Nostalgia Thread
What was your first shounen ai, /cm/?
>>2978536
gravitation and pic related
>>2978536
My first introduction to BL was through Yugioh doujinshi way back when Duel Monsters was a thing.
My first "real" BL series was Gravitation iirc.
>>2978536
Gravitation. And I didn't even want to watch anime with gay romances back then.
>>2978547
How did you feel when you realised Ritsuka was 12?
>>2978536
It's funny to see those old mangas with the 90s clothing and hairstyles
>>2978536
First exposure was a Taichi/Yamato Digion doujinshi called Rolling Ambivalence Hold.
Pseudo exposure after that was Ouran.
First real series was Junjou Romantica.
>>2978614
I was 13 or 14 at that time so I didn't understand that much of it and ended up feeling anything. Some time later I realised that it was kinda fucked up in some way but then I started reading the manga and felt disappointed with the anime.
Anyways, I just realised (in my 20's) that maybe this is why I tend to like older men even more that people of my age.
>tfw i liked someone who was 17 years older than me when i was in middle school
Zetsuai and Ai no Kusabi around '02/'03 - I don't remember how I found out about the genre/series, but I specifically went to search for these to download. Not long after that, Gravitation, although it never really clicked with me for whatever reasons. I guess Shuichi was too hyper for my taste.
As for Zetsuai, I still like it (art and character design included), though I realise that it's far from good. Angsty as fuck, characters do shitloads of unreasonable stuff, drama levels are through the roof and so on.
>neighbor classmate was into Gravitation in middle school
>didn't really have interest in that or other series they liked (Loveless, Fruits Basket)
>found out about Lamento freshman year of high school, guy friend let me borrow his volumes of Loveless
>still couldn't get into Loveless but took Tokyo Babylon out from the school library and got into Fumi Yoshinaga manga with Antique Bakery
A gorillion years later and I'm still stalled at volume 2 of Loveless. At this point I feel like it's even harder to read because I'm not the same age as the MC anymore.
Gravitation here as well. I remember wanting Shuuichi to be with Ryuuichi instead of Yuki and that's how I discovered the wonders of fanfiction.
>>2978588
Are you me? I remember going on ebay (lol) in the early 2000s and trying to look up YGO doujinshi hoping they'd show more than just the covers.
Pic related deserves mention too for gatewaying me into 'darker' shounen ai, along with teasing shit like X/1999
>>2978588
This only with Yu Yu Hakusho doujins. There used to be a really nice site that had scanlations (I think the name was as literal as "YYH doujins in English" haha) but it disappeared.
I remember following Gravitation until that idol girl came along then it seemed to get really outlandish. Time to get a TL;DR from a wiki.
>>2978722
Older dudes have always revved me up and I have nothing in my memory to blame it on. Age gaps with any gender are my kryptonite.
My introduction was when a friend showed me some slash Inu Yasha fics back in the early 2000's. I found them ridiculous because I'm one of those freaks that only has otps with canon backing so I brushed it off. But a few years later I started to find bl appealing. Probably my first series with gay themes was nge but Gravitation was the first manga I had that was full out gay. The "sex scenes" were mind blowing because I had no access to doujin back then. The anime version was shit though.
Now that I think about it, my first introduction to BL in general was pairing taichi and yamato from digimon in my head, also yugi x yami yugi and naruto x sasuke, but my very first shounen ai anime was gravitation and then loveless. Now, in my 20's I just don't watch shounen ai or yaoi anime anymore since I started to like manga even more than before.
>>2979063
Same here, but I tend to overthink almost everything and I guess that maybe watching loveless was like some sort of hint or insentive for myself to start liking older dudes.
>>2978536
I was big into sci-fi/fantasy before anime, so my intro into gay was Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan, and I will forever love him for it.
First actual gay character/series, tho, was Eerie Queerie, which was all kinds of cockteasing.
>>2979058
>Turkish
>'if I could keep you little'
who woulda thunk it
I can't even remember, probably Loveless. Then Antique Bakery, then it went into yaoi territory with Sensitive Pornograph and you-know-what-no-you-know-what. Then I stopped due to the severe emotional scarring.
Koi no Annaijin and Viewfinder. Junjou Romantica's the one who stayed with me, though.
YES REALLY.
Grandma took me to an exhibition on manga when I was like 10. 70's shoujo caught my eye and was rapidly googled. I crushed hard on Serge.
And I still want to draw like that, dammit.
Gotta love FAKE.
>>2982244
Those faces...
>>2982260
believe it or not, dudes actually looked like that in the 90s
>>2982115
>Grandma took me to an exhibition on manga when I was like 10. 70's shoujo caught my eye and was rapidly googled.
underage banned
>>2982350
Except I'm 22.
This was around 2002-2003.
FAKE BABY
Koisuru Boukun. I actually still have the first volume.
Very embarrassed because now I don't think it's good at all, although it had a lot of potential (there's a great scene in a later volume where the uke comes out to his family).
Watched Gravitation shortly after that, didn't think much of it though.
My first series with BL undertones was actually my first manga ever: Fushigi Yuugi.
That gave rise to a world of Yu-Gi-Oh! pairings and fan-fics.
But first real BL was FAKE for me, too, along with some of the gooier, sillier stuff like Princess Princess.
Now, I've got a non-discriminant gender bender obsession that hasn't waned since that first exposure in Fushigi Yuugi. Thanks, Nuriko.
Same as OP, my very first BL. Started with the anime and later, my country released the manga. It makes me laugh a lot with the lots of nonsense. Like when Shuichi started a riot on a theater (Manga only)
Later... Well, I really started to love it seeing some One Piece pairings. Then I watched Loveless and Princess Princess.
