I Couldn't Read Romance Manga. But I Could Read BL.
Romance
Kana
Back when everyone around me was hooked on the romance serials running in magazines, I never quite found my way into the circle. I figured I understood the ache of an unrequited crush, and the urge to root for a classmate's love life - at least in theory. But when the latest chapter became the talk of the classroom, I couldn't muster the same energy as everyone else. "Are those two still missing each other?" "I can't wait to see what happens next month." Those reactions never came naturally to me.
So I learned to pick my comments carefully, just to keep up and avoid being left out. Around that time, my mother handed me something different: a story about a relationship between two men. What we'd now call BL.
It was my first time in that world, and I read through it in one sitting. What I remember most is the relief: it turned out I could read the small emotional signals of a love story after all.
Decades and a lot of books later, I think I can see why. BL never asked me to be a participant in romance. It didn't ask me to wedge myself between two people, or to become one of them. It just gave me a seat from which to watch a relationship change.
Among Japanese BL fans there's a phrase: "I want to be the wall." Cutting in between the two characters is out of the question, you simply want to be there, present, watching the moment their relationship shifts. The place I'd found turned out to be something close to that wall.
What follows are a few works that carry that same "I want to be the wall" feeling.
A Relationship That Starts With a Misunderstanding
The first is My Love Mix-Up!
The story gets going through a small misunderstanding between classmates. Aoki, the protagonist, is a high school boy with a crush on a girl named Hashimoto. But after he borrows her eraser, a classmate named Ida comes to the wrong conclusion: that Aoki is in love with him.
On paper, this looks like the opening of a standard school rom-com mix-up. What My Love Mix-Up! does, though, is structured so that the misunderstanding doesn't stay a simple comedy of crossed wires. Aoki never saw Ida as a romantic prospect to begin with, his feelings were pointed at Hashimoto. And yet, through the misread signal, Ida's sincerity and his clumsy kindness start to come into view.
You can read it as an ensemble rom-com. For me, My Love Mix-Up! was less about the moment a romance begins and more about watching a relationship shift along the line between friendship and love. If I'd been a classmate in that room, able to watch Aoki and Ida's awkward exchanges from a desk a little ways off, that would have been a pretty good place to sit.
Too Close to See
Next is My Ultramarine Sky.
At its center are two high school boys, Kai Makihara and Ren Mizushiro. They've been in the same class from their first year of junior high all the way to their second year of high school. Then, in their final year, they end up in separate classes for the first time. A class reassignment, about as minor as events get, sends a small ripple through a daily routine they'd assumed would never change.
The book doesn't frame the moment friendship turns into love as a dramatic incident. There's no big fateful meeting. If anything, the two had always been close. Maybe it was that very closeness that kept them from putting a name to what was inside them. It takes the small distance of a class change for the wish to "stay together" to finally take shape.
The mechanism that makes this work is the shifting viewpoint: the structure sets up a kind of after-the-fact answer key in the reader's mind. Rather than following just one boy's feelings, you come to see that both of them had their own silences, the one who couldn't say it, and the one who couldn't notice. Once you know both sides, it gets hard to take only one of them.
Being too close means you can get hurt, and you learn to fear the distance. That feeling extends to the reader watching the relationship, too. The words that were said and the words that went unsaid, do they push the two apart, or pull them back together? Watching that play out is what's left to the reader standing in as the "wall."
Toward a Place You Don't Have to Hide
The last one is If It’s You, I Might Try Falling in Love.
What clearly sets this apart from the others is where it begins: the protagonist already understands that he's attracted to men and doesn't feel romantic love toward women.
Ten, the lead, already knows his feelings may not be easily accepted. The way he keeps things light, turns to jokes, plays at brushing things off. This isn't carelessness, it's the only way he had to protect himself.
The one Ten meets is a classmate, Ryuji.
Ryuji doesn't rush to define what lies under Ten's words and behavior. He doesn't push too far, but he doesn't pull away either. That sense of distance is what gives the book its soft air.
Falling in love isn't only about a racing heart. It also means letting someone see your weak spots, and holding out your real feelings in a place where they might be rejected. That's why watching Ten change, little by little, in his time with Ryuji, brings a quiet reassurance before it brings any sweetness.
While reading, I found myself just wanting to watch their time move forward at their own pace, wanting that soft stretch of time to become, for Ten, a place where he doesn't have to hide. Watching it unfold from a desk off to the side was what reading this book felt like.
Wanting "to be the wall" is about observing sincerely from a distance while not interfering with someone else's bond. It's learning that there's a way to stay connected to the world without being at the center of it.
What BL gave me was a quiet place to stand, the sense that you can be near a story without ever having to be a participant in the romance itself.
About the Author
Kana
A manga reader from a household that gets through more than 500 books a year, all together. Three generations of the family have been known to swap BL impressions. Drawn, regardless of genre, to stories that take their time depicting how relationships change.
Editor’s Note: The views and interpretations expressed in this article are those of emaqi’s editorial team. While My Love Mix-Up! contains elements associated with BL, it is officially published under VIZ Media’s Shojo Beat imprint and categorized by Shueisha as shojo manga, not BL. Its inclusion in this feature does not necessarily reflect the creators’ intended genre classification.