Renta!’s BL Team Sorts BL Tropes

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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ChillChill Awards 2025!

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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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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[♡RECS♡] 11/22: Happy Good Husbands Day!

Here at RentaBLog, we sure do love our special calendar dates — so far, we’ve covered Good Meat Day, Cat Day, Cat Day Part 2, and even Twink(ie) Day. Last week on 11/11, BL fans and shippers around the world celebrated Pocky Day across social media, which was pretty exciting to see (so much great fanart!). But there’s one more day this month I’ve been looking forward to in particular. No, it’s not Thanksgiving — but I am very thankful for the cornucopia of BL I associate with it.

That day — today, November 22nd — is none other than いい夫婦の日 (Ii Fuufu no Hi), meaning “Good (Married) Couple’s Day” or “Good Spouses Day.” It’s a day for couples to show appreciation for one another, and to celebrate the special bond they share.

While the Japanese word for “married couple,” 夫婦 (fuufu), uses the kanji for “husband” and “wife,” the term can be used to refer to same-sex couples as well. Still, some on social media have taken to the M/M-specific term, いい夫夫の日 — here “fuufu” is pronounced the same, but uses the kanji for “husband” twice, to make it “Good Husbands Day”! I always enjoy scrolling my feed on this day, as it’s bound to be full of adorable BL and ship art tagged “#いい夫夫の日”.

Since I have a soft spot for sweet, married-couple vibes BL, I just had to take this opportunity to introduce some series on Renta! that you can read to enjoy “good husbands” all year round! 🥰

Without further ado, here are five BL series centered around married (or basically married) couples that will soothe your heart. From domestic newlywed bliss to the trials and tribulations of a long-term relationship, these manga have it all! 👨‍❤️‍💋‍👨

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BL Awards Light: The ChillChill BL Character General Election!

If you follow a lot of BL artists and publishers, there’s a good chance you’ve been seeing the #BLキャラ総選挙2024 hashtag floating around Twitter over the last couple weeks, along with little profiles of BL characters belonging to the artist or publisher. When I first started seeing them about a week and a half ago, I initially assumed it was just a fun new Twitter trend among mangaka, but boy was I wrong (and also super behind on commercial BL news—I guess you can really tell the Renta! office has been super busy these last couple months).

BLキャラ総選挙2024, or the “2024 BL Character General Election,” is another effort by the wonderful BL site ChillChill to spread the love for commercial BL. It was initially announced in early May with the following blurb (loosely translated by yours truly):

For the amazing commercial BL characters who make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside!

This BL election was brought forth in order to shine a spotlight on those wonderful BL characters, spread the love of the BL series they’re from, and introduce new stories to an even wider audience!

This is really interesting, since the ChillChill BL Awards already used to have a seme/uke character section. So in this BLog post I’ll give a brief rundown of the ChillChill BL Awards character ranking history, before showcasing the BL characters whose stories you can read on Renta!, how to vote, and a little chatter about some of my personal Best Boys.

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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!

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