Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

<em>Fujoshi</em> Spaces in Mexico City

2020; University of Minnesota Press; Volume: 13; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5749/mech.13.1.0131

2152-6648

López Lopez,

Japanese History and Culture

Fujoshi Spaces in Mexico City Mirna Montserrat Díaz López (bio) Anime first began to take root in Mexico, as elsewhere in Latin America, in the 1970s, with series such as Candy Candy and Princessa Caballero (Ribon no kishi; Princess Knight) broadcast on television, followed in subsequent decades by Mazinger Z, Ranma 1/2, and Dragon Ball. The popularity of these anime helped lead to the import of manga, the establishment of a local "Latinized" otaku culture, and new fan practices, including cosplay.1 BL (boys love), generally called "yaoi" by fans in Mexico, arrived in Mexico in the 1990s, according to fans I interviewed. These fans were part of a new fandom in Mexico, whose members, borrowing from Japanese BL fans, would come to call themselves "fujoshi." In spite of persistently strong homophobia in Mexico, BL fandom has continued to expand since that time, as have spaces proffering media and goods that appeal to fujoshi. As elsewhere, Mexican fujoshi spaces are primarily online. One fujoshi with whom I spoke said, "The internet opened the door allowing you to see people who like similar things to you, sharing your stories [with each other]." Fujoshi in Mexico find and communicate with one another on online forums, blogs, and even sites like YouTube, a platform that has long played a big role in this sphere. There are, however, an increasing number of physical spaces in larger cities in Mexico in which fujoshi can find yaoi manga and other goods that appeal to their tastes. Below, I introduce and contrast such spaces, including shops for fans of manga, anime, and games, and a specifically yaoi-themed fan event. In so doing, I draw on interviews I conducted (in Spanish) with twelve fujoshi in Mexico City in February 2018 as well as my own experiences as a member of this community, including visiting these spaces as a fan and participant observer. "Friki" Spaces as Fujoshi Spaces? To date, Mexico has no stores specifically dedicated to selling yaoi. Nevertheless, it has become easier in recent years to find yaoi manga and other media and goods in shops catering to friki, a Spanish word derived from the English "freaky." While the word means geek, like otaku, which also has currency [End Page 131] among Spanish-speaking fans, friki is often used to describe passionate fans of anime, manga, and so forth. While there are a number of such shops in the city, there are three that figure most prominently in the fujoshi scene in Mexico City: Frikiplaza, Pikashop, and Fan Center Freak. These large shopping centers, located adjacent to one another in the city's Centro neighborhood, each contain one to two dozen specialty shops, collectively offering a huge number of friki-related goods and other Asian cultural products. Here I would like to consider the extent to which the first two function as fujoshi spaces. Frikiplaza was established in 2003 and now has over a dozen branches around Mexico from Tijuana to the Yucatan Peninsula. Spread across five floors are shops selling tech-related goods, video game and anime/manga character goods and the games and anime themselves (Figure 1), clothing, cards for role-playing games and collecting, Korean make-up and other goods, manga, and Asian magazines featuring popular idols. There is also an Asian food court on the third floor and a game center on the fourth. Frikiplaza's larger rival, Pikashop, was established in 2012 across the street. This five-story shopping center, whose name is borrowed from the Pokémon character Pikachu, has a similar collection of stores but also contains shops for cosplay goods as well as more manga shops than Frikiplaza. Both centers see a great deal of activity when they hold events. And while—or perhaps because—Pikashop is larger, based on my observations, I believe that sellers and customers interact more with one another in that space. Although shops at both centers sell yaoi manga and other goods and are influenced by this fandom (Figures 1 and 2), as suggested above, there is no yaoi-focused shop in either, and the owners even at shops that sell yaoi seem to know very little about the genre...