I have been feeling slightly saddened recently in noticing that yuri/shoujo-ai/GL series get far less feedback overall (in terms of votes/comments/reviews) on Baka-Updates than manga in the other demographics. Does that mean that yuri is the least popular demographic?

I just wanted to check what people think...

I also welcome ideas about why or why not yuri is the least popular. Like, what are the reasons for it in either case...

Btw, I did not include hentai in my list of major demographics because I wanted to talk about the general readership (regardless of age, not just those old enough to read pr0nz), and hentai skews the statistics in a weird way. Plus I don't think that the yuri in most hentai (with a few exceptions) is real yuri, in the sense that it's more often just eye-candy for straight guys and less about any kind of actual bond between two women. Even in explicit non-hentai yuri, the focus is still on the female-female relationship, and the characters are way more realistic than hentai characters would be. So I hardly ever think that hentai yuri counts as real yuri... But I can really appreciate how others might feel differently.

So what DO people think about that? Should I have included hentai as a major demographic? Would that change the result for yuri's popularity, and it would it be a fair/justified change? (As in, is hentai yuri real yuri or not?)

I welcome your feedback. 🙂

Hmmm... if you're talking about relationship-wise, yeah... I doubt most hentai yuri really counts. If it's the recognition of sexual feelings in fxf, sometimes... I think that hentai yuri can be rather passionate and so forth. After all, everyone has different desires and feelings during sex and hentai often does a good job recognising those whereas many sex scenes(m/f, f/f, excluding m/m, etc.) in most non-hentai series often come across as "mannequin sex". And I don't really wanna admit it but hentai yuri can be somewhat arousing for me sometimes whereas josei yuri sexual scenes often are "meh". 😮 (And oh one thing.. I am straight.)

I think the problems regarding popularity of yuri(non-hentai yuri) are that:

a) lots of women/girls probably find girls' love kinda icky. Besides social/gender norms in various societies that're Western/Westernized(influenced by Christianity or Victorian values), there's also the fact that yuri often can get a little explicit. And there're lots of women who'd rather die than look at their own bodies, and since yuri often... connects you with 1 of the characters, I think that could get awkward since it's like being really in love with the other woman and doing XXXX to her or be the one who's receiving love and sex. ^^;; Hence why most straight females stay far away from yuri/shoujo-ai.

b) good yuri is hard to find

Most of the yuri that's been scanlated is either cutesy wutsy shoujo-ai/yuri or hentai yuri. I don't mind either yet at times, I crave for something deeper/far more serious. Hence why, those who want deeper stuff find themselves frustrated or stymied. Also, a fair bit of serious yuri that's supposedly deep tends to rely on annoying cliches: like all men are women haters, women must be raped by men in order to turn lesbian, etc., etc.

c) flowery yuri can scare people off.

Oh and then, there's the flowery type of yuri. You know... probably the old-school style of art where everything is all sparkly, sparkly and even more sparkly. And everyone wears ultra-flowery/ultra-girly kinda clothing and lingerie. There's some of this stuff floating around, so I won't be surprised if some people really got scared off yuri. 🤣

d) josei yuri is in kanji(no furi)
There aren't a lot of josei series being translated and I'll tell you why: lack of furi and josei often has a lot of text, too. In contrast, a good majority of genres without furi like seinen, BL, etc. have far less text.

And on a sidenote: I've to actually state that if not for BL, I would've had a very hard time accepting yuri relationships(romantic, platonic or otherwise). And if not for hentai, I'd have a hard time accepting seeing 2 women in actual sex scenes. ^^;;

Speaking of popularity, real authentic sci-fi is not too popular either(look at the amount of "conspiracy stuff/ESP/super powers/etc." = sci-fi series floating around and look at the amount of entries under "hard science fiction". Same for real authentic psychology that isn't based upon some definition from some psychology textbook/media but upon characters crafted to feel really human. That's if you treat yuri as a category, for example.

But in terms of demographics, perhaps relationship-based yuri really is the least popular.

