Usagi Tsukino, better known as Sailor Moon, is a Japanese superheroine and the protagonist of the Sailor Moon franchise created by Naoko Takeuchi. She is introduced in chapter No. 1 of the manga, "Usagi – Sailor Moon", as a carefree Japanese schoolgirl who can transform into the magical "Guardian of Love and Justice", Sailor Moon.
Yaoi, also known as boys' love and its abbreviation BL, is a genre of fictional media originating in Japan that features homoerotic relationships between male characters. It is typically created by women for women and is thus distinct from bara, a genre of homoerotic media marketed to gay men, though yaoi does also attract a male audience and can be produced by male creators. Yaoi spans a wide range of media, including manga, anime, drama CDs, novels, video games, television series, films, and fan works. While "yaoi" is commonly used in the west as an umbrella term for Japanese-influenced media with male-male relationships, "boys' love" and "BL" are the generic terms for this kind of media in Japan and much of Asia.
Shotacon, abbreviated from Shōtarō complex, is, in Japanese contexts, the attraction to young boy characters, or media centered around this attraction. The term refers to a genre of manga and anime wherein prepubescent or pubescent male characters are depicted in a suggestive or erotic manner, whether in the obvious role of object of attraction, or the less apparent role of "subject".
Cosplay, a portmanteau of "costume play", is an activity and performance art in which participants called cosplayers wear costumes and fashion accessories to represent a specific character. Cosplayers often interact to create a subculture, and a broader use of the term "cosplay" applies to any costumed role-playing in venues apart from the stage. Any entity that lends itself to dramatic interpretation may be taken up as a subject. Favorite sources include anime, cartoons, comic books, manga, television series, rock music performances, video games and in some cases original characters. The term is composed of the two aforementioned counterparts – costume and role play.
Bishōnen is a Japanese term literally meaning "beautiful youth (boy)" and describes an aesthetic that can be found in disparate areas in East Asia: a young man of androgynous beauty. This word originated from the Tang dynasty poem Eight Immortals of the Wine Cup by Du Fu. It has always shown the strongest manifestation in Japanese pop culture, gaining in popularity due to the androgynous glam rock bands of the 1970s, but it has roots in ancient Japanese literature, the androsocial and androerotic ideals of the medieval Chinese imperial court and intellectuals, and Indian aesthetic concepts carried over from Hinduism, imported with Buddhism to China. Today, bishōnen are very popular among girls and women in Japan. Reasons for this social phenomenon may include the unique male and female social relationships found within the genre. Some have theorized that bishōnen provide a non-traditional outlet for gender relations. Moreover, it breaks down stereotypes surrounding feminine male characters. These are often depicted with very strong martial arts abilities, sports talent, high intelligence, dandy fashion, or comedic flair, traits that are usually assigned to the hero/protagonist role.
In Japanese popular culture, a bishōjo, also romanized as bishojo or bishoujo, is a cute girl character. Bishōjo characters appear ubiquitously in media including manga, anime, and computerized games, and also appear in advertising and as mascots, such as for maid cafés. An attraction towards bishōjo characters is a key concept in otaku subculture.
Comic Party, sometimes abbreviated to ComiPa, is a dating sim video game by the Japanese game studio Leaf. It was first released on May 28, 1999, for Windows with adult content, but re-released with it removed for the Dreamcast, Windows, and PSP. The main focus of the game is the creation of various dōjinshi by the player's character, during which there are varied opportunities to interact with a cast of girls.
The following is a glossary of terms that are specific to anime and manga. Anime includes animated series, films and videos, while manga includes graphic novels, drawings and related artwork.
Manga, in the sense of narrative multi-panel cartoons made in Japan, originated from Euro-American-style cartoons featured in late 19th-century Japanese publications. The form of manga as speech-balloon-based comics more specifically originated from translations of American comic strips in the 1920s, with several early such manga read left-to-right and the longest-running pre-1945 manga being the Japanese translation of the American comic strip Bringing Up Father. The word manga first came into usage in the late 18th century, though it only came to refer to various forms of cartooning in the 1890s and did not become a common word until around 1920.
