Manga / Zettai BL ni Naru Sekai VS Zettai BL ni Naritakunai Otoko

"I realized that I live inside a manga world. However, it's not just any manga. I'm a resident of one of those called Boys' Love."

Zettai BL ni Naru Sekai Vs Zettai BL ni Naritakunai Otoko (絶対BLになる世界 VS 絶対BLになりたくない男, roughly translated as "A World Where Everything Definitely Becomes BL vs. The Man Who Definitely Doesn't Want To Be In A BL") is a 2018 Comedy manga by Konkichi.

The manga follows a plain-looking boy that realizes that he's an extra in a world of BL Manga. Straight and refusing to take part in the romantic plots flourishing around him, he studies how these romances happen to avoid any chance he might get involved in a romantic story.

The manga started as a webcomic in 2017, before being officially serialized on Manga Jam and pixiv Comic in November of 2018. The manga got a live-action adaptation in 2021.

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Tropes

• Adaptation Dye-Job: In the live-action television series, all of the characters featured with more out-there hair colors such as green, blue, or pink for changed into black or brown hair. The protagonist, likewise, went from purple hair to brown hair for the live series.
• Blatant Lies: Kikuchi, a main character, tries to get close to the protagonist by means of pretending he missed class, even though they sit next to each other.
• Cast Full of Pretty Boys: The protagonist comments that there's an uncommonly high amount of handsome men in the world he lives in, which makes sense since many of them will get paired off.
• Contrived Coincidence: It's noted that the world will bend itself backward to get the romances going. In "VS the drinking party", the protagonist notes that there was only a 30% chance of raining, which still ended up happening just when two main characters were walking home, making it likely that they'd seek shelter and have to spend the night together in a hotel.
• Chromosome Casting: Downplayed. The protagonist observes that the world seems to be made up of mostly men, with women having their faces blurred out or being relegated to the background. He notes that they tend to be a source of supportive advice, friends that could be a Romantic False Lead and often are lesbians themselves.
• Deconstructive Parody: The manga deconstructs multiple tropes and conventions of the Yaoi genre from the point of view of a background character that is aware of the manga he is in and actively avoiding becoming part of the story.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • Mayama is a BL author that wishes he lived in a BL world, saddened that his attempt to see a guy named Yashiro confessing to another man goes haywire. Fortunately for him, he does live in a BL world, and the only reason why that particular example didn't work is likely because Yashiro confessed to the Protagonist, who is dodging any possibility of homosexual romance.
  • In the first chapter, the Protagonist mentions that he has largely escaped being shoved into a BL pairing because he's not good-looking. As later chapters would show, his looks are the least of his concerns, since the world would pair up anyone for any number of reasons anyway and a handful of boys already crush on him despite his plainness.
• Dude Looks Like a Lady: Due to the women of that world being often poorly defined background characters, any prominent feminine character that is gorgeous and has distinctive features is most likely a cross-dressing boy. The protagonist comes across one such boy called Yamazaki who uses a female persona for marketing purposes and ends up in a romantic pairing with a man called Kakei who seems uninterested in his female persona.
• Dude Magnet: Just by the very way the world is structured, more than one guy is attracted to the protagonist. There is a classmate trying to hit on him, a friend of his brother holding a long-lasting crush for him, and in "VS goukon", a handsome man is trying to raise flags with him.
• The Faceless: A common occurrence for mob characters is to have no face or at most a very ill-defined or generic face. When seen from others' points of view, the MC is shown to not have a face, or it is out of frame. In "VS Wedding", he jokingly notes that his female cousin, to whom a main character in a BL story is marrying, is faceless.
  Cousin, I can't see your face.
• Failed a Spot Check: The protagonist realizes that the couples in the world are able to notice really small hints that each other is sick. He points at two characters, one of which is only slightly out of breath and red in the face, with that being enough for his love interest to realize he is starting to get sick. He points out that since he's a mob character, nobody realizes he's in a much worse state than the ones in a relationship and nobody bothers with him.
• Gender-Blender Name: It's commented that the majority of guys in that world have names that sound feminine, and many even go above and beyond what is usual to nickname other male characters with female-sounding nicknames, like nicknaming a man called Morikawa as "Rika", or exclusively referring to male characters by their female sounding last name. The protagonist comments that this facilitates Entertainingly Wrong assumptions about people's gender, making it so that someone expecting to meet a girl would meet a guy.
• Genre Savvy: The protagonist thoroughly studied the BL genre to make sure he has no way of accidentally starting a romantic plot with another man. The manga's comedy comes from his comments on the various tropes of the genre happening around him. Everything from the way he behaves, talks, clothes, and answers questions are tailor-made to not raise any possible romantic flags with other characters.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Each chapter is named as "VS [X]", such as "VS female characters" or "VS voice volume".
