Zetsuai 1989 is a Japanese yaoi manga known for its melodramatic, almost operatic plot, its "semi-insane characters", and for the controversial style of its artwork. The word "Zetsu-ai" is a compound created by Minami Ozaki which has been translated as "desperate love". Ozaki's preferred English translation is "Everlasting Love". Many western yaoi fans got their introduction to the genre through this series, which defined the genre for them.
Cover of the Japanese VHS release of the Zetsuai 1989 OVA
Yaoi, also known as boys' love and its abbreviation BL , is a genre of fictional media originating in Japan that features homoerotic relationships between male characters. It is typically created by women for women and is thus distinct from bara, a genre of homoerotic media marketed to gay men, though yaoi does also attract a male audience and can be produced by male creators. Yaoi spans a wide range of media, including manga, anime, drama CDs, novels, video games, television series, films, and fan works. While "yaoi" is commonly used in the west as an umbrella term for Japanese-influenced media with male-male relationships, "boys' love" and "BL" are the generic terms for this kind of media in Japan and much of Asia.
Mari Mori, whose tanbi novels laid the foundation for many of the common genre tropes of shōnen-ai and yaoi
The manga artist group Clamp, whose works were among the first yaoi-influenced media to be encountered by Western audiences
Otome Road in Ikebukuro became a major cultural destination for yaoi fandom in the 2000s.
Artwork depicting a seme (top) and uke (bottom) couple