Frédéric Boilet

Boilet depicting himself in the company of one of his Japanese models.

Frédéric Boilet is a graphic novelist of the French-Belgian school whose stories are mostly about life in Japan as a Western expatriate. He himself has been living in Japan since 1990, and since then has been a "bridge builder" between the French-Belgian school and the world of Manga. He has in particular collaborated with Jiro Taniguchi, and been instrumental in the latter's introduction to the European market.

Boilet's girlfriend is a fellow graphic novelist, Aurelia Aurita (the Pen Name of Chenda Khun), a Sino-Khmer woman, who has related their steamy relationship in the sexually explicit Fraise et Chocolat. He makes no secret of his overt Asiaphilia.

Boilet's works include:

• Love Hotel and its sequel Tokyo est mon jardin
• Demi-tour
• Yukiko's Spinach
• Mariko Parade
• L'Apprenti Japonais
• Elles

Frédéric Boilet provides examples of the following tropes:

• Author Appeal: Young Asian women.
• Benevolent Boss: David's boss in Tokyo est mon jardin.
• Bittersweet Ending: Love Hotel and Demi-tour especially, though Tokyo est mon jardin subverts this with an Earn Your Happy Ending, and the more Slice of Life-oriented stories don't really have closure per se.
• The Casanova: How Boilet depicts himself.
• Character Development: David is a rather clueless loser in Love Hotel and grows into a much more self-possessed character in Tokyo est mon jardin. This goes hand in hand with his growing fluency in Japanese.
• Did Not Get the Girl: David in Love Hotel. Averted in extremis in that he gets another girl at the end.
• Fan Service: The stories feature liberal amounts of female nudity.
• Fish Out of Water: Western expatriates in Japan.
• Love Hotels
• Me Love You Long Time: As Boilet confesses, "Japanese girls are so wonderful, if it was up to me, they're all I would ever talk about."
• Slice of Life
• Translation Convention: Mostly played straight, but averted at times to emphasize the fact that characters are really speaking Japanese. In which case their speech bubbles will be written in Japanese and the translation will be provided in a separate caption.
• Write Who You Know