Boys Love, yuri, otome, moege – romantic visual novels come in a huge variety of subgenres, catering to different genders and sexualities. Today I want to compare two with a lot of audience overlap, which have a lot in common content-wise: Boys Love and otome.
'Otome' directly translates to 'maiden,' and as the name suggests the genre features stories about girls and women falling in love with a variety of male characters.
Boys Love, as you probably know already if you're reading this blog, refers to stories in which two male characters are romantically or sexually compatible with one another.
Both BL and otome are considered subcategories of joseimuke, 'media aimed at women.' Traditionally, both genres are created by, and aimed at, straight women, though the demographics of the genders and sexualities of those involved have become more varied and nuanced in recent years.
Some otome games, such as Fxxx Me Royally!! Horny Magical Princess include female love interests as well as men, but typically a game has to have a focus on the female/male romances on offer to be considered an otome.
Though there are 18+ otome games, such as Fashioning Little Miss Lonesome, Boys Love is more likely than otome to be explicit. This has meant that while otome titles have been increasingly ported to the Nintendo Switch – an example being the upcoming Hana Awase quadrilogy of games – BL has not made the same jump as a genre.
Both Boys Love and otome genres are known for their intense dramatic plots; though there are softer examples of each, the titles which have been translated into English are largely at the more serious end of things (though there are a few screwball comedy otomes out there).
Some well-known BL titles that have been translated into English include DRAMAtical Murder, Togainu no Chi - Lost Blood -, Slow Damage, and Lkyt. All of these, and the genre generally, feature intense and often violent settings. While there's certainly Boys Love out there that isn't dark and dangerous, the publishers that have been most frequently translated skew towards this kind of fare.
Otome visual novels that have been translated into English include Steam Prison, OZMAFIA!!, Collar X Malice, and Code: Realize ~Guardian of Rebirth~. As with Boys Love, the titles that have been translated into English skew towards the more intense end of the spectrum as a general rule.
Fans of both Boys Love and otome care very much about voice acting, and popular games tend to include sterling performances from their casts.
Wikipedia notes that "sometimes there are [Boys Love] elements in otome games, but the two genres are usually kept separate." Examples of relationships which could be interpreted as having BL subtext within otome games include Ulrik and Eltcreed in Steam Prison or Miki and Saito in Fashioning Little Miss Lonesome.
While they have much in common as genres, there are key differences between Boys Love and otome. The main point of contrast is the gender of the player character, with the audience controlling a man in BL and a woman in otome.
While both genres can feature extremely grim bad ends, otome is probably more notorious for this than BL is – individual Boys Love titles may gain a reputation for their bad endings, but it varies more widely across the genre than it does for otome.
While there are certainly many otome games with heroines who are characters in their own right, there are also examples of less defined heroines designed to be projected onto by the player – an example of this would be NEKOPARA - Catboys Paradise, where the player character is a cipher through which the player can project themselves into the story. This type of protagonist is sometimes called a 'faceless protagonist', as they are typically drawn without defined facial features.
By contrast, BL protagonists are almost invariably wholly defined characters, as the presumed female player is not expected to project herself onto him.
The genders involved in the romance remains the major difference between otome and Boys Love, however, and should be your primary consideration when thinking about which genre you'd like to try. To put it bluntly, do you like seeing boys kiss boys, or girls kiss boys? Or both? This question will guide you in deciding whether to go for Boys Love or otome when selecting a visual novel.
Or, if you're familiar with one genre and not the other, why not expand your horizons a little and try the other out? You might be surprised how much you enjoy seeing how the other half lives!