What is Yuri?
Yuri (百合 – Lily), also commonly referred as Girl’s Love (GL), is a genre in manga, anime, and other Japanese media which features romance between women.
History
The term originates from Barazoku (translates to ‘Rose Tribe” in English), a magazine primarily targetted towards gay men, in a column titled Yurizoku no Heya (translates to “Lily Tribe’s Room” in English”)which references letters from the publication’s female readers. Though the column was very short-lived, other publications started to run similar columns with “Yuri” in the title.
As time went on, the term Yuri was used in dojinshi circles for works that revolve around the romance between women.
Modern Use
In Japan, Yuri is used as a base genre of the attraction between women. This includes but isn’t exclusive to sexual relationships. However, in the west, Yuri is more often used as a genre for works portraying a sexual relationship between women. Incidentally, in the west, many works with non-sexual relationships are categorized as shojou-ai, which is not commonly used in Japan.
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