Yaoi

Yaoi (やおい) is a term for fiction that shows homosexual male relationships. This is a subgenre of Boys love (BL) that usually originates from Japan and is sexual leaning.

Yaoi is a term that is short for "Yama nashi, Ochi nashi, Imi nashi." Which means No climax, no point, no meaning. Yaoi has been a term used for Japanese BL, and usually leans towards more sexual content rather then romantic man loving man relationships, and rather has less plot and focuses more on smut and sexual interaction. BL and Yaoi are not the same terms though, BL is a broader term used to describe any type of man loving man relationship, including platonic and romantic relationships along with sexual relationships, BL also focuses a lot more on character and mutual development, along with more world building then what you would see in Yaoi.

Yaoi originated in the late 1970s as a derogatory term towards man loving man media that focuses on sexual content rather then plot or character development. Yaoi is no longer used in Japan because of these bad connotations, but rather seen often in western media and across the world through the internet, especially popular on places like TikTok, Tumblr, and AO3 as of 2025.

Fans of Yaoi have proclaimed themselves as Fujoshi (腐女子) which means Rotten girl, and Fudanashi (腐男子) which means Rotten boy.

Some Yaoi are based off of real events but most are from the artist's imagination. One example of yaoi anime is Sekaiichi hatsukoi, a good example of a great Yaoi manga is "Obnoxious Hero-kun".

This Isn’t yet official to the fandom of Yaoi, but they’d like to add that the Unicorn emoji will signify all Yaoi users across platforms.

SOURCES https://fanlore.org/wiki/Yaoi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boys%27_love https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/smut https://fanlore.org/wiki/Fudanshi https://fanlore.org/wiki/Fujoshi