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yaoi is a manga that focuses on the sexual aspect between two boys, whereas shounen ai is focusing more on the romantic side between them. the lines have been slightly blurred nowadays, so most just say if there's straight out sex (like dick showing) it's yaoi. and if there's not sex/not direct sex (is mentioned but not actual visible or not a main part of the story) it's shounen ai. lmao correct me if i'm wrong
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Keep in mind that the shounen-ai and yaoi designations are outdated terms that are continually used in this community, but in Japan, it all falls under the BL (Boy Love) category. And it makes more sense to put it under the umbrella category of BL because there is absolutely no clear delineation separating shounen-ai and yaoi content anyway. For instance, take Castle Mango where there is a lot of heavy sexual tension but very little in sexual scenes. They eventually have sex, even if its brief, and not as explicit as say, Harada or Zaria, so does that make it shounen ai or yaoi? Are we seriously going to define a series by how much explicit sex is depicted?
It's all romance between two male characters sometimes involving very explicit sexual content. Trying to rank and categorise series based on the degree of sexual content seems almost insulting to the manga-ka and his/her work.
But technically most of the answers have been correct in the context of how the terms are used in the BL reading community, but honestly, I think we should all make an effort to stop using yaoi and shounen-ai designations. If manga-ka in Japan don't see it that way, neither should we.
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No, not really. shounen-ai can have sex scenes too, but it's easy to tell if it's shounen-ai if they do cut scenes. my best example of shounen-ai sex http://www.mangago.zone/read-manga/slow_starter_ichikawa_kei/mf/v02/c011/2/ also, vassalord.
Actually yhe best way to know if a manga is shounen-ai or yaoi is WHICH MAGAZINE it got published. It's the same for josei and shounen. Fans just conveniently stick whatever "genre" they think a manga is but this is the real meaning of those terms.
I tried looking it up on google but all I got were posts about how yaoi and yuri is disgusting... ┗( T v T )┛