Yaoi vs BL vs Shonen-ai: What the Terms Mean

Yaoi, BL and shonen-ai all describe stories about romance between men, mostly made by and for women, but they are not the same word. In Japan, “BL” (boys’ love) is the broad commercial category and “yaoi” points to the sexually explicit end. In English-speaking fandom it often runs the other way: “yaoi” became the umbrella, “shonen-ai” means romance without the explicit part, and “BL” is used loosely. If you are shopping for a show, the label you search with changes what you find.

This guide sorts out the three terms, where each came from, and how to search so you get the kind of story you actually want.

What does yaoi mean?

The word started as a joke at its own expense. Per Wikipedia’s entry on boys’ love, manga artists Yasuko Sakata and Akiko Hatsu coined it in the late 1970s as a shortened phrase for “yama nashi, ochi nashi, imi nashi,” roughly “no climax, no point, no meaning.” It was a self-deprecating label for amateur self-published comics (dojinshi) that dwelled on sex and skimmed plot and character. That scene grew up alongside Comiket, the big Tokyo dojinshi market, which first ran in 1975.

In Japan the word stayed narrow: dojinshi, and work centered on sex scenes. In the West it went wide. American publishers leaned on “yaoi” partly because they thought “boys’ love” sounded like it implied something worse, and Western fans also use it for anime- and manga-based fan fiction about male couples. That mismatch is the root of most of the confusion.

What does shonen-ai mean?

Shonen-ai literally means “boy love,” and its history is older and messier than the other two. The term predates the genre, and historically it carried an uncomfortable meaning. From the 1970s it came to describe a new kind of shojo manga (comics for girls) about romance between bishonen, the delicate “beautiful boys” of that era. Keiko Takemiya’s In the Sunroom (1970) is usually named as the first work of the genre, followed by Moto Hagio’s The November Gymnasium (1971).

These stories were aimed at teenage girls and young women, though adult readers of every kind found them. In English-language fandom, “shonen-ai” settled into a label for romance-forward stories that keep the sexual side off the page. That is a Western habit. In Japan, BL had largely replaced shonen-ai as the main term by the 1990s.

What does BL mean?

BL is short for boys’ love, a Japanese-made English phrase (wasei-eigo) that grew out of a literal reading of shonen-ai. According to the same Wikipedia entry, the magazine Image used it in 1991 and Puff popularized it in 1994. Publishers wanted one label that covered the overlapping genres, and by the 1990s it had largely replaced the older magazine-based term “June” and “shonen-ai” in Japan. It describes male-male romance marketed to women, and the people making it are mostly women. A 2008 bookstore survey cited there found that 25 to 30 percent of yaoi readers were men.

The entry adds a caveat worth keeping in mind: in practice these terms are used interchangeably, and scholars Kazumi Nagaike and Tomoko Aoyama call the lines between subgenres ill-defined.

Yaoi vs BL vs shonen-ai: how to search for what you want

Here is the practical version, since a title that says one thing in Japan can be filed under another in an English-language catalog.

If you want romance and relationships first, search “BL anime” or “boys’ love anime” and add words like “romance” or “slice of life.” Do not lead with “yaoi,” because in Japanese usage that word points at the explicit end of the spectrum.

If you are looking for a sweet or sports-and-friendship feel with no explicit content, “shonen-ai” is the English-fandom shorthand, but treat it as a rough hint rather than a rating. Check the age rating on the platform before you press play. Boys’ love runs from gentle romance to adult-only, and the label alone will not tell you where a particular show sits.

If you want to read, remember that manga and dojinshi follow different rules than licensed anime. Anime that streams legally generally comes with a content rating you can read; fan-made comics often do not.

Where to start with BL anime

Our starter list of BL anime for beginners names three shows for beginners (Junjou Romantica, Sekaiichi Hatsukoi and Yuri on Ice) and tells you to check each series’ rating before you watch. For the male-character side of waifu culture, our guide to anime husbandos is a lighter place to wander, and the waifu and husbando guide explains the shared vocabulary.

If the vocabulary is what you enjoy, our piece on the bishoujo archetype covers the female counterpart of the bishonen “beautiful boy” type that shonen-ai grew around.

FAQ

Is yaoi the same as BL?

Not exactly. In Japan, BL is the broad commercial genre and yaoi is the narrow, explicit end. In the West, yaoi is often used for everything and BL is used inconsistently.

What is the difference between yaoi and shonen-ai?

In English-language fandom, yaoi usually implies explicit content and shonen-ai implies romance without it. In Japan, BL largely replaced the word by the 1990s.

Who is BL made for?

Mainly women. Creators are typically women, though men read and write it too.

Where did the word yaoi come from?

From the late 1970s, as a joking abbreviation of “yama nashi, ochi nashi, imi nashi,” meaning no climax, no point, no meaning, used for amateur comics.

Sources

Terminology and history: Wikipedia, Boys’ love, which cites the scholars Kazumi Nagaike and Tomoko Aoyama on how the terms overlap.