Why GL Deserves More Recognition (And Why 2026 Might Finally Be the Year It Gets It)

If you follow BL even a little, you've probably noticed something. The conversation around queer romance in Asian entertainment is almost entirely about men loving men. Thai BL dominates the discourse. Danmei adaptations go viral. Male lead couples get the fan edits, the merch, the sold-out fan meetings.

Meanwhile GL, which is Girls Love, the genre about women loving women, is sitting right there being quietly excellent and not getting nearly enough credit for it.

That's starting to change. Here's why it matters.

The numbers are there

Thailand's GL market is projected to generate up to 2 billion baht per year in economic value. That's not a niche number. Thammasat University published research in 2025 noting that GL ranked among the top 10 most discussed topics on Thai social media in the second half of 2024. Production companies that built their reputations on BL are now actively developing GL content because the audience demand is real and growing.

The US manga market hit $1.28 billion in 2025. Romance and drama are projected to be the highest growth genres through 2030. Female readership is the fastest growing demographic. GL sits right at the intersection of all three of those trends and is still somehow treated as a footnote.

The content is genuinely good

This is the part that frustrates GL fans the most. The genre has been producing great work for years. Series like Love Bully and The Secret of Us have been praised for how they portray LGBTQ+ relationships with real honesty and care. The yuri manga tradition in Japan has decades of emotionally sophisticated stories behind it. There are GL novels that do everything BL fans love about the genre, the slow burn, the tension, the found family, and do it with women at the centre.

The quality has never been the issue. The visibility has.

GL does something specific that nothing else does

Women loving women in fiction has always had to fight for space. Straight romance centres heterosexual dynamics. BL centres men. GL is one of the very few genres where women are the protagonists of their own love story, not supporting characters in someone else's, not the secondary pairing, not the comic relief couple.

That matters to a lot of readers. Women who want to see themselves in a romance. Queer women who want stories that reflect their lives. Anyone who is just tired of the default assumption that romance means a man and a woman or two men.

GL offers something different and it does it without asking for permission.

2025 is being called a comeback year

Fans have been calling 2025 the year GL finally gets its moment. New anime, new Thai dramas, new manhwa, production companies investing properly for the first time. The infrastructure that made BL explode globally is starting to build around GL too.

It is not there yet. The gap between how BL and GL are covered, funded, and discussed is still significant. But the trajectory is clear.

Why we're paying attention

At Bright Tide Media Studios we publish BL, GL, and danmei-inspired fantasy romance. We mean all three of those equally. GL is not an afterthought on our list. We are actively looking for GL manuscripts that have the same ambition, the same emotional weight, the same slow burn craft that the best BL brings.

If you're writing GL and you've been wondering if there's a home for it, there is. Email us at agent@brighttidestudios.com.

The readers are there. The market is growing. GL deserves the recognition it's been earning quietly for years.