Sunroom Nite

Sunroom Nite (Japanese: サンルームにて, Hepburn: Sanrūmu Nite; transl. 'In the Sunroom') is a Japanese manga one-shot written and illustrated by Keiko Takemiya. It was originally published in the December 1970 issue of the manga magazine Bessatsu Shōjo Comic under the title Yuki to Hoshi to Tenshi to... (雪と星と天使と; transl. 'Snow and Stars and Angels and...'). It is the first work in the shōnen-ai genre, a genre of male-male romance manga aimed at a female audience.

The story is a loosely adapted and condensed version of Takemiya's later manga series Kaze to Ki no Uta, and follows the relationship between a Roma teenaged boy and the son of a wealthy family. Takemiya's publishers had declined to publish Kaze to Ki no Uta, owing to its homoerotic subject material and their refusal to publish stories focused on male protagonists. She was ultimately able to publish Sunroom Nite by submitting the story to her editor at Bessatsu Shōjo Comic immediately before the issue's publication deadline, thus foreclosing any attempts to edit or reject the story. Upon its publication, Sunroom Nite was a critical success; it is credited with establishing male–male romance as a discrete category of manga, and launching Takemiya's career as a manga artist in earnest.

Serge Battour (セルジュ・バトール, Seruju Batōru), the teenaged son of a Roma fortuneteller, regularly visits an abandoned mansion to spend time in its sunroom. During one such visit he encounters Étoile Rael (エトアール・ライエル, Etoāru Raieru) and Angel Rael (エンジェル・ライエル, Enjeru Raieru), and learns they are respectively the son and daughter of a family that has recently taken up residence in the mansion. The siblings befriend Serge, and invite him to continue visiting the sunroom. Serge and Étoile gradually grow closer, though Étoile becomes deeply depressed and falls ill after Serge demurs from his romantic advances. Étoile's mother forbids the two from seeing each other, prompting Serge to infiltrate the mansion to visit him. Reunited, Étoile asks Serge to kiss him, which he obliges; Étoile then commits suicide by grabbing Serge's hand and using it to plunge a knife into his own stomach.

Keiko Takemiya made her amateur debut as a manga artist in 1967, when her manga Kokonotsu no Yuujou (ここのつの友情) submitted to the magazine COM was published as a "Monthly Newcomer Honorable Mention", and made her professional debut in 1967 or 1968. Having grown up reading shōnen manga (manga for boys), Takemiya was interested in creating manga that featured boys instead of girls, and especially "friendships" between boys. She had previously been introduced to literature, artwork, music, and films that depicted relationships between males by her friend Norie Masuyama [ja], and was influenced by Taruho Inagaki's essay Shōnen-ai no Bigaku (少年愛の美学; "The Aesthetics of Boy Love", 1968) to make "shōnen-ai" (lit. 'boy love') the core of her creative work.

The shōjo manga (girls' manga) publishing culture into which Takemiya made her debut was highly restrictive, and her editors at Shūkan Shōjo Comic refused to publish stories featuring male protagonists. Shōjo stories in general were marketed to an audience of children, were focused on uncomplicated subject material such as familial drama or romantic comedy, and favored Cinderella-like female protagonists defined by their passivity. Over the course of the 1970s, a new generation of shōjo artists would emerge who would introduce a greater degree of narrative and thematic complexity to the genre, collectively referred to as the Year 24 Group. The group, of which Takemiya was a member, contributed significantly to the development of shōjo manga by expanding it to incorporate elements of science fiction, historical fiction, adventure fiction, and same-sex romance: both male–male (shōnen-ai and yaoi) and female–female (yuri).

In September 1970, Takemiya began drawing a manga tie-in for the television series Majoha Hottona Otoshi-goro [ja] in Shūkan Shōjo Comic, though she was unenthusiastic about the series because she found the material uninspiring. A one-shot (single chapter manga) adaptation had been publicly announced for publication in the December 1970 issue of the supplemental magazine Bessatsu Shōjo Comic, which Takemiya had little interest in writing. Masuyama suggested that she instead submit a shōnen-ai story, which Takemiya agreed to.

By the early 1970s, Takemiya had already conceived of the plot and characters for what would become her acclaimed 1976 shōnen-ai series Kaze to Ki no Uta, but was unable to find a publisher for the series. Consequently, she sought to publish a "compact" version of Kaze to Ki no Uta in the form of Sunroom Nite. Knowing that a male–male romance story was likely to be heavily edited or rejected by her editors, Takemiya included the character of Angel, which gave the story the impression of a love triangle narrative. By having one of the central characters be a young girl, Sunroom Nite was able to "barely maintain the appearance of a shōjo manga", with Takemiya remarking that Angel's inclusion "made it easier to tell the story. If there were only two boys, there would be no way to tell the story."

Takemiya has described Sunroom Nite as the "foundation" of Kaze to Ki no Uta, with both works sharing common narrative and thematic elements. Both stories focus on a Roma teenager named Serge Battour, and his relationship with a blonde boy who dies at the end of the story; Serge and Étoile have been described as "prototypes" of Serge and Gilbert, the primary couple in Kaze to Ki no Uta. A character similar to Carl Maïsser, a secondary character in Kaze to Ki no Uta, also appears in Sunroom Nite.