Yumemisama sent in this wonderful clarification on the categorization of romantic/sexual anime/manga terms. I couldn't bear to chop it up or cut it down, so here it is in its entirety:


I think I might be able to clarify some of the terms that come from the anime fandom. Specifially "lemon," "shounen ai," "yaoi," and "yuri."

"Lemon" comes from the title of an anime called Cream Lemon, which is PWP in animated form. As far as I am aware, "lemon" refers and has always referred to any kind of explicit NC-17 sex in a story, and not specifically to F/F. Other shades commonly used in anime fandom are

  • "lime," denoting a tasteful seduction and fade-to-black or simply the R-rated version of the sex scene,
  • "lemonade," denoting a WAFFy lemon fic, and
  • "citrus" or "citrusy," indicating a strongly erotic tone without necessarily including graphic sex.
"Orange" sometimes pops up to describe stories involving just necking, but most authors don't bother.

"Shounen ai" comes from two legitimate Japanese words. "Shounen" is composed of the characters for "young" and "boy" and while in every day speech it can be used to refer to actual children, in animedom it generally means a teenage boy who isn't yet mature enough to rate the title of man. (Compare "bishounen," [bi] = beautiful + [shou] = youth + [nen] = boy, used to describe those willowy, big-eyed, feminine types that so widely populate the world of anime and manga.) "Ai" is the general word for love (romantic love is specifically designated by a different character, "koi").

Thus "shounen ai" is sweet, WAFFy, generally non-graphic romance between two guys. There is a female analogue, "shoujo ai," which is not used a whole lot, because frankly, shounen ai is a legitimate and thriving genre in Japanese manga, whereas when the girls pair off it's generally for fan-drawn pornographic sex. ^^;;;

"Yaoi" is the Japanese equivalent of an acronym. It is a combination of the first characters of the words in the phrase "yama nasi, ochi nashi, imi nashi," which roughly translates to "no climax, no plot, no point." Although the phrase sounds like it could translate to pretty much any PWP in existence, "yaoi" is used exclusively for graphic male/male sex. Usually this is in fan-drawn manga (called "doujinshi," these can feature established characters owned by established authors, or can feature the artist's ("doujinka"'s) own inventions), but there are a few mainstream-type series that are yaoi in their own right. "Yaoi" can be used as a noun, in reference to a genre, or as an adjective, to describe a piece of writing.

The origins of "yuri" are unfortunately lost to the mists of time, i.e., no one I've ever asked, Japanese or not, can tell me. The two most common theories are that it's either from the name of the first girl that most of these types of stories centered around (Yuri is a girl's name in Japanese) or that it comes from the common use of lilies as backdrop in these sorts of romances ("yuri" is also the word for lily). "Yuri" refers to a female/female relationship, but usage in regards to graphic sex or not is not as rigidly constrained as that of "yaoi." "Yuri" can cover ground equivalent to that described by both "shounen ai" and "yaoi," although these sorts of stories are SO much less common than the yaoi type (at least in anime fandom) it's difficult to tell.

I don't know if you can use all that, but I always thought too much information is often better than too little -- at least, in regards to etymology. ^_^

-- Yumemisama, The Little Dreamgazer