Why exclude Hentai? Actually, you're always discriminator to Hentai (and Ecchi). >.>

Anywho, shouldn't the same apply then for Yaoi PWPs? They shouldn't be included either then, and I'm sure there are a lot of them too. :/ Also, as far as least popular demographics go, I vote for Josei. There's rarely any of it.

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I completely agree that yaoi PWPs are a kind of hentai, but they don't have yuri in them, so I felt they wouldn't affect this poll... 😀

I'm fascinated by the claim that josei is the least popular... That might be right, actually, now that I think about it. Does anyone have statistics on-hand about which demographic has the most serializations dedicated to it? That's generally a good indicator of overall popularity... For example, I would think that shounen is the most popular demographic, because it has the greatest regular readership and the most number of magazines/serializations devoted to it (like Shonen Jump). If there were some statistics about the number of mags/serials per demographic, that would help us clear this issue up...

I'll try finding some, but if anyone's got figures they can quote, please do oblige. 🙂

If you look at the genre page, it shows how many series each genre/demographic has. Of course that's limited to what's in the database. Nonetheless yuri by far has the least number of series listed whether it's because there really aren't that many or people aren't interested enough to find them and enter them here.
You can also look here for a listing of magazines for each demographic. You'll notice there is only a few for yuri.
Using genre search I found that there are more josei series than yuri series that are being scanlated. I also checked the "looking for" and yaoi/yuri forums and it looks like there are less search requests and topics about yuri than any other demographic.
So based on that yuri may very well be the least popular demographic.
I myself tend to stay away from yuri for the very reasons VampireBanana listed.

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Quote from VampireBanana

d) josei yuri is in kanji(no furi)
There aren't a lot of josei series being translated and I'll tell you why: lack of furi and josei often has a lot of text, too. In contrast, a good majority of genres without furi like seinen, BL, etc. have far less text.

I find this unlikely as a reason. I have read a lot of josei yuri, and rarely are they particularly difficult to read or translate in comparison to yuri works in other genres. While that may be a general trend in josei, it's not apparent here.
I think it's more that people don't care for the art or aren't interested in "that boring/depressing feminist stuff." Or the particular josei yuri works they've found haven't appealed to them enough to translate them.

Every yuri fan has their own tastes. I'm more interested in translating a variety of good yuri works than in focusing solely on josei yuri, and difficulty has nothing to do with that. I would love to see more good josei yuri works from companies like ALC, though.

Quote from mizuno_youko

Quote from VampireBanana

d) josei yuri is in kanji(no furi)
There aren't a lot of josei series being translated and I'll tell you why: lack of furi and josei often has a lot of text, too. In contrast, a good majority of genres without furi like seinen, BL, etc. have far less text.

I find this unlikely as a reason. I have read a lot of josei yuri, and rarely are they particularly difficult to read or translate in comparison to yuri works in other genres. While that may be a general trend in josei, it's not apparent here.
I think it's more that people don't care for the art or aren't interested in "that boring/depressing feminist stuff." Or the particular josei yuri works they've found haven't appealed to them enough to translate them.

Every yuri fan has their own tastes. I'm more interested in translating a variety of good yuri works than in focusing solely on josei yuri, and difficulty has nothing to do with that. I would love to see more good josei yuri works from companies like ALC, though.

Errr...I wasn't talking about "josei yuri" alone. 🙂 I meant josei(overall demographics) in comparison to seinen and other types of works with kanji(without furi). >>;; Well, at least that's what some tlers were complaining, the last time I heard. But that doesn't mean certain seinen/BL/etc. can't be wordy. My mistake for being very vague. -__-;;

Also, there's some josei series whereby relations between females is very implicitly done and you can't tell there's actually even any "romantic relations" present, no? As in: almost shoujo-ai, no yuri. Because so little josei is being tled, doesn't stuff like that get missed out on?

And I do agree that every yuri fan probably has their own taste.

I'm sure both hentai yuri and the platonic kind are more popular than bara.

