A few months ago, I dedicated this column to something I called “intimacy porn,” a kind of emotionally grounded writing that creates a strong sense of intimacy between characters. One of the examples of “intimacy porn” I cited at the time was Kazuya Minekura’s Wild Adapter, the subject of this month’s Manga Moveable Feast, hosted [...]
Fanservice Friday
Fanservice Friday: Hikaru no Go edition
May 6, 2011 by 6 Comments
Not so long ago on Twitter, Deb Aoki asked, is Shounen Jump manga the gateway drug for yaoi? I expect that’s true for quite a number of people, and as you know, fanservice for girls in shounen manga is kind of a pet interest of mine. As it so happens, my path was roughly the [...]
Fanservice Friday: The sleeve’s the thing
April 8, 2011 by 36 Comments
Earlier this week in our Off the Shelf column, Michelle and I reviewed Kazue Kato’s Blue Exorcist, at which time the following exchange occurred: MICHELLE: … While I do like the art style, particularly the looks of Rin and Yukio, I must say that the quirky-just-to-be-quirky garb of the academy’s president puts me off quite [...]
Fanservice Friday: Intimacy porn
March 4, 2011 by 40 Comments
I’ve had fanservice on the brain quite a bit lately, most recently thanks to this article by comics creator Michael Arthur at The Hooded Utilitarian. In it, Michael discussed his perspective on BL manga as a gay man and an artist, and though reception was mixed (for the record, I have pretty much equal appreciation [...]
Fanservice Friday: From the ladies
January 7, 2011 by 22 Comments
… or at least one lady. There’s been quite a bit of talk already about editor Sean Michael Wilson‘s assessment of female critics’ reaction to AX: A Collection of Alternative Manga, most of it much smarter than anything I might offer up (posts from Brigid Alverson and Kate Dacey among them). Still, as a North [...]
Fanservice Friday: Sundome
December 3, 2010 by 2 Comments
Welcome to the second monthly edition of Fanservice Friday! Today’s column is actually collaborative in a sense, and not hosted here in its entirety. Just yesterday, I appeared as a guest on the Manga Out Loud podcast, hosted by Ed Sizemore (Manga Worth Reading), where we discussed the manga series, Sundome, written by Kazuto Okada, [...]
Fanservice Friday: A Girl’s (G)Fantasy
November 5, 2010 by 54 Comments
Many female manga fans regularly read shonen manga. This is simply a fact. Women are infinitely adaptable and generally omnivorous readers. We like romance, intrigue, action, drama, satire, comedy, tragedy, and sometimes, porn. Most of us spent our school days reading books written by men, the classroom philosophy being that girls would read books written [...]
