Tag: Yaoi Manga

Renta! Staff BL Awards 2025

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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!

Continue reading “Renta! Staff BL Awards 2025” →

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.

Continue reading “Renta!’s BL Team Sorts BL Tropes” →

Citrus Con 2025: Going All Out!

~ ames ~ 2 Comments

The heat and humidity has cranked up in Tokyo, June is coming to an end, and with it Citrus Con 2025 is officially over! 😭 We’re so sad! The lead-up to Citrus Con was so stressful, but the weekend was just amazing.

This was our third year with Citrus Con; we also wrote event reports in 2023 as attendees, and in 2024 as panelists. Every year we have so much fun and it’s such a wonderful experience that we want to crank it up a notch, so this year for Citrus Con 2025 we did MULTIPLE panels on top of being major sponsors, and also tried to be in the Discord as much as we could (timezones notwithstanding… 🙃), since this is a rare and vital opportunity to actually interact with our users.

Being in Japan, it’s unfortunately incredibly difficult for us to stay on top of the Western convention scene—which is much more vital for participation in the English manga industry than you might expect. Not only are many big announcements planned around convention season, with it being an amazing opportunity to showcase your service and wares and drum up hype, but it’s one of the few chances to get face to face feedback by interacting with your actual customers.

However, since Citrus Con is an online convention—and ALSO currently the only large-scale English-based convention focused solely on the BL community—this one we can attend! We MUST attend! And so we did. 😎

In this report we’ll talk about about Renta!’s history with the convention scene, what it’s like on the industry side preparing for a convention, and our experience this year! So, without further ado, let’s hop into it!

Citrus Con Homepage
Citrus Con Twitter

Continue reading “Citrus Con 2025: Going All Out!” →

BL Trope Tourney 2025: A Retrospective!

~ ames ~ 1 Comment

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.

Continue reading “BL Trope Tourney 2025: A Retrospective!” →

ChillChill Awards 2025!

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Make sure to cast your vote! ChillChill Awards 2025 nominees dropped this last Friday, and boy is the competition intense. Around this time last year I wrote about the ChillChill BL Awards and why they matter so much—about ChillChill’s rise from a review and indexing site into essentially the community hub for all lovers of BL manga in Japan—so I’ll spare you from having me write too much here. Nonetheless, I still wanted to make a quick index of all the nominees from the 2025 BL Awards that you can read on Renta!

Last year we had quite a few, and thankfully this year is no different. Also, not just in regards to Renta!, this year’s BL Awards are a testament to how big BL is getting in the West because many of the nominees are licensed by a variety of other localization companies—both digital and print. It’s so wonderful to see how many BL get brought to an international audience now, not to mention so fast. It used to take much longer before BL was licensed for release in the West, and the options used to be so few and far between. It’s such a testament to Western BL fans who keep showing up pushing that BL isn’t just some niche genre—it’s got a massive and excited fanbase ready and willing to support the genre and its creators in any way they can. I love that so much, both as a fan and obviously as someone who works in the field. I can work my dream job only because of the BL fans who show up to support its creation. Thank you so much!

Another thing that’s a bit of a pride point for me is that two years in a row, now, most of our associated BL Awards nominees (particularly our own licenses and localizations) are in the up-and-coming category. That’s honestly so exciting! I talked a little bit in my post about the benefits and drawbacks of being a digital licensor about how we’re able to take more risks on lesser-known, up-and-coming talent due to the lower entry fees of digital versus print, and it fires me up every time I think I get to play even a tiny part in bringing these new artists to a wider audience. And this year’s BL Awards have a particularly good mix of super popular, established artists and rising stars!

Anyway, without further ado, here’s the list of the 2025 ChillChill BL Awards titles you can find on Renta!—including some sneak peaks into exciting upcoming licenses! 🤭

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Naughty and Nice: BL Recs for the Christmas Season

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The Renta! BL team wanted to do a Christmas special again this year, and we were racking our brains on what we could possibly post. Last year’s Christmas BL rec post was actually shockingly time-intensive (two whole 10+ hour work days on top of my regular workload…), so I didn’t have it in me to do it this year. And a manga like A Gift From Santa Claus only comes once a lifetime, and I obviously wasn’t going to review it twice. We spent about an hour in the BL meeting just going in circles—BL recs based on Christmas songs? How about based on popular holiday foods?

