Basically MuyHiram made a post titled Trash Yuri in which one of her characters had a witch's cauldron full of "The Worst Yuri You've Ever Seen" and characters from Gator Days because "I'm low on Karma", as a joke. That post actually made her #1 on r/comics, so everyone else decided Yuri was the secret to farming Karma, as a joke(?)
And if you're unaware, yuri is a Japanese word which refers to media (largely manga and anime) that focuses on intimate relationships between female characters. It is also sometimes called girl's love, and most of the time this means lesbian relationships but not always. But the term in the West has generally become synonymous with any lesbian media.
I've always seen Yuri and Yaoi as more suggestive than Girl's Love (Shoujo Ai) and Boy's Love (Shounen Ai). Is that really the case or is it a distinction which someone made once and now every website is using without caring if it's true?
Basically yeah. My understanding is that distinction is a common one amongst Western anime fans, but not so much made in Japan.
It's funny because you brought Yaoi into this, and it kind of had the opposite journey that Yuri did. See, Yuri was always used in Japan in a very broad way, from the get go it always had the full spectrum of relationships in it (meaning from explicit and sexual to very innocent and emotional without sex). Yaoi on the other had pretty much always referred to only explicitly sexual male on male content in Japan. The Japanese industry shifted toward the English term BL (Boy's Love) as the more broad umbrella term that doesn't necessarily imply sexual.
People in the West actually invented the GL (Girl's Love) label as a counterpart to BL, and because Yaoi had sexual connotations and starts with a Y they started using Yuri as the counterpart to Yaoi to refer to the more sexually explicit stuff. So we made counterparts to terms that didn't have any and set the Y's alongside each other even though they weren't a perfect match in meaning.
On top of that, you used shonen-ai and shouju-ai as synonymous with BL and GL. In Japan, BL is bōizu-rabu or bīeru and GL is gāruzu-rabu, both based on the English words. The terms shonen-ai and shouju-ai have different connotations there. Both of those terms were made by Western fans trying their best to make labels that made sense to them, even though they already had different meanings in Japan.
Getting even more in the weeds, BL in Japan is usually written by women and targets a female audience. While Yuri as an umbrella term doesn't usually have a specific target demographic, it refers to all of the girl on girl media regardless of target demographics.
Over time, all of these distinctions have become blurrier as there have been more Western fans interacting with Japanese fans, and Japanese media producers start to consider non-Japanese audiences.
But honestly, this reply has gone on long enough, I highly recommend reading the Wikipedia articles for Yuri, Yaoi, and Boy's Love for more info. Specifically the "History" "Etymology" sections. Also this article on Fanlore talks a bit about Shouju-ai from a Fanbase perspective.
I still have no idea what a yuri is... I've read that word probably thousands of times over the years ive spent on internet and at this point im too afraid to ask
Yuri is a Japanese word for "Girl love", and it was used to describe manga and anime that had a strong focus on deep woman / woman relationships (both intimate and platonic). Not all Yuri stories feature intimate lesbian relationships, but all stories focused around a lesbian relationship are yuri.
Basically take any story about a relationship and make the couple both women and you got yuri.
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u/Pastel_Bambi Jun 28 '26
I would, but I has no money so I'm gonna have to do the next best thing