Yaoi: Yay or nay?

I have nothing against yaoi. Actually there was once a time when I passed my days hidden away in my room and I would search the internet and read any that I could get my hands on, but luckily those days are over. Why, you might ask? Because there are very few manga that I find good enough to bother mentioning once I'm finished with them. Usually there is the violent/possessive/sadist seme that spends the whole manga finding a way to torture "his" uke, who does nothing more but cry. I really don't understand how he can permit his companion to do such evil things and get away with it. A perfect example of this is Sex pistols and You're my loveprize in viewfinder, two yaoi that I couldn't even finish, but for some reason are popular now between the fans of this genre.

Anyway, that said, there are a few yaoi or shounen-ai that are brilliant, to the point to make their way into my top 15 list of all time. I'm talking about Slow Starter (Ichikawa Kei), Let Dai, Seven Days and Acid Town.

Slow Starter is plain cute. Two boys meet each other and become friends. Then they realise that what they want is more than just being friends. Cliché, but lovely. Plus one of the characters has one of my favourite names: Ino.

Seven Days is similar to Slow Starter, in the sense that it's another shounen-ai that makes you think love is a beautiful thing.

Leaving the innocence behind, Acid town is a yaoi from one of the best mangakas out there. I find it hard to describe what it's about, if I don't want to give out any spoilers, but to make a long story short, a boy has to protect himself and his little brother from the dark side of a world much worse than ours. The only problem is that it's still airing; therefore it's best to wait until it's completed or you'll miss a whole lot of small details. It's a story that makes you think "what the hell is going to happen?". While you're waiting for the series to be completed, I recommend the other mangas that Kyuugou has done.

Last, but definitely not least, is Let Dai. It's not really a manga, as it's from Korea, but it's still a great piece of artwork. Jaehee, the main character, saves a girl in a back alley from being robbed and beaten up. Because of this, he finds himself swallowed into the world of gansters. But not just any gansters; Korean ones. The worse after the Chinese mafia.

Dai is actually very similar to Rei from Mars (both in character and looks), but much much more cruel. I'm seriously scared of him. And he's just a picture.

The only not-so-good point I found while reading Let Dai was that the names are in Korean (duh) and I'm not used to Korean names. I still don't even know how to pronounce Jaehee.

Other good yaoi and shounen-ai are the works of Ogura Muku. Sweet one-shots and well-drawn.