shoujo ai

Meaning

Noun

• Anime and manga that explore emotional, but largely platonic, homoerotic relationships between women.
• A genre of manga, anime, or hentai featuring lesbian sex and romance; yuri.
• lolicon.

Origin

• Two connected etymologies. Either interpreted as a loan translation of Japanese 少女愛, or a specialized neologism created in analogy to shounen ai (少年愛; shōnen ai) using Japanese vocabulary.