to Japan; and Kaze to Ki no Uta (Poem of the Wind and the Trees), a 17-volume series beginning in 1976 that chronicles the relationship between two schoolboys in France. As with much manga and anime, science fiction and fantasy tropes and environments are common: Ai no Kusabi, a 1980s yaoi light novel series described as a "magnum opus" of the Boys Love genre, involves a science fictional caste system. Simoun has been described as "a wonderful sci fi series" which does not have to rely on its yuri content to appeal to the audience. The various terminologies for both male/male pairings and female/female pairings are sometimes used to denote the level of sexual explicitness or romanticism in a work. Although yuri originated in female-targeted works, today it is featured in male-targeted ones as well. Yaoi has been criticised for stereotypical and homophobic portrayals of its characters,Keller, Katherine Seme and Uke? Make Me Puke Sequential Tart February 2008 and for failing to address gay issues. Homophobia, when it is presented as an issue at all, is often used as a plot device to "heighten the drama", or to show the purity of the leads' love. Rachel Thorn has suggested that as yaoi is a romance narrative, strong political themes may be a "turn off" to the readers. Critics state that the genre challenges heteronormativity via the "queer" bishōnen ("beautiful boys"), and Andrew Grossman has written that the Japanese are more comfortable with writing about LGBT themes in a manga setting, in which gender is often blurred, even in "straight" manga. Bara and "gay comics" There also exists "gay manga" (called Bara (rose)) specifically targeted at gay men, with gay characters. Yaoi writers and fans distinguish these "gay manga" from yaoi, sometimes calling it "bara". Prior to the early 2000s, the primary venue for publication of gay men's manga was gay men's general-interest magazines, which have included manga since the inception of Barazoku in 1971. The typical manga story in these magazines is an 8–24 page one-shot, although some magazines, notably G-men, also carry some serialized stories. McLelland, surveying gay men's magazines from the mid to late 1990s, indicates that most manga stories were simply pornographic, with little attention to character or plot, and that even the longer, serialized stories were generally "thinly developed". McLelland characterizes Barazoku as containing "some well-crafted stories which might be better described as erotic rather than