Around this time English-speaking audiences mistook the term to specifically refer to the artworks posted in the online boards-most of which were drawn in an almost hyper-realistic muscular style. “Bara” made a comeback during the 1990s through online chat rooms and messaging boards. The usage of the term faded as more and more people in the gay community used “gay” and “homosexual”. During the early 1970s, perhaps echoing the rising gay rights movement in the west, the magazine Barazoku called for the gay community in Japan to be out and show themselves instead of keeping to the invisibility offered by being “underground.” It was also an attempt to re-appropriate the slur “Bara” for the gay community. The origin of the term “Bara” was actually from a slur for gay people in Japan. The term “Bara” is written with the kanji 薔薇 which literally means “rose.” Its common usage can be traced back to the first magazine catering exclusively for gay men in Japan, Barazoku (薔薇族). In Japan, however, the term is not commonly used with the same meaning and has a more complex history.

“Bara” is a term commonly used in English-speaking manga reader communities to generally describe a genre of manga depicting romantic and sexual relationships between men with art styles showing more realistically-drawn characters or muscular men.