Boys’ Love Media Scholarship, 2000–2026: A Systematic Review and Bibliometric-Thematic Synthesis

Originating in Japanese manga traditions depicting romantic relationships between men, Boys’ Love (BL) has developed into a transnational media phenomenon. Scholarship has expanded accordingly but remains fragmented across disciplines, national contexts, media forms, and methods. This systematic review examines 134 English-language, peer-reviewed, Scopus-indexed journal articles published between January 2000 and June 2026. Combining bibliometric mapping with a PRISMA-guided thematic synthesis, it maps geographic, temporal, thematic, and methodological patterns in the internationally indexed literature. Publication growth accelerates after 2020, accompanied by increased attention to Thai and Chinese screen media alongside continued work on Japanese manga. Four bibliometric clusters are interpreted through eight analytical themes: fandom and audiences; state, censorship, and regulation; representation and narrative; gender, sexuality, and feminist critique; industry, political economy, and soft power; transnational circulation and localization; genre history and aesthetics; and affect, emotion, and intimacy. Qualitative approaches dominate the corpus, whereas quantitative and mixed-method designs remain comparatively uncommon. Country-related patterns are treated as descriptive author-affiliation tendencies rather than statistical country-theme relationships. The review identifies four priorities: deeper production and political-economy analysis, stronger examination of multidirectional transnational circulation, broader geographic and linguistic coverage, and greater methodological diversity. It further argues that intercultural BL scholarship would benefit from moving beyond nation-bounded localization models toward transcultural and counter-flow perspectives.