Are all yaoi and yuri and hentai porn?
Yes or No?
With reasons.

in english manga term, hentai is porn
yaoi and yuri are mostly porn, however since japanese dont really differentiate between hardcore and just little kissing, sometimes what tagged as yaoi or yuri here maybe just shounen ai and shoujo ai. but yeah, mostly there will be some genital rubbing.

How to differentiate whether a yaoi/yuri is porn or not?

If you consider porn as having sex, regardless of whether it's softcore or hardcore, then yes. Yaoi and Yuri will contain sex.

If you just want homosexual relationships, search on shoujo ai and shounen ai. However, there may be some cases where it's really softcore and still classified as shoujo/shounen ai.

I've never really understood the English interpretations of Japanese terms, but I have known for quite a while know that hentai refers to erotic manga/anime. This yaoi/shounen-ai stuff is on the other hand is new to me.

Hentai refers to either metamorphosis or to a perversion (in a negative way). You can also call any perverted creep hentai.

Yaoi is a genre of homosexual theme (male x male), whether pornographic or not.

Yuri is the same (female x female).

A loan word "girl's love" (ガールズラブ) is a synonym for yuri.

Shoujo-ai is different from both "yuri" and "girl's love". Basically shoujo-ai refers to an older person of either gender being attracted to younger girls. I have heard it being used in reference to yuri manga though, but it doesn't seem very common.

Shounen-ai is a little different kind of term than shoujo-ai. Shounen-ai refers to love between an adult male and a younger boy. It makes me think of those Chinese or Greek paintings with an old man touching a young boy.

So to your original question: no, yaoi and yuri are not always porn and hentai has no relation to porn. As for English usage of hentai, yes it's always porn as it refers to pornographic manga/anime. As for English usage of yaoi and yuri, I'm not sure but it seems they mean pornographic works and shounen-/shoujo-ai refer to their non-pornographic equivalents.

And for your second question "how to differentiate whether yaoi/yuri is porn or not", it's very simple: if it has erotic content it is, if it doesn't it's not. Not really a matter of opinion or philosophical debate. If it's porn it's porn, if it's simple romance story without erotic scenes—it's not porn.

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sex does not equal porn!
Not all yaoi and yuri are porn. As to how to differentiate, I don't have any special criteria, but you can usually tell if you're reading/watching porn of something else.->When there is a story, when the sex isn't meaningless smut/actually moves along the plot, when the characters are real, well-written,etc.

I guess when you don't feel like you're reading porn, then it probably isn't porn.


I disagree. Erotic content does not equal porn!

Last edited by Pebble_ at 9:52 am, Nov 19 2013

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Hentai means pervert(ed) and generally refers to explicit material. You could also say ecchi, which is derived from the pronunciation for the letter "H" in hentai. I have generally thought of ecchi as the less porn-ish of the two, with only panty shots and other slips in nudity rather than the full sex scenes that you see in hentai.

Yaoi stands for yamanashi, ochinashi, iminashi (no climax, no resolution, no meaning). Yaoi is meant to be a gay relationship that has more emphasis on smut than on storyline. Yuri is the female version of this, but isn't always considered to be smut.

Shounen ai (aka BL) and shoujo ai are generally thought of as the more romantic option. They focus on the love between the characters rather than the sexual nature of the relationship, so they are almost always G to PG-15.

The line between smut and romance is often blurred, so there are many manga listed as both. Also, many refer to any gay/lesbian relationship to be Yaoi/Yuri without meaning for it to be considered sexual, so the misinterpretation continues.

These are the primary meanings to English speakers, though the words may have a different interpretation by native speakers.

It's interesting to see what the terms mean in Japanese, because the way they are used in English (as I've been exposed to on this website) seems completely different. I think the way these terms are used on this site are as follows:

Girl's Love (GL): female x female relationship
Yuri: a female x female relationship with explicit sexual content
Shoujo-ai: a female x female relationship without explicit sexual content
Boy's Love: male x male relationship
Yaoi:male x male relationship with explicit sexual content
Shounen-ai:male x male relationship without explicit sexual content

@godlover from the above generalizations you can kind of make you're own assumptions of what yuri and yaoi are. If you think that any story with explicit sexual content is porn (whether its a manga with sex in every chapter, or just a short scene at the end of the series), then yaoi and yuri are porn.

Lots of people differentiate yaoi and yuri from porn and hentai because yaoi and yuri usually have more of a storyline than hentai. This is why there is yaoi smut and yuri smut, as designations for yaoi and yuri manga that are less about the story and more about the sex.

Also, I think the purposes of hentai and yaoi/yuri are different. It's pretty clear with hentai that the manga is meant to be used for its pornographic elements (aka fapping). With yaoi and yuri, while it is possible to use the sex scenes for these purposes, it doesn't seem to be the main purpose of these manga. Which is what leads to the categorization of some manga as yaoi hentai or yuri hentai when they are specifically designed to be used as porn.

So basically, a long-winded answer for it's up to each reader to decide whether they consider these porn or not

Last edited by KaoriNite at 11:39 pm, Nov 19 2013

The answer is no. Because as stated, the terms Yuri and yaoi are complicated when introduced into western terminology and is a broader concept in Japan; the rundown is usually any homosexual relationship whether sexualized or not.

Hentai manga is drawn with the intent on being pornographic and its focus is to be arousing material. An H-manga can contain yuri/yaoi, but the same cannot be said of the reverse. Though blah blah perspective herp derp smut blah blah the pages are 90% sex, the point is - it isn't CLASSIFIED as a hentai unless its purpose is show graphic sex.

I think there's quite a bit of male-oriented yaoi ero-manga which doesn't much differ from other male-oriented stuff otherwise. The genre is much different from female-oriented yaoi with no explicit details in erotic scenes.

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That would be bara. On this page it goes under yaoi but it has a different purpose as well as different origins and a very distinctive style (since it's meant to please men instead of women)... meaning that bara is not really some sort of subcategory of yaoi but more like something completely different.
There is very explicit yaoi for females though (can be just as explicit as bara) with the more "delicate" art style and whatnot.

...what was I going to say...? Well, I do see the yaoi manga that have sex scenes in every chapter without even trying to build up a story as porn. Not that it's a bad thing. But the ones that only have one erotic scene at the end or very few throughout a longer story would definitely not classify as porn.

You're not going to say a 2 hour movie is porn when it has one 2 minute sex scene either, are you?

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Normally, if it's porn yaoi/yuri then it would be tagged both yaoi/yuri and hentai in it's genre. also most of the time porn really doesn't have much plot.

Really? I'm asking this seriously as I'm not very informed in this area. I've only ever heard that term in yaoi-related material but I've always just thought of it as a counter-word for yuri (百合, lily)—as bara (薔薇) = rose.

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I would say not always. Bara is male-on-male manga that was drawn by gay men, for gay men. It features very muscular men. An example would be Fire Code. There is also male-on-male manga that was drawn by straight men for straight men. These are trap manga, where the boys are very feminine and often dressed in girl's clothing. An example would be My Bride Has Sprouted a Penis.. Both of these are yaoi hentai, but for male audiences.

Thanks. Now that you mention it, it makes sense. I never really thought about it. Again I learned something completely pointless on a subject I've no interest in. Well, I asked for it.

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