Surprisingly (or perhaps not so), the amount of homosexual ships in this fandom can be safely assumed to outnumber heterosexual ones, even official or canonically ship teased ones. Here are the biggest BL/GL pairings:
- Almost every male character, human or ayakashi, has been shipped with Seimei at some point.
- Among the humans, Seimei & Hiromasa are probably the most common, even though they're both ship-teased with women.
- Kuromujō & Shiromujō are Incest Subtext incarnate, with the former's overt Big Brother Instinct and the latter's showing subtle signs of affection for the former that borders on softcore type-B Tsundere. Also, let us not get started on the Hijikata × Okita jokes…
- To a lesser extent, Kurodōji & Shirodōji, who are successors to the pair right above in many ways.
- Ibaraki-dōji & Shuten-dōji, given that they're close friends, they have a lot of attention to fleshing out their intense and tumultuous background, and the former is devoted to the point of masochism and Yandere for the latter.
- Hiromasa & Ōtengu owing to their former friendship and emotionally complicated relationship in the present after the former was betrayed by the latter. This is despite the former's being ship-teased with Hakurō.
- Even though Sakura has a lost Lenore, she will almost always be shipped with Momo. You can hardly fault the fans when the girls are close friends, the latter treasures the former more than anything, and they frankly have more chemistry than the former does with her canonical lover.
- Susabi is shipped with Ichimokuren for as long as any fan remembers, even though they are by definition a Ship That Passes in the Night. This ship remains manned even as Susabi is later on ship-teased with Miketsu and Ichimokuren with Mushishi.
- Onikiri & his master Yorimitsu which turns out to be Mind Game Ship once you realize the truth about them, not helped by the rather suggestive PV art
◊, as Onikiri's absolute devotion to his master opens a lot of possibilities. It's later confirmed that Yorimitsu had loved him in a way, but could not put this above his responsibilities, ultimately betraying Onikiri and causing his defection. Thus he is reduced to staring at the empty blade holder as if he had lost something important to him, mirroring Onikiri's habitual staring at his swords. May be considered pseudo-canon if only because Onikiri and Yorimitsu's concept artists/story creators obviously support this pairing as well. - Ungaikyō's two sides together – despite their personalities and vehemently opposing each other's worldview, they don't hide how much they want to hug each other.
- Taishakuten and Ashura are almost unbelievably gay. Pretty much everything about them basically screams "THEY'RE LOVERS". Taishakuten regards Ashura as his hero and idol, while Ashura consider Taishakuten the only person he can trust, and they have a strong Brooding Boy, Gentle Girl vibe, particularly with how effeminate Taishakuten is. They're often very physically close, and Taishakuten is the only one who can calm Ashura's berserk rages. Even their eventual falling-out is treated like an acrimonious break-up. And when Taishakuten is eventually forced to betray and kill Ashura, he does so by making himself appear as Ashura's mother so he embraces her, bringing Taishakuten close enough to stab him. As he does this, he even whispers his farewell to Asura, referring to him as "My dear Asura". And when he executes the nobility of the Celestials for their sins, the considers their greatest sin their betrayal of Ashura by spreading rumours to turn the people against him- although in truth that was actually him. And then after Asura is revived and breaks free of the Abyss Prison, Taishakuten attempts to reconcile with him by tempting him with a dream of the Celestials' lost realm of Trayastrimsa, where the two of them live together happily for what seems to be hundreds of years before it breaks down. It's complicated.
- In their final fight as Asura tears out Taishakuten's heart, he realizes that his own heart and soul was inside Taishakuten. As Taishakuten slowly dies, his last moments has him try to reach out his hand to touch Asura's face. Then as Taishakuten falls, he almost gently refers to Asura as "my Asura". Taishakuten reveals that all along his plan was to become a tyrant so Asura would inevitably overthrow him and be hailed as an even greater hero. As Asura goes to destroy the meteor, it's revealed that Taishakuten placed his own heart inside of Asura to save him. He tells Asura that if he ever wanted to find him again, he'll be waiting here. The music playing in the final scene is "我心之人" which translates to, "My Beloved". Then Asura uses his power to retcon history so that he was always the evil demon king and Taishakuten was the heroic king who defeated him and brought peace to Demons and Celestials. In the end, it turned out that effectively the entire story arc was Taishakuten and Asura's love story.
- Yōtō-Hime gets a fair bit of les yay with both Hakuro (during the comic story accompanying the release of her SP form's event skin) and Kinnara (in the comic accompanying the release of her SSR form's one). Hakuro takes her out to the carnival to try and cheer her up and they hang out together (and even have a loading screen splash where they're relaxing by a stream with the bare feet in the water, touching hands), while Kinnara comes and shyly asks her to accompany her to learn a traditional ritual dance from Miketsu, because she's too nervous to go alone.
- Kinnara also gets an amount with Shiranui, who meets and comforts her when she's sad, causing Kinnara to decide to try and find her again, thinking that it had been Love at First Sight.