Quote from VampireBanana

Errr...I wasn't talking about "josei yuri" alone. 🙂 I meant josei(overall demographics) in comparison to seinen and other types of works with kanji(without furi). >>;; Well, at least that's what some tlers were complaining, the last time I heard. But that doesn't mean certain seinen/BL/etc. can't be wordy. My mistake for being very vague. -__-;;

Right--I'm not arguing that it couldn't be a trend in general. I just don't think it has much to do with yuri in particular.

Also, there's some josei series whereby relations between females is very implicitly done and you can't tell there's actually even any "romantic relations" present, no? As in: almost shoujo-ai, no yuri. Because so little josei is being tled, doesn't stuff like that get missed out on?

You mean subtext rather than canon? Yuri fans/blogs tend to be all over that in addition to the canon stuff, but it's certainly possible that a number of series have been overlooked. Depending on how blatant the subtext is, I'm not sure I would call them "yuri" manga in any case, though, or look to them when determining the popularity of yuri in general. Different measuring sticks, I guess. 🙂

Quote from mizuno_youko

Right--I'm not arguing that it couldn't be a trend in general. I just don't think it has much to do with yuri in particular.

Hmmm... good point. I guess I was going along with the thinking that "since yuri is often a subtext of josei, so since josei is scanlated far less than most other genres/demographics, soo... yuri/shoujo-ai often suffers from this". But then again, maybe not. =/ 'Cos I forgot that: yuri/shoujo-ai is found in shoujo, josei, seinen, shounen and even ... other various "non-demographic specific" genres. ^^;; Though, relationship-based yuri/shoujo-ai seems far more endemic to josei but maybe not.

You mean subtext rather than canon? Yuri fans/blogs tend to be all over that in addition to the canon stuff, but it's certainly possible that a number of series have been overlooked. Depending on how blatant the subtext is, I'm not sure I would call them "yuri" manga in any case, though, or look to them when determining the popularity of yuri in general. Different measuring sticks, I guess. 🙂

Ahhh by canon, I assume you mean "official" and subtext as "not announced officially", eh. Hmmm... I don't always really "read into" that kinda stuff though and simply just enjoy stuff as it is, but yes... I guess I sometimes wonder whether there's anything else like some "crush or some really understated romance vibes". Plus, I kept thinking of it as "shoujo-ai" when in actuality, that refers to love between err... underaged females. 🤣

You are right when you mean "different measuring sticks". 😛

Yuri and yaoi aren't demographics, but genres, as I understand.
Most scanlated yaoi is of the shoujo demographic, while most yuri is of the seinen demographic.
Let us disregard exceptions.

About its popularity...
Maybe.
It's scanlated in a much lesser scale.

About the josei...
Let's see..
Overall josei in the database is 47 pages (showing 50 results).
Scanlated josei in the database is 8 pages.

Yuri:
Overall yuri in the database is 11 pages.
Scanlated yuri is 9 pages. 5 without hentai.

You can go on like this, checking shoujo ai, excluding dj and so on.

I don't know what to tell you.
Personally, I would LOVE to see more GL in general.
More girl x girl action and better chances to find good stories.
I have no idea how things are in Japan, but MU is a rather wide database...
Seems yuri isn't very popular. A shame.

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Yes, I also forgot(in terms of consumers/purchasers in Japan): there're gay men who read Boys' Love and straight women who read Girls' Love/Yuri. Hell, there may be straight men who read Boys' Love and it's not like... people always openly discuss their reading habits in public! 🤣

After all, hasn't there lately been a trend of Yaoi magazines which publish manga by gay authors and which are read by both women and men. 😕

Hell no!

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Quote from VampireBanana

Yes, I also forgot(in terms of consumers/purchasers in Japan): there're gay men who read Boys' Love and straight women who read Girls' Love/Yuri. Hell, there may be straight men who read Boys' Love and it's not like... people always openly discuss their reading habits in public! 🤣

After all, hasn't there lately been a trend of Yaoi magazines which publish manga by gay authors and which are read by both women and men. 😕

Huh, haven't heard of that.
If you're talking about gei-comi, it came about around the same time that BL did.

Anyway, I don't really think yuri is the least popular genre.
After all, it's pretty much the only genre that genuinely appeals to both males and females and has separate magazines and genre conventions for each.