Fujoshi are women with enthusiastic interest in genres of fiction known as yaoi and BL (“boys love”), which express male-male romantic and sexual relationships. Fujoshi are thus a kind of devoted fan, or “otaku.” This paper examines, through the perspective of gender, how representations of fujoshi have changed over the past few years, incorporating perspectives from the work of the Japanese academic and social critic Azuma Hiroki, in particular his concept of “moe” character-based consumption. Azuma makes a distinction between sexual desire situated in the genitals and "sexuality" as subjectivity. Male otaku respond to moe characters, or images in manga, animation, and in the mode of Azuma’s sexual desire, while their consumption practice is what Azuma calls “database consumption,” typified by “moe” characters, images with features that elicit a “moe” response of desire. Representations of fujoshi have been among consumer products constructed for male otaku.13;
I aim to demonstrate that fujoshi, who are both readers and writers of fujoshi manga, work to undermine, through the fujoshi image, the gender relations in which they themselves are involved. In other words, through the fictions that they create, fujoshi protest male-oriented fictions. Through this, they also resist male otaku desires that would keep them confined within two-dimensional fantasy worlds.