have each BL team member make their own so we could see just how different our tastes really are.

One thing I’d like to note: we generally try not to talk about manga/characters/tropes we personally don’t like, since we try to avoid anything negative and don’t want to bring down those who do like it. We feel very strongly that all BL is “for” someone even if it’s not to our personal tastes. So please know there’s no judgement from us if you adore the tropes we’re personally not big on. Please fly your freak flag high—there’s nothing we love more at Renta! corp than people who unabashedly love the manga they read. Not to mention, as I already said, chances are someone on the team likes it even if someone else doesn’t.

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#OldManYaoi Never Gets Old

~ Yomogi ~ 1 Comment

Earlier this year, I was overjoyed to come across this post on X from the mangaka account アライグマ社 (@AraigumaSha) regarding one of the finest phrases known to humans: old man yaoi. The thread of posts features a moment of discovery by the artist, accompanied by wholesome interactions between them and English-speaking BL fans chiming in to explain how the term is used to refer to works of BL featuring older characters. Several users also added to the conversation—whether to reassure アライグマ社 that the term has a positive, endearing nuance, or to let them know how, in Western fandoms, works featuring anyone older than 30 or so could be categorized as old man yaoi. Personally, I absolutely love seeing moments like this, where fandoms from across the world connect over a shared interest, teaching and learning from each other. It truly demonstrates the ways in which communities grow and evolve through curiosity and genuine interactions ☺️

At the same time, as an old man yaoi lover myself, I could not simply sit still in the office. I had been meaning to work on doing an oyaji (term described below) blog post, so I took it as a sign from the universe that now is the time to work on it…! I know many of you are already well-versed in this sub-genre (if I can call it that), but I will start off with an overview of different ways in which old man yaoi may be referred to in Japan, followed by some recommendations.

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An Indulgent Love Story: “Bittersweet Bliss With A Chocolatier” (Happy Valentine’s Day!)

~ sou ~ 1 Comment
Who needs chocolate-covered strawberries when you have chocolate-covered twunk tits, amirite? 🥴

Read on Renta!:
Bittersweet Bliss With A Chocolatier
by Yan

Japanese title:
ビターポルノショコラティエ
Bitter Porno Chocolatier

Links:
Yan’s Twitter (author)
Melty Bullet’s Twitter (publishing line)

Valentine’s Day is upon us again 💗 and whether that means you’ll be cozying up with a loved one, showing some extra appreciation to your friends, or just chilling by yourself and eagerly awaiting the 15th for all the delicious discounts on Valentine’s chocolate and candies, we hope you have a great one!

And, while we believe there’s never a bad time to enjoy a good BL, when I stumbled upon — and quickly fell in love with — this one in particular, and learned that it was set to drop on Renta! right around Valentine’s Day, I knew this was the universe telling me to jot my thoughts down while reading so I could share them here on the BLog as my Valentine’s Day “gift” to you all.

As the intriguing title suggests, this book has a lot to offer, even aside from the delectable combo of a handsome top in his 40s and a feisty 20-something-year-old bottom with a naughty body; there’s a healthy serving of comedy to brighten your mood, but also plenty of drama to balance out the sweetness.

Get ready for some food porn (in the form of lovingly crafted fancy chocolates), some manga porn (in the form of an astoundingly buff middle-aged chef pounding a cute twunk’s ass), and a genuinely inspiring story about chasing your dreams.

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Beefcake Special (Happy Good Meat Day!)

~ sou ~ 3 Comments

For all lovers of BEEF — dinner is served!!

It’s finally cooled down a bit here in Tokyo, and the Christmas decorations lining all the shopping centers and Mariah Carey blaring from every store’s loudspeaker do a wonderful job of reminding me of the upcoming holiday season.

…But maybe you’re the type of person who wishes the holiday cheer could hold off for a bit longer, and prefers to savor the time between Spooky Season and the lively-but-potentially-exhausting year-end festivities. In which case, Japan’s got you covered!

As we briefly touched upon in our Yaoi Day post, Japan has lots of “special” days throughout the year, based on wordplay that’s possible with the Japanese pronunciation of a given date — and November 29th is one of these days! In Japanese, 1-1-2-9 can be pronounced いいにく (ii-ni-ku), which is a homonym for 良い肉 (also pronounced iiniku), which means “good meat.” As such, 11/29 has been designated “Good Meat Day” in Japan.

Unfortunately, as far as special days in Japan go, Good Meat Day isn’t really that big of a deal — beyond some meat vendors having special offers, or meat lovers treating themselves to a delicious, protein-rich meal よだれをたらしている顔ステーキ.

However, here at RentaBLog, we like to spice things up and take every opportunity to celebrate different aspects of Boys’ Love — and thus, I decided that on this day, we’d give the spotlight over to the beefy guys of BL, who make our hearts pound with their rippling muscles — the buffer, the better! 

Hope you’ve saved room for a feast, because meat is on the menu tonight!! カトラリー

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