yaoi

Yaoi, also known as Boys' Love or BL in Japan, is a genre mostly written by women, for women, that depicts homosexual relationships between men. Japan typically uses this single category for all forms of these relationships, sexual or not. In the West, the term Shounen-ai categorizes stories that focus on emotional aspects of relationships, while Yaoi categorizes more of the sexual aspects, such as Smut, or explicit content. As Anime-Planet's audience is mostly based in the West, we use the Western definition for both Yaoi and Shounen-ai. See BL for a list of both titles.