Three additions to the Oyaji BL Primer

I’m chipping away at my backlog of additions to the Oyaji BL Primer with three new titles: Mada Ai ga Tarinai (the working man), Shinjuku Lucky Hole (the bad boy), and Negaigoto wa Hidamari de (now that’s an old man!).

Mada Ai ga Tarinai by Nishida Higashi
Inoue Masayuki is a middle-aged, divorced HR manager with a surprising problem–there’s an anonymous complaint accusing the talented, younger manager Kitahara Akihiko of sexual harassment. Inoue approaches Kitahara to investigate and just when his suspicions start to clear, a nude photo of Kitahara is sent to his cell phone. A cat-and-mouse game evolves between the two–Inoue can’t dismiss, yet won’t be easily fooled or manipulated by Kitahara. And Kitahara sent the nude pic himself–to lure Inoue into bed.

It’s fun watching Inoue’s conflicting attraction grow into determination to show Kitahara that he has more appeal than just money and good sex. Even the scheming Kitahara can be oblivious and caught off-guard.

Shinjuku Lucky Hole by Kumota Haruk0
Hiyama Kumi is a former porn star who manages an adult film company with his partner, Sakuma. They met in a non-traditional manner. In order to repay his father’s debt to the yakuza, Kumi was sent to live and be “trained” by Sakuma so the young Kumi could appear in gay films. Eventually, Kumi starts to develop feelings for Sakuma and schemes to release him from the yakuza world.

Kumi is indebted to Sakuma, who lets others know that Kumi is his. Sakuma is intimidating and possessive in his own way. Kumi may sleep with people for a living, but crossing over that professional line into personal feelings is a good way to bring out his scary, threatening yakuza side. They have an interesting dynamic, both in their past and present. The present storyline features them as two hot oyaji, of course.

Negaigoto wa Hidamari de by Katsuragi
Nakakouji  Tomohiko and Shiomi Haruhito have been friends all their lives. Now in their 50’s, Tomohiko blurts out that he wants Shiomi to marry him. Thinking his secret crush on Tomohiko is blown, Shiomi panics. However, Tomohiko just needed some help to deflect a marriage proposal. Now that the secret is out, will it ruin or transform their long companionship? It’s a bit comical and very sweet story about “silver love.”

Oyaji BL Manga Primer

At some point, you get tired of reading manga about 16 year old kids.  You crave something different.  The further you get away from age 16, the more prominent this feeling can become.  Thankfully, there’s a trend within BL that gives us some grown, adult men and it’s been growing in popularity:  the oyaji!

“Oyaji” literally means father, but is also casually used to refer to middle-aged men. The lower age limit to qualify as an oyaji is typically early 30’s.  Common oyaji “cues” include visible signs of age like wrinkles around the eyes and mouth, an established family, and, of course, crotchety old man behavior (my favorite).   Within manga, there’s certain character types associated with this term.  The majority of oyaji seem to fall within the 30-45 year old range, particularly for BL.

Yamada Yugi teaches us oyaji moe points

First, if you’re completely new to this subgenre, here are some of the most highly regarded mangaka that reliably produce fantastic older men.  Their works are a great place to start and are relatively well-known, so I’ll only briefly mention a few of their relevant works.

• Ono Natsume (basso)- noticeably older, professional men
• est em – all types, very versatile
• Yamashita Tomoko – natural characters
• Suzuki Tsuta – one of the best at the gentle,  sweet type
• Nishida Higashi – mostly salarymen (this is a good thing).  Kudos for having real oyaji, including some in their 50s (and still hot!)
• Naono Bohra – her oyaji feel more fetishy, but there’s many and a wide range of them

This would be best titled “shin’s Oyaji BL Primer” because it isn’t all inclusive (too much!) and I’m blatantly playing favorites.  Hey, what can I say–it’s my blog and I think I have decent taste in oyaji. ♥ I’m not including everything, as I’d actually like to finish this list at some point (yet I know I’ll add to it later).  So this will be an overly large manga snippets post describing my favorite oyaji within those works.  And boy do I love my oyaji.

So here’s some hand-picked BL works that I’ve enjoyed which feature an older man, whether top, bottom, in the middle, on the side… I don’t discriminate!