But then the glorious Sou was like “well… how about which BL characters will get coal in their stocking?” And thus the “Naughty x Nice” Christmas BL Special was born! For this, the Renta! BL team got together and thought of three recommendations for the following four categories:

・Nice Seme x Nice Uke
・Nice Seme x Naughty Uke
・Naughty Seme x Nice Uke
・Naughty Seme x Naughty Uke

Some boys will be getting a lump of coal and a spanking (😘) this Christmas season, so to see who’s on Santa’s shit-list and who’ll be getting exactly what they asked for, read on!

Continue reading “Naughty and Nice: BL Recs for the Christmas Season” →

Don’t Judge a Book By Its Cover: Ayaka Matsumoto’s “Unexpectedly Naughty Fukami”

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Read on Renta!:
Unexpectedly Naughty Fukami by Ayaka Matsumoto

Japanese title:
やたらやらしい深見くん
Yatara Yarashii Fukami-kun

Links:
Screamo Twitter (publisher)

I was first introduced to this manga when my friend who worked at Coolmic said “you’ll love this series; you have to read it.” And while I usually take his recommendations, since he knows me well, for some reason I put off reading it—maybe because my “to-read” list is already massive, or maybe because I’m usually not that into megane characters. But, his recommendation aside, I kept seeing it in the trending and top rankings of the various online bookstores I go to for intel, and I eventually was like “FINE, JEEZ, I’LL READ IT!”

And, boy howdy, am I glad I did. I feel like you’ll see my experience replicated in the reviews for the series on Renta! as well: almost everyone who reads this reports being kind of blown away by how enjoyable it is. It’s cute. It’s funny. It’s very sexy. So, what exactly is the magic of Unexpectedly Naughty Fukami? Let me explain.

The story follows Kaji. Loved by his coworkers, admired by women on the street, and just overall seen as the pinnacle of capability and manhood, Kaji seems like a great guy. In reality, however, Kaji’s a total piece of shit. He’s arrogant, callous, and incredibly calculating. He fakes his Nice Guy™ personality at the office while looking down on his coworkers, thinks lowly of anyone who isn’t appropriately “attractive” by his standards, and gives every man he sees a score from 0 to 100, judging their worth on their status, style, and looks above all else.

Granted, all of these aspects of his personality are because he’s desperately hiding his sexuality from those around him and trying his best to keep people from ever knowing him on a deeper level. If he’s perfect, no one will ever question him. Still, this has left his personality completely twisted to the point where he sees everyone around him as objects to fit his needs at any given time.

Enter Fukami, a coworker from the tech department at Kaji’s company. Fukami is frumpy, unsociable, and bland, hiding behind uncut hair and thick glasses. Thus, when he’s paired with with Fukami for an overnight business trip to clear up a bug in another prefecture’s system, Kaji’s incredibly judgmental. While they’re on their business trip, Kaji secretly leers at Fukami and rates him a “total 0.” However, at the hotel that night, Fukami walks out of the shower and—he’s stunning!??? Dressed in the skimpy hotel nightshirt, bare legs in full view, and hair finally out of his face, Fukami is incredibly, 100% Kaji’s type—from 0 to 100 in an instant. So shocked, Kaji drops his phone—leaving the gay hookup app he was previously browsing in full view.

Continue reading “Don’t Judge a Book By Its Cover: Ayaka Matsumoto’s “Unexpectedly Naughty Fukami”” →

We Attended the ChillChill Fujoshi Seminar!

~ ames ~ 1 Comment

When I was lucky enough to attend the ChillChill BL 2024 Awards Ceremony and meet up with the head of Futekiya, they told me their coworker often attends little business seminars put on by ChillChill. This was the first time I’d heard of such a thing—business seminars specifically catered to people looking to spread the gospel of BL manga? Sign me up!

These seminars, aptly titled Fujoshi Marketing Kenkyuujo (or “Fujoshi Marketing Lab”), are run by SANDIAS, a BL marketing research firm associated with ChillChill. SANDIAS’s aim is to understand fujoshi and BL culture, and as such, they host seiyuu events, assist with the BL Awards, and help push other types of content (oshikatsu, idols, etc.) that might appeal to fans within that realm. The seminars can be watched via their YouTube channel as well. I highly recommend them if you can understand Japanese—they’re honestly fascinating, especially if you’re the type of dork who loves to look at the figures behind the things you love. Also, since ChillChill is one of the most well-known BL sites and is trusted and beloved by the BL community, it’s a bit easier for them to get interesting and varied stats from their surveys.

