Our Manga Gaylien Is Now The #1 Boys Love Manga In Japan!

Our four-panel format manga Gaylien: Close Encounters Of The Gaylien Kind, begun in February of 2009, has been building a large following among Japanese fujoshi and just recently reached the very top of the boys love manga rankings! （Nihon Blogmura Rankings）



Fujoshi? Boys love?! What the heck are we talking about?!

Well, for those of you who aren’t in the know, boys love is a genre that has gained popularity in Japan in recent years. The stories focus mainly on love affairs between men but, in a unique twist, are written almost entirely by women, for women. The phenomenon has its roots in the dojinshi (or fan comic) market, where female authors fantasized about male relationships between well known fictional characters, concocting new stories along the way. This was seen by some as a way to subvert the underlying gender roles in these stories and female readers of boys love are often characterized as being dissatisfied with the traditional normative gender roles in Japanese society. This intrepid audience refers to itself with more than a small touch of ironic self-derision through the use of the term fujoshi – or “rotten girl” – a nickname which is pronounced the same as a more traditional term for women but carries a different Chinese spelling.

As for Gaylien, the weekly comic strip tells the story of an alien named Uchuu from the planet Gaylien and the object of his affection, the young man Yamada-kun.



The third season of the Japanese edition of Gaylien made its official start in January 2010 but the beginnings of this new season can actually be traced back to the book Baby Gaylien, sold at last year’s Comiket 76.

■Baby Gaylien

The Baby Gaylien dojinshi is available for purchase through the Amazon address above.

The author of this opus has plunged herself into the four-panel and lately has been trying to take full advantage of all the different facets of this unique format.

On another note, episodes 1-120 of the Japanese edition of Gaylien will be on sale in one volume at the end of April!

And that’s not all!! Kaikai Kiki New York is now ready to announce that an English language edition of Gaylien will be making its international online debut very soon! We’ll be bringing you more information in the coming months, so keep your eyes on this space!