<em>Sakkai Muniyai</em>: A Look at Sri Lanka's First Sinhalese BL Manga

Abstract

Sakkai MuniyaiA Look at Sri Lanka's First Sinhalese BL Manga Lakshmi Menon (bio) The Sri Lankan anime fan community, while small but active, is among the organizers of annual events such as Lanka Comic Con and Colombo Comic Expo. It has also proven to be a community that is supportive of the artists among them. Perhaps surprisingly, given Sri Lanka's cultural conservatism, this includes those who specialize in BL (boys love) themed original and fan art. As a result, Sri Lanka's BL artists have found space at events such as Lanka Comic Con to sell their art and meet like-minded members of the BL fan community, although for the most part they are yet to produce many original works. Sakkai Muniyai is a black-and-white Sinhalese-language webcomic drawn in a manga style by Sri Lankan artist Achintya Amarakoon.1 The work, which is hosted within photo albums on the Facebook page "Papadamn," debuted in 2018, and in October 2019 entered its second "season," complete with a full-color cover illustration (Figure 1). Unlike two English-language manga that Amarakoon posted on the tapas.io website,2 Sakkai Muniyai is not explicitly a BL work. However, the manga contains several elements of queerness within the narrative, and it is easy to understand how a reader familiar with BL could identify the dynamics of the genre in the relationship between the two protagonists. The plot draws heavily on elements of Sri Lankan myth. Sakkai Muniyai is the story of Sakka, or Shakra II, the son of the King of Gods, and Muniya, or Vesamuni II, the son of the King of Demons. In a subversion of tropes, the god Sakka is characterized as being willful, spoiled, and rather too violent, while the demon Muniya is too cowardly to be a demon. The two are sent to present-day Sri Lanka by their fathers so they can learn to behave as they are expected. The comic plays on many tropes that are common in fish-out-of-water narratives, as the gods try to navigate the complexities of human society while at the same time making commentary on the ground realities of contemporary Sri Lanka. The protagonists' lack of awareness of gender norms in particular, however, is noteworthy throughout this narrative. Most notably, they often perform gender in subversive ways and open up the text to queer [End Page 143] readings. Visually, Sakka and Muniya are both drawn in what might be called a bishōnen, or Japanese "beautiful boy," style, with the former being more feminine with softer features and (in his manifestation as a god) longer hair (Figure 2). This image is at odds with his brash, foul-mouthed, aggressive personality. Muniya, who in his demonic form is red skinned and sharp toothed, also fails to adhere to expectations of masculinity because he is "soft" and incapable of the violence that is expected of him as a demon prince. The theme of subversion is continued in the character of Muniya's sister, who is shown to be in a close relationship with a young woman whom she befriended during a time spent as an amnesiac in the human world. With Sri Lanka being a relatively conservative society and with the manga having a mixed readership, Sakkai Muniyai never goes so far as to explicitly state that the relationship between the main characters is a romantic one. However, the author does make it a point to drop hints as to their sexuality: both Sakka and Muniya are completely unaware of the romantic overtures that female characters make toward them, and at one point are visibly distraught when Kalu, a womanizing demon from Sri Lankan myth, takes them to spy on women bathing. The author also makes use of a number of traditional romance tropes that readers who are familiar with manga aesthetics will be able to identify. For instance, at the end of the first season of the manga, Sakka leaps in front of an enemy's blade and nearly dies trying to protect Muniya, leading to a dramatic, rage-filled reaction from the latter. In a post on Medium, Amarakoon revealed that the intention...