Brain Dump: Fujo Bait in D.Gray-Man

And this is fascinating to me for two reasons; obviously Shounen Jump moving it out of their weeklies directly after we have all these love confessions in what could be taken as a very problematic ship.

[Aside: I’m sure someone out there is like “neither meant this romantically” and I don’t dismiss that entirely but I can imagine an editor sitting like. Allen is very passionate about this in a way that does not feel in line with the platonic/familial relationship we expected.]

But the other reason is in relation to this poster and the following comment from Hoshino;

The marketing side of D.Gray-Man had a very interesting play where they caught on in what was almost like a boom of Marketing By Yaoi. I need to read more into this, but I know that Tadashi Satomi of Persona 2 once gave an interview about the reason for Jun being gay (and Tatsuya being bi) in Persona 2 was because the industry had noticed the marketability of yaoi and there was the suggestion to create fujobait (and then Tadashi Satomi instead made them actually gay whoopsie). For Shounen Jump’s side, I suspect things like Naruto also put a focus on this kind of marketing. But D.Gray-Man seemed to essentially get caught up in this and the marketing team seemed to try to pin point “what is our NaruSasu”; maybe it wasn’t actually said like that, but anyone familiar enough can see how you put those blocks together. They landed on Allen and Kanda, two pretty boy characters that are somewhat nippy with each other…

Except they don’t have the strength of interaction that is expected for this ship bait.

I am phrasing this very carefully because all power to those who ship; but Kanda is essentially not part of Allen’s life. Kanda is like his colleague in a rival department who is annoyed their department never replies to emails on time. There can be chemistry there, but there’s a distance that neither of them are really bridging in canon until way later than this marketing started. Personally, I didn’t feel there were notable scenes until Kanda’s actual boyfriend is introduced and Allen is trying to help them get it together. By which point, the above has happened.

The point here is that Hoshino followed her plans and introduced something that wasn’t the marketable ship that Shounen Jump had been hoping for. Therefore, D.Gray-Man is no longer allowed to play with the star children and has to go sit with the monthlies (and then go to quarterlies or less). While I think mangaka shouldn’t be held to a ridiculously tight schedule and should have a better work-life balance; it’s interesting to observe in terms of what it means about both audience reception and the handling of the publishers.

Anyway, the fun thing is this didn’t dissuade this plotline at all. Thanks for coming to my TED talk, here’s what I’m putting up with

Allen blushing cause he feels normal about this damn clown.

Why do you have a necklace of him...