I just wanted to post this without the intention of being annoying or obnoxious. ^^; Everyone always says 'girls like shounen-ai/yaoi, boys like ...' well, het relationships or yuri or whatever. And of course shounen-ai is gay oriented stuff. But besides straight people enjoying their own genre/theme/'whatever it's called' of anime, gay people like the appropriate stuff too. I mean I like it all, whether it?s about girls or boys, but my reasons may differ. I'm a gay male and I'm admittedly obsessed with cute shounen-ai/yaoi pairings. (Waya x Hikaru anyone? ^_^) Real gay anime fans seem to be a rarity on boards I've been to... but I just wanted to say for everyone who doesn't consider it (from what I've read, at least Dagger IX1 does) there are [I]real [/I] gay fans! We're here too! *waves arms around* Other than rabid fangirls! (But I love you rabid fangirls, where would we be without you? ^^)
And honestly, I loved general anime going into it. I think years and years ago the first thing I watched was the dub of Sailor Moon. That was my intro to anime. Heck, I even liked Pokemon. It's not like I got into anime because I knew yaoi stuff existed. Discovering shounen-ai/yaoi/yuri... (ugh, I'm gonna abbreviate that to "gay stuff") was just a wicked bonus. I remember when I was younger, I accidentally discovered a shounen-ai manga, and I was blown away that something like that existed. And I found it immensely difficult to find anything else like it, or anyone else that had ever heard of the word "yaoi" (maybe my search engine skills were lacking, but I couldn't find a dang thing!) I'm extremely happy that anime has sort of evolved (and is still doing so), including more gay themes and relationships. Sure, I'd love for more anime like Gravitation to appear, but as long as anime like Kyou Kara Maou shows up, I'm happy! And of course, I'm not completely one-sided either. One of my favorite anime of all time is Naruto, which is extremely action-based. I don't [I]need [/I] the shounen-ai, I just enjoy it. (A lot ^^; ) And of course, things would be quite a bit less exciting for me if it never existed.