Anyone who is a fan of hardcore bara, will know the name Gengoroh Tegame. He is an openly gay homo erotic artist. I will tell you right now, his work will not be for everyone, in fact I can guarantee a lot of yaoi fans will hate it due to it’s violent content, but his work is not made for yaoi fans. Bara is a genre of homo erotic art that is made for gay men and as such the subject matter in these works are far different than that which is found within the yaoi genre. Gone is the female fantasy of pretty boys and in is big burly hyper masculine men.
Tagame’s artistic career started back in 1982 while he was a student at Tarma Art University but it would not be until 1986 that he took on the pen name Gengoroh Tagame. His art style has a virile masculinity to it. Hardcore BDSM is a common theme within his work. Men bound, beaten, humiliated and even more. It is not uncommon to see guro levels of violence in his work and this will be off putting to many. But the way he creates his stories will pull you into his world, like any true story teller. His works are raw primal fantasy and the passion for his work comes out in it.
He is an artist who does what he loves and I can very much admire any artist who has the courage to live there life that way. If I had to pick a favourite of his work, well that would probably go to one of his more recent works “My Brother’s Husband”. This recent manga is a big change from his previous work in that it does not contain any hardcore material but instead explores gay rights, stereotypes and attitudes towards homosexuality it Japan. If you want a good starting point for his more hardcore work, well I would perhaps suggest one of his short stories “The Winter Fisherman Lodge” which has a young gay man working as a sort of live in maid for a burly old fisherman for the winter. It is a story that though very hardcore also has a very sweet heart to it.
I will be writing more about My Brother’s Husband later on this month and as I was doing research for that piece I ended up learning a lot about the author behind it which is what inspired me to write this post. I hope you enjoyed this post!
Yaoi Playground 
Ooh this was an interesting read and I can’t wait for your post on ‘my brother’s husband’! My first encounter with Tegame manga was one of his very intense ones so when I picked up my brother’s husband I almost couldn’t believe he was the mangaka, it’s so so different to his usual stuff!
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It came through, I have to approve comments due to trolls
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Ah awesome! I do the same, thankfully not too many troll comments but a heck of a lot of spam!
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When I saw the pic, I thought for a moment that it was two Mike Haggar’s from the Final Fight games. I’d heard of My Brother’s Husband, but i’m not as familiar with the artist in general, so this was an interesting read.
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If you don’t mind hardcore content his work is quite amazing
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I’m not usually put off by hardcore stuff, though I do find that I have to be in the right mood to enjoy it.
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Yeah I can understand that, depending on my own mood depends on what kind of content I look up myself
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