Antique Bakery is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Fumi Yoshinaga. The slice of life series follows the lives of four men who work in a pâtisserie. It was originally serialized in the manga magazine Wings from 1999 to 2001, and collected into four tankōbon volumes published by Shinshokan; a spin-off dōjinshi series has also been produced.
Maid cafés are a subcategory of cosplay restaurants found predominantly in Taiwan and Japan. In these cafés, waitresses, dressed in maid costumes, act as servants, and treat customers as masters as if they were in a private home, rather than as café patrons. The first permanent maid café, Cure Maid Café, was established in Akihabara, Tokyo, Japan, in March 2001, but maid cafés are becoming increasingly popular. The increased competition drove the cafes to employ more diversified themes, gimmicks and even unusual tactics to attract customers. They have also expanded overseas to several countries around the world.
The World Cosplay Summit is an annual international cosplay event, which promotes global interaction through Japanese pop culture. It developed from a cosplay exhibition held at the Aichi Expo in 2005.
Futanari is the Japanese word for hermaphroditism, which is also used in a broader sense for androgyny.
A butler café is a subcategory of cosplay restaurant that originated in Japan. In these cafés, waiters dress as butlers and serve patrons in the manner of domestic servants attending to aristocracy. Butler cafés proliferated in reaction to the popularity of maid cafés and serve as an alternative category of cosplay restaurant intended to appeal to female otaku.
LGBT Culture in Japan has recently begun to distinguish. The Japanese adopted the English term gender to describe cultural concepts of feminine and masculine. Previously, sei was used to distinguish the binary biological sexes, female and male, as well as the concept of gender. Ai Haruna and Ayana Tsubaki, two high-profile transgender celebrities, have gained popularity and have been making the rounds on some very popular Japanese variety shows. As of April 2011, Hiromi, a fashion model, came out as a lesbian. There is a genre of anime and manga that focuses on gay male romance known as yaoi. With the rise of a visible gay community and the attendant rise of media for gay audiences, the Hadaka Matsuri has become a fantasy scenario for gay videos.
Otokonoko is a Japanese term for men who have a culturally feminine gender expression. This includes amongst others males with feminine appearances, or those cross-dressing. "Otokonoko" is a play on the word 男の子, which is also pronounced otokonoko; in the slang term, the kanji for "child" (子) is substituted with "daughter"/"girl" (娘).
Shōjo manga is an editorial category of Japanese comics targeting an audience of adolescent females and young adult women. It is, along with shōnen manga, seinen manga, and josei manga, one of the primary editorial categories of manga. Shōjo manga is traditionally published in dedicated manga magazines, which often specialize in a particular readership age range or narrative genre.
In anime and manga, the term "LGBTQ themes" includes lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender material. Outside Japan, anime generally refers to a specific Japanese-style of animation, but the word anime is used by the Japanese themselves to broadly describe all forms of animated media there. According to Harry Benshoff and Sean Griffin, the fluid state of animation allows flexibility of animated characters to perform multiple roles at once. Manga genres that focus on same-sex intimacy and relationships resulted from fan work that depicted relationships between two same-sex characters. This includes characters who express their gender and sexuality outside of hetero-normative boundaries. There are also multiple sub genres that target specific consumers and themes: yaoi, yuri, shoujo-ai, shonen-ai, bara, etc. LGBT-related manga found its origins from fans who created an "alternative universe" in which they paired their favorite characters together. Many of the earliest works that contained LGBT themes were found in works by dōjinshi who has specifically written content outside the regular industry. The rise of yaoi and yuri was also slowed due to censorship laws in Japan that make it extremely hard for Japanese manga artists ("mangakas") and others to create work that is LGBT themed. Anime that contained LGBTQ content was changed to meet international standards. However, publishing companies continued to expand their repertoire to include yuri and yaoi, and conventions were created to form a community and culture for fans of this work.
Rule 63 is an Internet meme that states that, as a rule, "for every given male character, there is a female version of that character" and vice versa. It is one of the "Rules of the Internet" that began in 2006 as a Netiquette guide on 4chan and were eventually expanded upon by including deliberately mocking rules, of which Rule 63 is an example. It began to see general use in fandom communities as a term to refer to both fan-made and official gender flips of existing fictional characters.
