【Fannish50 2025 #03】First Exposure to Gay stuff

[michifugu]

Alright, we’re on the 3rd week of Fannish/Fandom 50, and this time I’ll talk about my first exposure to that ~gay~ stuff in animanga.

I think I first heard the term “yaoi” when I was around 4th or 5th grade. I didn’t know what it was, so I googled it. At the time, I didn’t realize it was about homosexuality.

I wasn’t really into it at first, thanks to my internalized homophobia back then, but since the English-speaking side of the otaku community loved talking about it, I got curious.

My first exposure to it was Junjou Romantica, and not gonna lie, I wasn’t really into the male characters. I thought they looked ugly, LMAO. Anyway, I watched it on Youtube out of curiosity, and let’s just say... it wasn’t pleasant. I was kinda... yeah, disgusted, like, “Ewww, what the fuck are those men doing??” Genuinely, I wasn’t into it, LOL. So, yaoi was a big no-no for me at the time. It didn’t help that Boku no Pico had a “big” reputation, if you know what I mean, and I was kinda disturbed by it. I was fine with shota and loli stuff, but I wasn’t really on board with the whole homosexual thing. So yeah, yaoi was a no for me.

Now, despite my first exposure to gay stuff being kinda unpleasant, my first exposure to lesbianism was a different story. I first learned about yuri when a lot of male otaku in my Facebook group claimed to be fans. I asked one of them what yuri was, and he said, “It’s like yaoi but with females” (he didn’t say it was lesbian, LOL). Anyway, I thought it would be weird like yaoi, but then I saw Kannazuki no Miko characters, and when I saw Chikane, I was just really interested. If Suigintou planted the seed of lesbianism in me, then Chikane was the one who forcefully awakened it.

Plus, it was a mecha anime, so why not? And let’s just say it was a very pleasant experience! I was really invested in Chikane and Himeko’s relationship, and it appealed to me so much. But I was afraid to talk about it because, at the time, I had family on Facebook, LMAO (I removed them later). So, I only talked about it in Youtube comments, chat groups, and forums.

I was a bit of a tryhard, trying to detach myself by saying, “This relationship is wrong and sinful, but it’s just fantasy in anime, so it’s okay.” You need to understand that I was a young child raised in a religious family, so I was taught that this stuff was wrong. That’s why, at the time, I was fine with BL and yuri by “separating” these relationships in fiction and reality. It’s wrong if I commit to it in reality, but it’s okay if it’s just fiction, that’s how I coped, anyway.

But thanks to that, I started watching yuri anime like Strawberry Panic, Maria-sama ga Miteiru, Mai-HiME, and even delved into yuri manga! I also got into Touhou yuri, I remember shipping Flandre x Remilia and Sakuya x Remilia, LOL. Anyway, before I became a huge fujoshi, I was a yuri girl first. I’ll tell the story of how I became a massive fujoshi sometime in the future.