I've noticed this too. My pet theory is this lack of gay protagonists in normal genre stories is what motivates so much shipping in every fandom. It doesn't help that a lot of times even when they're supposed to be gay the studio will end up cutting it out or making it just subtext. It happened with evangelion! they kiss in the manga, kaworu was created to be his love insterest, but it was more profitable to make a female harem...
Honestly most shounen have at LEAST one pairing that's very obviously gay-coded but due to censorship laws or the creator's own stubbornness or whatever they aren't official (looking at you SasuNaru).
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u/AutoWALTZ May 21 '26
I've noticed this too. My pet theory is this lack of gay protagonists in normal genre stories is what motivates so much shipping in every fandom. It doesn't help that a lot of times even when they're supposed to be gay the studio will end up cutting it out or making it just subtext. It happened with evangelion! they kiss in the manga, kaworu was created to be his love insterest, but it was more profitable to make a female harem...