Out of all the anime that Star and I watched in 2025, one of them was both truly incredible and also incredibly short. That show was none other than Karaoke Iko!, a painfully short five-episode anime. Karaoke Iko!, or in english, Let’s Go Karaoke!, was a simple premise: a high school choir boy meets a yakuza member who asks him to teach him how to sing. The rest of the anime features the high schooler, Satomi as he befriends and teaches the Yakuza, Kyouji, how to sing. The show is great on several levels–for one, the karaoke part is so unique and so much fun to actually watch on screen. On another level, the plain silliness of the premise–a yakuza needing to win a karaoke contest against other yakuza members to avoid getting an embarrassing tattoo–is absolutely delightful to watch and laugh at. Finally, the chemistry between Satomi and Kyouji is incredibly good to watch–almost too good.
If there was one thing that Star and I constantly debated while watching this show, it was whether or not Karaoke Iko was intended as a Boys Love or not. Now, when we found the show, we were under the impression that it was simply a show about Karaoke. There was no indication in the description nor genre of it that implied that it was a BL, but the more we watched it, the more we wondered. And no, this isn’t a situation where we wanted it to be BL and thus saw everything in that lens. In fact, it was quite the opposite. I was pretty adamant that it seemed like it was only supposed to be about the brotherly vibe between Satomi and Kyouji. The dynamic at first felt very younger brother/older brother to us. But the longer we watched, the clearer it was something in the dynamic was changing, or the writer was at least beginning to imply something.
More and more, Satomi seems to be forming some sort of crush on Kyouji. There’s a moment where he thinks of Kyouji and wants to deliver a good luck charm to him and also has weird thoughts about how seeing Kyouji could calm him down. It’s all things you wouldn’t exactly expect from a brotherly love portrayal. Let alone, Kyouji isn’t helping the portrayal of their relationship as a possible BL either. After all, Kyouji starts treating Satomi as someone super close to him super fast and goes out of his way to try to win Satomi over (as a karaoke teacher of course), and also is constantly giving him rides and buying him food. While Kyouji never seems to quite obviously view this high schooler as a romantic prospect, he certainly says and does some questionable things that would make us sit and question the nature of the relationship.
The animation isn’t doing any favors either in the unending question. There are several scenes where Kyouji is sitting next to Satomi with his arm around him (okay, technically with his arm behind him on the chair), but certainly in a way you’d see a man do to his girlfriend. The first time Kyouji does this, Satomi is also squirming – maybe out of nervousness being near the yakuza man, but the way the whole scene is choreographed feels very much like a scene you’d see in a romance anime.
Now, getting into spoiler territory (turn back if you don’t want it), the ending is what really drives this into being truly queer-coded. Kyouji goes to jail for three years at the end of the series and when he is released he ends up losing that annual karaoke competition. Instead of an embarrassing tattoo, the yakuza boss decides to tattoo Satomi’s name on Kyouji. That is questionable story choice number one. The second questionable story choice comes at the end when the two of them meet again at the airport–Kyouji having sought out Satomi. Their reunion is casual yet charged at the same time. The whole three years, Satomi had assumed that Kyouji was dead, and in response, Kyouji essentially says he didn’t think Satomi would want him around to ruin his youth. The phrasing is…odd. Almost like it opens the door for more possibility now that Satomi is no longer in high school (and a legal adult). It was in that moment that I felt we got incredibly confused as to if it was subtexting that yes, this was in fact a BL this whole time.
At the end of the day, no. Karaoke Iko! Is not officially a BL, but yes. I think the possibility of it being interpreted as such is there. It’s queer coded enough while still playing it safe as Satomi is still underage in the story. Now, I’m just curious what the sequel to this story is like. While not in anime form yet, I did read that there is a sequel manga that features Satomi working in a store as an adult. If it picks up where Karaoke Iko left off, I wonder if it’d finally answer the question if the story was intended as a BL or not. Until now, we’ll take what we’ve got, question it endlessly, but enjoy it for all that it is.
xoxo
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Luna
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