I thought I'd share some easily confused manga genre explanations here, because people were getting really confused in a comments section about it.
Yaoi and Shounen Ai are NOT the same genre. Both are BL (boy's love), but Yaoi is mature & sexy gay stories published for a female audience with tropes about power dynamics in a gay relationship, Shounen AI is sweet gay romance for a younger audience, Bara is gay manga written for a gay male audience and focusing on muscley men.
Shounen manga without the "ai" is action manga written for a young boy audience like Pokémon. Action manga is just action stories for adults.
For GL (girl's love) there's Yuri which is for sexy & mature lesbian stories, while Shoujo Ai is for sweet lesbian romance and a younger audience.
Shoujo without the "ai" is stories written for young girls, and usually it's romance focused but occasionally it focuses on daily life for teen girls. Everyone is supposed to be straight in the world of Shoujo but sometimes modern authors and publishers will let a random side character be different.
Josei is stories written for (straight) adult women.
Ecchi is straight porn.
Doujinshi is fanfiction.
While we're at it the Martial Arts section has many Chinese comics that are either the Wuxia genre (no magic just fighters), Xianxia genre (earthly fighters using magic), or Xuahuan genre (mythology fighters from the heavens beyond humanity) . There are also Korean and Japanese martial arts comics and they're a little different.
Supernatural genre is where magical things happen within our ordinary world, while fantasy is in another reality where everything is magical.
I thought I'd share some easily confused manga genre explanations here, because people were getting really confused in a comments section about it.
Yaoi and Shounen Ai are NOT the same genre. Both are BL (boy's love), but Yaoi is mature & sexy gay stories published for a female audience with tropes about power dynamics in a gay relationship, Shounen AI is sweet gay romance for a younger audience, Bara is gay manga written for a gay male audience and focusing on muscley men.
Shounen manga without the "ai" is action manga written for a young boy audience like Pokémon. Action manga is just action stories for adults.
For GL (girl's love) there's Yuri which is for sexy & mature lesbian stories, while Shoujo Ai is for sweet lesbian romance and a younger audience.
Shoujo without the "ai" is stories written for young girls, and usually it's romance focused but occasionally it focuses on daily life for teen girls. Everyone is supposed to be straight in the world of Shoujo but sometimes modern authors and publishers will let a random side character be different.
Josei is stories written for (straight) adult women.
Ecchi is straight porn.
Doujinshi is fanfiction.
While we're at it the Martial Arts section has many Chinese comics that are either the Wuxia genre (no magic just fighters), Xianxia genre (earthly fighters using magic), or Xuahuan genre (mythology fighters from the heavens beyond humanity) . There are also Korean and Japanese martial arts comics and they're a little different.
Supernatural genre is where magical things happen within our ordinary world, while fantasy is in another reality where everything is magical.