The Essentials - BL

Now enjoying its third anime season in the works, Junjou Romantica is by far the most essential read for BL enthusiasts. Its art is something that people have complained about for years - though the pairings are strong and the story execution is addicting and cute. You can never think of one boy without his complimentary, significant other.

Perhaps it would be best to dub this, "A more polished version" of Junjou Romantica. It has its own anime. The story is better, the characters are more mature and realistic. But a bit of the novelty is lost because of the precedence put on the plot's theme (First Love), over the actual dynamic between the characters. This would definitely be the read for those who do not want to deal with Junjou's art, but still want to understand what Shingiku Nakamura is all about.

This manga is the hotly anticipated BL of the year. Takarai Rihito is one of my personal favorite authors, but in this read she takes an extreme detour from her normally well-intended, warm realistic fiction. This BL has just recently been licensed, and will probably soon hit the west as hard as Japan. Very trendy. The story features a poignant relationship between a not-so-typical quiet man with OCD and a awkwardly frank, but sexy therapist. Their treatment plan gets hot and heavy fast.

Doukyuusei is a read that takes time. As it is advertised as a "slow, genuine" fall into love, so too must the reader process every detail with care and compassion. The small, commonplace things of a BL story become exuberant, inspiring motifs in Doukyuusei. With the new anime in the works, this series has demanded a new way to look at romance; and with the proper perspective, a new way to look at the simplicities of the "real life" world itself. The top read of Indie BL.

This series, along with 10 count, is one of the most hotly anticipated BL. It is popular in Japan and France, in particular. The American production of the volumes are now out of print because of their popularity. The story is a darker tale about a masochist Yakuza and his new underling, a former cop who went through and experience that rendered him impotent. It is not dramatized, but rather purely displays the warped and corrupted nature of the masculine world.

Definitely one of the most dynamic in BL history. Very well-known in Japan. The pair is hot and insatiable, but heartfelt and devoted. The story is between a local policeman and a local...heir to the nearby yakuza clan(?!). The plot itself makes light of the "starcrossed lovers" theme and instead focuses its efforts on building the characters of the seme and uke, who together are openly stupid for each other, and yet somehow immeasurably better and more sensitive people because of it

This series, drawn by the dean of Seika University (of the Arts), the only university that offers a degree in manga, pioneered the BL genre and is coined as the beginning itself for the homoerotic movement of girl's comics in Japan. This read is very old, very languid, and very thoughtful. Although it is true that this series is too old to really every pop up in BL conversation these days, I would be remiss to not include it as an essential, in due right of a mere glance, if only that.

This read is an icon of western BL. It centers around a young journalist who finds himself thrown into yakuza conflict. The art style, for the time, was highly attractive and a distinctly refreshing blend between eroge visual sentiments and the fast-paced plot of shounen. It is still highly beloved by people in the west, though it isn't very chatted up in Japan.

Koisuru Boukun is one of the most widely loved and hated of BL in the west. Number 14 on this list is blatantly callous to the idea of communication and intimacy, therefore most of its readers often disregard its rape culture and the like. However, since Koisuru is supposed to be a warm-hearted tale, people take more issue with it. And its far from easily palatable. The story is about a verbally abusive, highly homophobic senpai and his underclassmen, who is gay and madly in love with him.

Dubbed as one of the most eccentric reads in BL even written, Sex Pistols is a thrill ride of creative fantasy components mashed together. Animal themes, creative impregnation tools, and canon transgendered main love interests are some of the things that make this series stand out. It has OVAs that do not do it justice.

*Note: Just in case you didn't read it above. Trigger Warning - Impreg, literal Hermaphrodite, bestiality themes.