New Release!
Real Journalism (2025)
Queers Read This!
Karl Andersson self-published Destroyer in ten issues between 2006 and 2010. With its radical message and in-your-face layout, the gay magazine had an impact that far surpassed its small but devoted readership.
Real Journalism contains the best texts from Destroyer and its sequel The Lover – both long since sold out and very hard-to-get.
The book can be seen as an insider’s indictment of the contemporary LGBTQ+ movement and the society it is embedded in. The articles are a call to action directed at independent minds, real journalists – and maybe yourself.
Bonus!20 years later!
In a new introduction, the author explains the background to the magazines, their continued relevance, and how he feels about some of the articles twenty years later.
Note: Unlike the magazines, this book is text only and does not contain any photos or illustrations.
- Real Journalism: Self-Published Writings on Sexual Politics, History and Culture
- by Karl Andersson
- 295 pages
- ISBN: 9789189865242
Original Shota Research
Impossibly Cute Boys (2024)
Shota’s Unique History
For the first time in English, the tumultuous history of cute boys in commercial and amateur comics is told.
How to Love Shota
Meet the readers and creators of shota: what does it mean to them to read, draw and exchange these amateur comics?
Original Research
Based on ethnographic fieldwork on PhD level, this academic book is written in an accessible style, and is safe to order anywhere.
Bonus!Timeline of a Scandal
The last chapter recounts how my PhD research went viral, and how my university expelled me.
Amazon reviews
“A mammoth achievement of research and scholarship!”
“This is a fascinating ethnographic overview that covers not just Japanese shota culture, but also the broader doujinshi culture in which it is enmeshed. It’s very readable and very well-researched.”
“Genuinely one of my favourite books of all time!”
- Impossibly Cute Boys: The Healing Power of Shota Comics in Japan
- by Karl Andersson
- 218 pages
- ISBN: 9789189865211
Also available on Kindle, Google Play and Apple Books!
Documentary
Unreal Boys (2020)
A Film about Shota and the People who Read, Draw and Love it
Three young men in Tokyo explore the borders of fantasy through the manga genre shota. We follow an aspiring artist who wants to “live in a fantasy forever,” a youtuber who records his interactions with a shota game, and a professional mangaka driven by nostalgia.
MA ResearchAn Ethnographic Film
Unreal Boys is my graduation film from the Master of Arts program in Visual and Media Anthropology at Freie Universität Berlin. It has been screened and discussed at several ethnographic film festivals and conferences (you can watch a Q&A with me here).
Unreal Boys was awarded the prize for Best Student Film by the Society for Visual Anthropology, a section of the American Anthropological Association, at their Film and Media Festival in 2021. It also won the award for Best Director at the Kyiv Film Festival in 2021.
- Unreal Boys: A Film about Shota
- Director: Karl Andersson
- Released: 2020
- Duration: 36 minutes
Short
Love Doll Maintenance (2024)
The Pros and Cons of Having a Lover Made of Silicone
Love Doll Maintenance lets us peek into the everyday life of a man/doll couple in Tokyo. As the film progresses, it turns out that doll love is not an uncomplicated affair.
PhD ResearchAn Embodied Understanding of Desire
I planned this follow-up to Unreal Boys during my PhD studies. The idea was to get a better understanding of what love and desire decoupled from human others can look like. After the university canceled my research and expelled me, I completed this short on my own.
Love Doll Maintenance is the first part of a series. The film complements my book Impossibly Cute Boys: The Healing Power of Shota Comics in Japan (2024).
- Love Doll Maintenance
- Director: Karl Andersson
- Released: 2024
- Duration: 18 minutes
