Entering the elegant and immaculate Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport, I’m a little anxious and can’t help but wonder exactly how explicit YaoiCon, an 18+ convention, can be. If I were to sum YaoiCon up in one photo, it would basically be the above. Essentially, it’s a three-day event celebrating all that is yaoi and attractive men, often wearing little to no clothing.
At the guest of honor panel, yaoi manga artist Takanaga Hinako recounts two tales about rushing to turn in her manuscripts by their deadlines. One involves discreetly trying to draw sex scenes on a train heading to the publishing company, which had her and her assistants puking after the train ride and the other about her trying to bike to a train station to deliver her manuscript, only to get hit by a car. When she called the publishing company to explain the manuscript delay, her editor thought she was making excuses and didn’t believe that she was actually getting transported to the hospital in an ambulance.
What I learn from Takanaga-sensei’s stories is that yaoi is serious business. Plus, there seems to be a high demand for it, which explains the large crowd of attendees, some who come from as far as Europe, listening intently to her tales. And so, here she is back at YaoiCon for the third time, excited to interact with her fans and enjoy the convention, while I’m here at YaoiCon for the first time to experience as much of the event as I can in three hours.



Photos by Tina Quach