The Boys' Love genre (BL) is the sort of genre that gets a lot of mixed reactions. Those who enjoy the genre will often defend it to the death, while those who don't will find any excuse to rail against it. It tends to sit in an interesting area of the cultural zeitgeist as the genre has spread from Japan. The genre has its roots in stories stretching all the way back to the Meiji Era, but came into its own more well known form around the 1970s. While LGBTQ stories are becoming more mainstream, the genre of BL specifically has been around, hiding in the corners of popular culture since the rise of anime in the Western world. Stories like Gravitation (1996) were some of the first to make it to America specifically and exposed people to the established tropes of the time, where sex was the main focus of character development.