That being said, I wasn’t able to attend one until earlier this month, which we definitely had to set aside time for: Foreign Fans and Japanese BL Manga. ChillChill surveyed over 600 BL fans, half of which were English-speaking (EN) and the other half Chinese-speaking (CN), both from a multitude of different countries, and asked questions about their tastes and interests in BL, as well as their reading and spending habits. Originally, I wasn’t going to write a BLog post about it, but there was some information presented that I found really interesting, so I wanted to share that with our readers.

I’ll only be sharing a few of the slides to make my points, since I want to make sure ChillChill and SANDIAS get all the proper credit for their work. However, you can actually request the full presentation on their downloads page for free, along with previous seminar materials. For those who want to see all the data, please make sure to check that out! One video for the presentation is linked above, but be sure to check in on their YouTube channel regularly (and maybe even drop a sub) in case they continue to post content from this seminar as well as other interesting content in the future.

Continue reading “We Attended the ChillChill Fujoshi Seminar!” →

Custom Togii “Asphyxiating First Love”

~ ames ~ 1 Comment

Read on Renta!:
Asphyxiating First Love by Custom Togii

Japanese title:
Hatsukoi ni Aegu
初恋にあえぐ

Links:
Custom Togii (Twitter)
moment (publisher)
ShuCream BL (EN)

It is the era of 純情ビッチ!
Well. Not really. It’s just always the era of 純情ビッチ in my heart.

For those who don’t know, 純情ビッチ (junjou bitch) or “pure-hearted slut” is a BL trope that has always existed, but has been on the rise in recent years. You can see this trope in the form of characters like Nao from Hotaru Dies Tomorrow, or Hajime from Junjou de Nani ga Warui, or Haru from Kabukicho Cat Honey—the most important factor is that they’re actually quite innocent and pure-hearted in terms of emotional love, but are either mistaken for being promiscuous, or just see no issue with sleeping around or otherwise using their body while secretly wishing for true love to come their way. Personally, this is one of my favorite tropes because it’s a really easy way for a story to contain pure, sweet, innocent love with lots of really raunchy ero scenes (hehehe), so I get excited every time I find a BL manga that has this premise.

Thankfully, Custom Togii’s Asphyxiating First Love is one such BL manga. I was tasked with proofreading a single chapter for Sou since they were drowning in other deadlines, and I got so into it that I ended up proofreading the entire series in one go, other deadlines be damned. You’re welcome, Sou. Cool

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Peak Disaster Gays: Jiro Kawaii’s “We’ll Get Our Happy Ending”

~ ames ~ 3 Comments

Read on Renta!:
We’ll Get Our Happy Ending by Jiro Kawaii

Japanese title:
ドラマにならない僕らの話
Dorama ni Naranai Bokura no Hanashi

Links:
Jiro Kawaii Twitter
B. Pilz Twitter (Publisher)

Sometimes you’re just in the mood to hurt a little bit. A little hurt/comfort with yourself, if you will. As a treat. Except the thing that’s going to hurt you this time is a BL manga about sexuality and human relationships between college boys because, at its core, Jiro Kawaii’s We’ll Get Our Happy Ending is about human relationships—about how it’s not necessarily about being gay or bi or straight, but about finding someone you care about, learning to treasure and open up to them, and trusting yourself and your feelings—and the difficult path to cultivating a relationship with someone you love as you move on from the past. So, just how does this wonderful manga handle these themes?

It’s been two years since college senior Wataru broke up with his high school boyfriend, Jin. While he’s dated since the breakup, he still sees Jin as special; while Wataru openly considers himself bisexual, Jin’s the only guy he’s ever truly had feelings for. Nonetheless, when he meets college freshman Soma—who’s openly gay—he thinks he’s found someone he can open up to. Soma, however, has other plans—not taking Wataru’s bisexuality seriously (accusing him of “hopping on the bi trend,” no less) and shutting him down by saying he’s already got a boyfriend and isn’t interested.

Continue reading “Peak Disaster Gays: Jiro Kawaii’s “We’ll Get Our Happy Ending”” →