In non-Japanese contexts, bara is used to describe a wide breadth of Japanese and Japanese-inspired gay erotic media, including illustrations published in early Japanese gay men’s magazines, western fan art, and gay pornography featuring human actors. The use of (muscle) bara (hentai) as an umbrella term to describe gay Japanese comic art is largely a non-Japanese phenomenon, and its use is not universally accepted by creators of gay manga. While bara is typically pornographic, the genre has also depicted romantic and autobiographical subject material, as it acknowledges the varied reactions to homosexuality in modern Japan. Bara can vary in visual style and plot, but typically features masculine men with varying degrees of muscle, body fat, and body hair, akin to bear or bodybuilding culture. The genre focuses on male same-sex love, as created primarily by gay men for a gay male audience.
Muscle Bara (Hentai) is a colloquialism for a genre of Japanese art and media known within Japan as gay manga or gei komi. Muscle Bara Hentai is the parent topic of bara hentai.
