The Danmei Controversy – This Week in Anime

The comments released last week speak to the chilling effect this kind of crackdown can have on fiction, reflected in similar issues being felt in material like manga abroad. The other guys got to talk trashy romance, so now it’s time for a “fun” column.

After reading into it the past few days, it’s also one I see as fascinating, in how it’s emblematic of the spirit of expression and the popularity of stories to push through, even as they’re labeled “obscene” in an attempt to quash them.

Add in the fact that dealing with subjects representing a current cultural taboo, like love between men, brings its propensity for popularity, and you’ve got a recipe for a hit. Even I caught wind of Heaven’s Official Blessing a couple of years ago, despite not being anywhere near the scene. I’ve been around for previous BL booms, so I get it.

Incidentally, that fan art tipped me off to the incipient popularity of danmei, particularly through the artist alleys of my choice conventions, signaling the kind of penetration it had. (Not that kind of penetration! Again, censorship!)

Mostly hypothetically, I should stress. I’m far from a salient political commentary wonk, let alone when discussing a whole separate country from my own. I’m just a queer guy who likes talking about queer cartoons.

For me, it helped to clarify the ways danmei has continued to have a presence in the face of that censorship, how others have been taken down across multiple decades, and how that compares to the crackdown on the Haitang Literature authors referenced at the beginning of this discussion. It’s worth a read-through, along the stones we’re touching on here.

It’s notable in comparative context because of the way these so-called “obscene” books are being targeted purely for being queer. Thanks to that “nothing below the neck” rule of Chinese censorship, some of the manhua adaptations of these danmei don’t even get much more explicit than Sasaki & Miyano, which nonetheless found itself in the book-banning crosshairs.

Going back to the Haitang Literature authors, this bears out in the given reason they were arrested for “profiting” off this so-called obscene material. It’s genuinely being punished because it was successful, and the powers-that-be saw that as antithetical. Arguably threatening, even.

As you said, the licensing and release of this material marches on from the business side of things. The irony is that if the global rise in this sort of censorship and government crackdown continues, publishers might not be able to sell stuff like danmei here as easily eventually, either.

I can get the trepidation when works like danmei and BL don’t necessarily represent the gay lifestyle and even fetishize it for an outside audience in some cases. But the flip side is that if the enemies of this material equate it with that lifestyle, then defending one against censorship ostensibly defends the other.

As for how to exercise that united strength, I’ve admittedly gotten less concrete advice. It feels especially hard to propose against a crackdown happening halfway around the world that has already coerced those kinds of responses from the affected authors. Though the aforementioned domestic attempts mean there are likely local legislatures you can make your voice heard to while you keep demonstrating this material’s popularity by buying translations of your fancifully written pseudo-smut.