Yaoi Con 2015 was held September 18-20, 2015 in San Francisco.
The location was the same as last year and in 2010 – the Hyatt Regency SFO.
I’ve always called this hotel “The Mausoleum” due to its high closed atrium—which makes you feel you’re in a giant terrarium…
I did a panel again this year. More on that in a minute.
Digital Manga Inc. is still the owner of Yaoi Con. I went to their panel, which was presented by Kristine, their brand manager.
I know I take bad pictures, but I have no idea why the screen is so insanely reflective here. Anyway…
DMI announced 24 new manga titles—all digital. The print titles are being negotiated. Kristine noted that DMI releases 2+ digital yaoi titles each month.
Kristine then introduced the new releases. The audience was polite and receptive. The release that got the biggest reaction was Even So, I Will Love You Tenderly by Kou Yoneda.
Right after the DMI panel was Sublime’s panel.
Sublime is Viz Media’s boy’s love imprint. Like the DMI panel, it was well attended.
The crowd at the Sublime panel was more enthusiastic for its upcoming new releases, which were announced by Sublime editor-in-chief Jennifer LeBlanc. The ones that received the most wildly excited reactions (cheers and screams) were the latest volumes of His Favorite and Awkward Silence, as well as the titles Midnight Stranger by Bohra Naono, Don’t Be Cruel by Yonezou Nekota and Ten Count by Rihito Takurai.
I also attended the "Writing a Comic Script" panel presented by Yaoi Revolution, a small yaoi publisher. The panel was geared toward writers who write manga/graphic novel scripts who have never worked with an artist. A lot of helpful advice was presented, including cutting back your dialogue (as a writer you’re going to write too much, and it’s just not going to fit), make sure the contract terms are clear to both parties, and have the artist finish the complete web series before releasing the first page (as artists often bail on projects for justified or unjustified reasons).
I saw a lot of Haikyu and Dramatical Murder cosplay this year. In keeping with my current anime burnout phase or whatever it is I’m going through as a fan, I took almost no cosplay photos.
Not sure what anime this character is from.
The panel I did this year was on “The Female Gaze.”
I’ve been considering the issue of the male gaze for some time now. We’re all so used to movies and TV series being presented from a male—and usually white male—point of view that it’s accepted as the default for filmic storytelling. But why?
In the panel, I introduced the topic by reading from the TV Tropes essay on what is meant by ‘gaze,’ and then talked about some movies that are told from a female gaze/female point of view: Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and Frozen.
I brought up various aspects and consequences of the male gaze being so predominant—like sex scenes where the female is shown nude but not the male. And finally, I asked what makes a female hero, as well as what would we like to see in a female hero?
The panel was advertised as a moderated discussion and safe space to talk about these things, and I believe that I—in combination with the wonderful audience that attended—achieved this. There was much audience participation, and my deepest thanks to all who came. I hope you got as much food for thought out of it as I did.
I may put my thoughts on this topic into an ebook at some point—so if you’re interested, stay tuned to my writing blog.
I enjoyed Yaoi Con this year. I always enjoy Yaoi Con, though as the years go by, each year’s con pretty much merges indistinguishably into all the others in my memory. This year, I especially enjoyed it for a personal reason: friends from Boston attended the con and we had some good times together.
The sameness of Yaoi Con each year I think is due to the fact that yaoi and boy’s love don’t appear to be growing in the U.S. After the initial rush ten years ago when yaoi felt fresh and subversive and exciting—and the recession that nearly put the U.S. manga industry six feet under that followed—it seems yaoi has now found its audience, but that audience isn’t getting bigger. The people who love it will continue to buy it, but there’s currently no growth in the genre.
DMI gets flak for a lot of things, but they can’t be blamed for this. DMI and Sublime and smaller yaoi publishers are still doing what they do, but the related genre of m/m romance is growing and yaoi isn’t.
It’s too bad, because yaoi really is special. I only have to recall Fuyu no Semi or Mirage of Blaze and that tingly excited feeling comes right back, echoes from that era of my anime fan life when yaoi and boy’s love stories had an almost magical effect on me as a fan, a woman and as a writer.
In any event, DMI has announced that Yaoi Con will be held in the terrarium again next year, so I expect I’ll be back for my tenth year and filing another con report then. Let’s hope that yaoi and boy’s love see greater sales and a growing market before Yaoi Con 2016.