>>2982766
>Loveless
Saw that a year ago and here I am today....
>>2982766
>>2982786
Loveless was my 2nd or third BL.
Shotacon aspects aside, I think it could have been good if the author had just reigned in all the flailing plot threads a bit more. As it was I had no idea what was going on. Art was still great though, based Yun Kouga.
>>2982822
I think the manga started to get interesting halfway through. No idea how it's going now though.
I was way too obsessed with ronin warriors fanfic back in the day
>>2979806
Eerie Queerie ftw. Seriously great, but needed more butt lovin'
BEEP BEEP BEST BL COMING THROUGH
This is actually really genuinely great and horrifically underrated/unknown.
Though at the time I read it I never picked up on the gay vibes (I was maybe 12 or 13). Reading it a decade later I don't understand how I managed not to.
>>2979806
Holy shit, there are three of us who remember that. I remember trying to explain it as "guys doing paranormal stuff" to my parents when they got suspicious.
No fan art of it exists except this one shitty image I saved god knows how long ago. Shame.
Anyone else? Please tell me I'm not alone
>>2985872
I've never heard of this.
>>2985872 i have the game
I think my first full-on BL series was Gravitation, but what ACTUALLY got me into it originally was this manga called Satisfaction Guaranteed (I think it was called something else in Japanese). It wasn't a BL story, but I remember there being lots of gay subtext between the two main dudes, and there was even a rival guy that essentially had a straight up crush on one of them.
I dunno what it was that made this manga different from all the other pretty boy shit that I read, but something about it sparked a huge desire for me to ship dudes together.
I guess I'm a little out of place, I was never into BL or gay stuff when I was a kid, although I did read whatever trap / genderbender etc stuff I could find when I was little, especially whenever they ended up with a guy, reading fem-ranma x ryoga fanfiction and all that jazz.
Then I watched Evangelion which kind of struck me, I hadn't really seen anything like that before, but I thought it was very nice for Shinji and everything. I started reading and watching slightly gayer and gayer stuff, and also found it a bit concerning that I kept making husbando image folders instead of getting any waifus like everybody else ("I'm just a fan of the characters! They're cool!").
Then I started visiting the homo threads on /a/ out of morbid curiosity (I was reading genshiken nidaime which talked all about BL), and got real deep into it and started reading some actual ones they mentioned. I thiiink my real first one was Honto Yajuu, the bit more 'normal' artstyle helped a lot too I think, and I got real into it. Now that was like 2 years ago, and I've read and watched a ton of stuff, but still not any of the Gravitation/Junjou etc stuff.
Oh wait, I did actually have like two waifus, but they were both tomboys...how strange, right?
>>2984756
Aw yeah, Banana Fish.
>>2984635
Oh my god, that's Blue and Green right? When I was a little little one and they played the dub on toonami I swear I paired them up even though i was years away from consciously doing such things. (Red and Orange were for myself though. I always got super mad when Red got Moments with the girl. Ah, childhood.)
>>2979063
Same here, I think I remember that site! After that for me it was a manga called Demon Diary I think.
What the hell was that one called with the assasins? working in a flower shop called? I cannot even remember the name...
WILD BEGINNINGS.
>>2989696
Weiss Kruez.
>>2985872
Chocolate boy was the best.
>>2978809
If you read it while not trying to become invested in the story too much you can enjoy it better for the interactions.
Though that being said, I dropped it a while ago after the whole mystery plot started to get way too heavy and convoluted. I don't regret picking it up in the first place though, the early volumes are still pretty solid and visually appealing when I re-read them now.
>>2989698
I'd say so...
>>2982492
I remember when the very last issue came out and it was sealed in plastic wrap because it was too mature.
>>2990304
I gotta applaud my past self for seeing someone get blown up after gay anal sex and deciding that that's something I want to see more of.
>>2989698
holy shit. how old were you?
>>2978536
Gravitation for sure.
I remember being all excited for getting a shitty burned copy of the anime, it found it so great that I bought the manga, only the first vol because the ugly ass art was a total turn off for me.
I was used to Kaori Yuki's master art works, her androgynous boys and ambiguos relationships made me love shonen-ai in first place, so pic related was my second bl manga.
>>2978588
Same story here! I started with Yugioh..
but Yami no Matsuei manga was my first BL thing (i remember watching the anime very disappointed) .. then Gravitation, then Loveless, then Fake (the manga).
Good old days..
It was some web comic with vampires and light BL back in 2004. At first I was kind of grossed out but then I asked the author for more similar stuff and she introduced me to Gravitation. I didn't get into shipping til Kyou Kara Maou though.
>>2986919
Holy shit I owned these too. Nobody I know had ever heard of it, and I recently donated my copies to the local library. That and that other manga she made about the vampire, Sequence, were my favorites. The mangaka never finished a series though, it was really annoying.
HELLO DARKNESS MY OLD FRIEND
>>2992412
God, I was obsessed with Kyou Kara Maou. I recently started to rewatch it, considering I own a bunch of it on DVD, and I never realized how goddamn annoying Wolfram is. Which is weird because my main ship back in the day was WolfYuu or whatever it's called.
A reminder that "shounen ai" does not mean "boy's love" and that if you say "shounen ai" to a Japanese person they will probably think you are talking about pedophilia.
>>2992419
Same here, except I wasn't even sure if this was bl or just 4 ambiguous sexuality cast like weiss kreuz was. Good memories though. Gaiden was the shit.
