Boys’ Love, or BL, has been thriving within Asia for many years, without much spread outside the region – but that might be slowly changing.
While the Boys’ Love category of queer media has typically been used for Asian productions, with a wide selection from countries such as Japan’s ‘Cherry Magic’ (30歳まで童貞だと魔法使いになれるらしい), South Korea’s ‘Semantic Error’ (시맨틱 에러), Thailand’s ‘Bad Buddy’ (แค่เพื่อนครับเพื่อน), and the Philippines’ ‘Gameboys’, among countless others, queer media from other regions, such as the UK’s Heartstopper and Sweden’s Young Royals typically have not used the label of BL. This is beginning to change, however, with ‘Ships in the Night’, a series from New Zealand, or Aotearoa in the native Māori language, which proudly presents itself as “Aotearoa’s first BL series.” Now, you may be wondering: what can viewers expect from Ships in the Night?
