Gei komikku ゲイコミック, "gay comics" ( komikku is bara comics in Japan. The word douseiai-sha 同性愛者, "homosexual person," is used when some formality is required. Another word for "gay" is homo ホモ, but this one can be considered offensive for some. You can't call yourself a " bara" neither in English nor in Japanese if you want to say you're gay. I get it." So the original Japanese has the cause while the loaned term in English has only the effect.Īlthough bara refers to gay fiction, it doesn't mean "gay" itself. So the characters of bara manga are automatically manly looking because that's what its audience wants.īara and were like: "oh, okay, bara is gay porn with manly men. Since Japanese bara is by definition gay porn for gay men, it contains what those gay men would like to see in their gay porn, which is, guess what: men. We can see above that western bara is a lot more complex than Japanese bara, it takes some more text to describe, but that has a pretty good reason. In Japan, bara 薔薇 means a genre of gay fiction which is made by gays for gays and often featuring gay sex. That is,doesn't feature effeminate, androgynous-looking male characters that are more common around anime. In the west,means a genre of hentai 変態, drawn, manga and anime porn, which is gay, includes sex scenes featuring guys, and which features strong-looking characters, with tons of muscle, sometimes, overweight characters, and sometimes hairy characters. But what does bara mean in Japanese? Where does the meaning of the word bara come from?ĭefinition bara means a genre of bara doesn't feature effeminate, androgynous-looking male characters that are more common around anime. This word refers to a genre of gay drawn porn.