• I Work Alone: When he is invited to a drinking party, the Protagonist calls out the fact that, as a mob character, he needs to be sociable, and that unsociable characters are in fact more likely to become protagonists in a romantic plot than someone that is very sociable, since they stand out from the rule. The correct way to avoid a romance is to go to the party and avoid anyone that seems like a possible main character for a plot, and if a situation arises that could start a romance, push another main character-looking character in it and avoid being part of it.
• Incompatible Orientation: The MC is straight, it's why he is so hell-bent on not raising a flag with another guy. That said, he seems to work with the theory that this will not matter if a flag is raised because BL rules would just make him be attracted to that one guy in particular anyway.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: When the Protagonist is hospitalized, he shares a room with an amnesiac boy, who has forgotten enough that his friend tells him they've been dating for a while. The protagonist simply acts disapprovingly since amnesias don't last long and the guy is likely to remember they never dated soon.
• Love at First Sight: The protagonist observes that this is a world where people can fall in love at any given time, and so much as bumping into someone who looks like a main character is likely to make them fall for you. In "VS worldview", the protagonist watches as a meek and timid student named Yuuki bumps into the delinquent Kuroda, and the latter immediately falls in love with him.
  • The protagonist gets on the receiving end of this in a later chapter, where another character who had sat down next to him is in love with him even though they never interacted.
• Making Love in All the Wrong Places:
  • In "VS the molester", the protagonist is on a train where a couple are grinding and groping discreetly in public, which intensively bothers him. He mentions that in this world, it's very common to catch people in the act or at least about to do the act. He even memorizes a list of excuses he's been given. When the couple realizes that he can see them, they decide to go home to continue, which the protagonist mentions is still not great because they're likely to just have sex in the entrance instead of getting to bed.
    "As soon as they get home, surely they won't go to their room and will have sex in the entrance like animals."
  • In "VS drinking at home", the protagonist ends up sleeping in a friend's house together with two couples he realizes are secretly dating. During the night, one of these couples has sex on the bed right next to him, he can't intervene, but neither can he sleep.
    "You're guests in someone's home. It's not my home, but still, it's someone's home!?"
• Medium Awareness: The protagonist is aware that he is inside a BL manga, and that he is just an extra. The manga follows him trying to keep things that way because he doesn't want to date a guy.
• No Name Given: The protagonist's name is never revealed and nobody refers to him by any name.
• Non-Standard Character Design: It's quite easy to point out who is a main character and who is a side character in the manga world. The protagonist is quickly able to categorize all of his brother's friends from their appearance, with the plain-looking one being a mob character like himself, and the charming one, drawn in great detail, is a main character that is probably dating his brother at this point.
• The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: The protagonist notices that his city is full of delinquents even though it's a very peaceful place, implying they're delinquents just for the sake of the aesthetics of delinquency (thus enabling romance between delinquents and honor students).
• Perspective Flip:
  • The manga is told from the perspective of a mob character in a world where many characters will become main characters in a BL romance.
  • One chapter is told from the perspective of the protagonist's sibling's unlucky friend, which shows that for other people, the protagonist's face is basically invisible. The very end of that chapter shifts the perspective back to the protagonist, who comments how sad it is the guy can't possibly realize he's stuck in a pretty bad situation.
• Sexy Soaked Shirt: In "VS. Summer", the protagonist notices this situation is bound to happen due to sudden summer showers, and how it is prime for enticing a romance between guys, so he makes sure to wear clothes that aren't see-through.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: The manga implies that there's a limit to how much the protagonist can run away from a romantic plot. One chapter shows that he had a Forgotten First Meeting with his brother's friend who has held a candle for him for 8 years. After meeting him, he promises to come back in 3 years to ask him out again, to which the protagonist decides to just brush it off, saying it's a problem for 3 years later. Even before that, it's shown that he is someone characters can fall in love with, as a classmate has a small crush on him. Later chapters begin to pile up the sheer amount of characters that are approaching him with some sort of interest.
• Yaoi Fanboy: The protagonist is a subversion of this. He thoroughly reads BL manga, but not because he particularly enjoys the genre, but to study the rules through which his world works. In "VS. fundashi", the protagonist gets caught by a boy named Mayama, who seems to be really big into BL manga, reading a BL manga. He knows he can't deny or agree without the possibility of being outed as a man that reads BL and raising a flag for a possible romance with Maya, so he explains it away by saying that he read it to get closer to a girl at work. Maya turns out to be the BL author of the manga.

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