Shounen Ai
Rating: PG-13
Translation: “boy love”
General Content: This is most definitely not to be confused with shounen manga, because while one is targeted as your typical boy’s adventure comic, the other is about boys generally being adventurous…with one another. While not pornographic, shounen ai does depict various instances of homosexual romance between boys or men; the theme is overtly emotional, avoiding the sexual beyond vague implications and mild displays of affection. While not particularly unsuitable for younger eyes, parents should still be aware of what this content means and make their own judgments as to how appropriate it is for their children. It may be more inappropriate for older fans than younger, for it often depicts boys in their teens and as such it’s often thought that such romance should only be of interest to children the same age as those in the story.
Shoujo Ai
Rating: PG-13
Translation: “girl love”
General Content: Just like shounen ai, comics, animations, and video games in the shoujo ai genre depict romance between the same sex, this time between girls or women. Again the romance is non-sexual in its portrayal, focusing on relationship issues and captured moments more than anything else. This is also non-offensive, but left to the parent’s discretion. Again the characters are often middle-school-age, and thus this is really only appropriate for those around the same age.
Hentai
Rating: R to X
Translation: To be crude, “porn”. That’s not a direct translation, but let’s not beat around the bush here.
General Content: This is the kind of thing that you expect to see in “Debbie Does Dallas”, but captured in pen, ink, and pixel. It may be softcore, it may be hardcore, it may involve tentacles or even machines, but it isn’t something that you want in the hands of your children.
Yaoi
Rating: PG-13 to X
Translation: An acronym for yama nashi, ochi nashi, imi nashi, or “No peak, no point, no problem”.
General Content: The translation gives you an idea of what yaoi storylines focus on: sex, with no plot and no real resolution. Yaoi differs from hentai in that it focuses strictly on gay male relationships depicted in a rather adult fashion. Although the term has become very commonly used as a broad blanket overlaying all gay-themed cartoon media, its technical use applies only to doujinshi. Originally it wasn’t used often in Japanese culture, but Western interest has made the term intensely popular.
June
Rating: PG-13 to X
Translation: Taken from the name of a Japanese magazine, Shousetsu June.
General Content: June is original yaoi with a plot. Rather than copying others’ characters and putting them in explicit homosexual situations, june instead creates a complex plot involving original characters, tangled storylines, conflicts, in-depth worlds, and the expected dose of rompin’ gay sex. The genre was named after a magazine that frequently published higher-quality stories that met such criteria.
Yuri
Rating: PG to X
Translation: “lily”, but in this case is rumored to be taken from the title of a magazine called Barazoku in which a storyline depicting tribes of gay men and tribes of lesbians labeled the later Yurizoku. Another purported source for the term is the frequency of the use of the character Yuri from the manga/anime Dirty Pair and Dirty Pair Flash in various lesbian-themed doujinshi.
General Content: Yuri and shoujo ai can at times be used interchangeably, because yuri is not always sexually explicit. Yuri is the female counterpart to yaoi, involving situations of lesbian erotica. The term covers both plot-based and plotless, original and fan-generated stories.
Shota/Shotacon and Lolicon
Rating: NC-17, X, a big fat “NO”.
Translation: Crabbed together from “Shotaru complex” and “Lolita complex”.
General Content: This is something to be avoided at all costs; the terms generally refer to an adult with an unnatural sexual attraction to children, but often they point more towards the reader than the content, for the content usually depicts explicit acts between two or more younger children rather than a child and an adult. Shotacon depicts young boys, while Lolicon depicts young girls. Just back away. Back away very, very slowly. Thankfully it’s easy to avoid media in this genre, as it’s as unacceptable in Japan as it is in the Western world and thus isn’t drawn as much as the other genres.
Guro/EroGuro
Rating: NC-17, X
Translation: A Japanese shortening of “erotic grotesque nonsense”.
General Content: Frankly? It’s gory sex – but more gore than sex, often. There can be sexual overtones without actual copulation involved, but the general intent is to eroticize the macabre. Guro can involve vore, necrophilia, mutilation, and several other disturbing acts. This, again, is a no-no for children. Some view it as an art form and there is a certain type of artistic appreciation involved when guro is taken as a political or cultural statement, but it’s still not appropriate for minors.
These cultural differences are something to be understood and approached with the proper information in-hand, but not something to be derided or feared.
Most Japanese import media is child-friendly - and if it wasn’t before it got here, it’s been sanitized for your protection. This is just a little extra information to keep you better informed as to what you’re looking at when you’re standing in the aisles and wondering which book or video is appropriate for your child, but are utterly lost in the barely-translated titles.
Of course, if you’ve stumbled across something like this before - well, now you know why the shopkeeper was looking at you so oddly, don’t you?
