There are some scenes from Boys Love games that just stand out as especially impactful for players, and come to define the game as a whole – at times, they become cornerstones of the genre.
While varying significantly in tone and content, these games share common elements: all feature intense emotional dynamics between the participants, and all represent a turning point for the narrative in some way, whether that be a shift in the relationship between the characters or a significant step forward in the plot.
I've tried here to outline some of the key romantic or emotionally significant moments from visual novels in the Boys Love genre. This list will contain extensive spoilers for the games involved, so please proceed with caution, and feel free to hit me up on Twitter at @sharpest_rose to offer your own suggestions!
There are so many memorable moments in Togainu no Chi that it was hard to narrow it down, so I've cheated a little and chosen two – my personal favorite, and the one I think the majority of fandom finds most moving.
My personal pick for a moment when a narrative turning point occurs is in the Rin route, when he and Akira share a quiet moment on top of the ruins of one of Toshima's high-rise buildings (revealed in the anime to be Junkudo Books in Ikebukuro).
This moment is impactful because it offers a moment of quiet and sincerity from Rin, something that becomes important after his apparent betrayal against Akira – I think, if we hadn't had the rooftop scene, it wouldn't make any sense for Akira to continue to care about Rin after Rin turns on him. But because we've seen Rin in a moment of honesty and vulnerability on the rooftop, we know there's more to him than his newly revealed ruthlessness.
In contrast, the scene I suspect the majority of fandom finds emotionally poignant from this game comes from the Shiki route: Shiki returns with a pair of bloody daggers, which he casts aside, and once again has sex with the captive Akira. Unlike earlier couplings between the two, however, Shiki appears to be emotionally as well as physically present in the proceedings, and afterwards asks Akira his name.
This scene is memorable because the player, having already gone through Rin's route, knows the significance of the bloody daggers – Shiki has killed his own brother. The more obvious way for such a narrative moment to play out would be for the act to reinforce Shiki's heartlessness and lack of humanity; we have already seen him consider Akira's consent to be of little concern when it comes to sexual coupling, and his reputation for violence carries over from earlier game routes.
But the game doesn't use the moment to underline Shiki's lack of humanity – instead, it is a turning point where the first, and perhaps only, glimpses of someone more complicated, and connected to others, come through. The sex isn't the same heavily sadistic, controlling act that it previously has been. In a key shift in his relationship with Akira, he learns Akira's name.
As with all the games listed here, there are a number of other scenes that would be easy contenders to be included, but these are the two I've chosen. Please let me know what your selection would be!
Slow Damage is a game with so many twists and turns that it would be impossible to name all the narrative highlights, so I've restricted myself to one: Towa and Fujieda's second sex scene, after Towa's suicide attempt.
The two characters, whose relationship has varied from adversarial to outright hostility to wary allies at different times throughout the game, finally come together physically and emotionally, with Fujieda taking care of Towa and treating him with delicacy and care.
Even more than the eroticism of the moment, the emotional intimacy is scorching in this section of the game: the way the pair sit together on Towa's bed and talk together carries a kind of truth and weight to it rarely matched and never surpassed in Boys Love visual novels. In a game all about exposing deep secrets, rarely do two people seem more laid bare.
sweet pool is an extremely complicated game, and its intense scenes reflect this – there are very few moments of consensual sex, and those that do appear are made complex by the nature of Youji and Testsuo's inhuman bond with one another.
The Red Road ending, echoing the Saya Wins ending from Saya no Uta, requires Youji and Testuo to sacrifice their own futures in order to birth the pure being.
Their lovemaking is bittersweet, as it is simultaneously an act of intimacy and of shared suicide. Youji muses to himself that there is no such thing as forever, suggesting that he has come to accept that his fate, while tragic, is not necessarily more tragic than any other fate that his unique destiny might have had in store for him: he wasn't going to get out of this alive, no matter what choices he made.
The visual of Tetsuo and Youji lying together, surrounded by gore and accepting of their end, is surprisingly gentle and moving – there's a genuine sense that they feel they are making the correct and inevitable decision, bringing what life they can out of the death that awaits them. It's an eerie, beautiful moment in a game filled with so much horror.
All the routes of Room no.9 are intensely emotional, and it may seem strange that I'm choosing arguably the happiest one to list here – Daichi and Seiji have been trapped in a room for a week and a half, forced to cause physical trauma to one another: Seiji must injure Daichi each day, or Daichi must sexually debase Seiji, but they must choose to do one or the other or they'll never get out.
In Route F, they have split the tasks between them as best as they can, so as to avoid escalation in either direction beyond what they're capable of enduring. On the tenth day, Seiji has been given an aphrodisiac and is trying to take care of it alone in the shower. Daichi comes in and has sex with him, pushing the two of them voluntarily across a line they have heretofore been forced over by their captors.
It seems in this ending that they are able to remain friends, leaving any more complicated feelings they may harbor for one another behind in the room where they were held.
It's an upbeat ending in an otherwise largely downbeat game, but the scene in the shower is extremely moving – Daichi's tenderness with Seiji, their overwhelming mutual lust, and finally, achingly, their moment of emotional vulnerability together, as they weep under the relentless shower spray, broken by all they've endured and everything they've had to confront about how they may secretly feel about each other.
It's an erotic and emotional climax, combined into one long moment.
While the scenes detailed above vary greatly in tone and content, they all represent emotional beats in their narratives which give shape to the wider story, and in some cases the game's place in the genre overall. They range from moments of character development to romantic or sexual connection, to a combination of the two.
If any sweeping statement can be made about a genre as varied as Boys Love, it is perhaps that moments of emotional connection can be said to be as vital as sexual content. Not all Boys Love is explicit, after all, and while not all titles rely on intense feelings to carry their narrative, it's certainly a strong mainstay of the genre.