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A japanese term from exercises, especially marial arts, meaning "to attack" A term used often in anime fandom to mean the sexually dominant character in a relationship, especially yaoi, either canonically or in fan fiction. Seme are normall used for simple aesetitics, although some fans dislike the concept feeling it creates an unrealistic, unbalanced, and fundamentally 'sexist' notion of romantic relationships.
Although similarties appear in yuri fandom, the term is generally not used to refer to female characters.
The classic guidelines establish seme by appearance in relation to the 'sub' uke (tall, broody, more mature, dark-haired, serious rather than cute faces, noneffeminate) often regardless of the characters' personality. Recently, most characters (especially in American fandom) are established as seme based strictly on personality, which can conflict with the original visual concept.
=examples=
Dragonball Z's Vegita is regulated to seme in older yaoi fanworks simple due to his short height.
Gravitation's Yuki Eri is a canonical seme explicitly designed to be taller, older looking, and more humorless than his exuberant boyfriend Shuichi.
In Gundam Wing fanworks, Heero could be portrayed as a seme because of his serious, grouchy demeanor, or as uke because he's considered depressive.
Yami No Matsuei's Tsuzuki has the appearance of a seme in regards to his 'partner' Hisoka, but has an atypical playful and almost chidlish personality that regulates him as uke to other characters.
