Platonic Writing, Romantic Reading in Anime & Manga.
- .hack//Legend of the Twilight, particularly the anime adaptation, writes the brother and sister protagonists, Shugo and Rena, in a way that came across as incestuous to a lot of viewers. It doesn't help that the original character avatars their characters are based on Kite and BlackRose, who do have genuine Ship Tease with each other. It also doesn't help that, during one arc of the story, Rena is afflicted with a status condition that causes her to flirt with Shugo.
- 07-Ghost: Teito and Mikage. Mikage tells Teito that he considers him to be as important as his own family (possibly meaning he considers Teito "family") before declaring "I love you, Teito." There's other suspect hints pointing to Ho Yay as well. Such as Mikage's running glomp upon meeting Teito again (complete with sparkles) and sleeping in the same bed together in the first episode.
- Attack on Titan:
- During the period of Manga Chapters 92-93 several readers assumed Gabi had a crush on Reiner due to her blushing around him, constantly clinging to him, following him everywhere around, her insistence on holding his hand, and the fact that Falco clearly seemed to be jealous of her behavior towards him. But, chapter 94 revealed that they're cousins.
- Surprisingly Mikasa, and Eren used to be this. Since in interviews and character sheets, the author made it clear that Mikasa saw Eren as a brother whom she had to protect, even when the majority of the fandom assumed that she is in love with him, to almost obsessive levels. Eventually he The author changed his position, and decided to write it as a romance in a more open way.
- Black Butler: Ciel and Sebastian have so much Ho Yay that it's easy to forget they're only using one another for their personal goals (Ciel using Sebastian for revenge and Sebastian only helping him so he can eat his soul later). There are no real hints that indicate they care about each other as friends, or even fellow individuals, but their constant physical intimacy and dialogue has lead to fans shipping them together more than Ciel and his actual fiancee.
- Bleach centers almost entirely around the relationship between its protagonist, Ichigo, and the Soul Reaper Rukia, with whom he fights Like an Old Married Couple with. They are described as the most important person in each other's lives, and the series' best known arc, the Soul Society arc, is about Ichigo fighting against all odds to rescue her from execution. Nevertheless, Ichigo ultimately ends up with his friend Orihime, who emerges from being primarily a Damsel in Distress and comic relief character to a serious romantic contender in the Arrancar arc, while Rukia, thanks to her new promotion to Lieutenant after a timeskip, becomes too involved in Soul Reaper matters to hang out with Ichigo's friend group to the degree she used to. With all the emotional weight given to the relationship in the earlier arcs, more than a few shippers were very surprised and displeased. Not helping matters is that the anime adaption added extra Ship Tease material not present in the manga. Genre conventions are another issue; shounen manga that feature a platonic male-female friendship as centrally as Bleach does are rare, and that list only shortens when you exclude the ones that don't end in a Last-Minute Hookup.
- Word of God reveals that this trope occurred between CLAMP members in the early chapters of Cardcaptor Sakura. The artist thought that Tomoyo had a crush on main character Sakura's older brother Touya, while the story writer actually meant for her to be in love with Sakura herself. When the artist found out her mistake, they quickly retconned the instances of Tomoyo blushing around Touya to be due to Touya (specifically, Touya's ears) reminding her of Sakura. CLAMP had a good laugh about this in a post-series interview.
- Code Geass: Rolo claims he sees Lelouch as his older brother, but in some scenes, it seems more like he's in love with him. This is to the point where some viewers saw his killing of Shirley as a case of Murder the Hypotenuse when in fact it was because he wanted to murder Lelouch's real sibling Nunnally, and Shirley, who remembered Nunnally's existence and wanted to reunite Lelouch and her, was a threat to that happening.
- Digimon Adventure 02:
- An episode had Miyako and Mimi growing really close, and Miyako even has a random Shoujo-styled Imagine Spot of herself and Mimi in Pimped Out Dresses embracing and looking deeply into each other's eyes. The implication was supposed to be that Miyako saw Mimi as a Cool Big Sis, but some fans saw it differently. Not helping is that the scene is animated similarly to the Les Yay-laden Revolutionary Girl Utena.
- Daisuke also has gotten quite a bit of Ho Yay with Ken, especially as Daisuke becomes the main emotional support system of Ken.
- This trope plays a rather big part in why the series' Distant Finale (where Yamato and Sora were revealed to be married) was controversial for many fans. Hiroyuki Kakudou states that he always intended for Taichi and Sora to be just friends, and for Sora to fall in love with Yamato as a way of subverting the usual pattern of the main boy and girl ending up with each other. This was also the plan for 02 until Our War Game! complicated this, because writer Mamoru Hosoda was unaware of the intended Official Couple and laid the Sora and Taichi Ship Tease thick in the movie. When Sora began dating Yamato in 02, many people were confused at the sudden change in love interest. Even the voice actors expressed surprise at this. When Digimon Adventure tri. rolled around, this time with a new writing staff, they began implicating once more that Taichi and Sora did have some tension and began marketing their relationship with Yamato as a Love Triangle. Jeff Nimoy, who was in charge of the English dub, shipped Taichi with Sora, and left lines in the original implying Taichi had a longtime crush on Sora intact (ex. "I want some of Sora's love, too," became "I felt something — I think it was your love shining through"), while making the friendly conversations between Yamato and Sora rather awkward and even hostile at times.
- Taichi and Hikari have Incest Subtext that may or may not have been accidental depending on who you ask. Mamoru Hosoda, the director of Hikari's debut episode, did have a very strange interview about the incestuous undertones about their relationship. During a live stream on August 1, 2018, Hiromi Seki, the producer of the show, explicitly mentioned she had warned Hosoda about the episode, saying that the scene where Taichi returns to the Digital World "didn't seem like a parting between siblings, but a different relationship."
- Eyeshield 21:
- Mamori and Sena are supposed to be platonic friends, but apart from various references to Mamori's feelings for him being practically maternal, some moments can be misinterpreted as Ship Tease. Apparently they were supposed to be romantic at one time, but they eventually wrote that out and made them Just Friends.
- Agon's jerkass behavior towards his brother is limited to teasing and noogies while his brother, Unsui, wants nothing more then for Agon to live up to his full potential. In the anime this is flanderized into Agon being almost violently abusive to his brother and Unsui declaring that his sole reason for existence is to serve his brother. So a relationship that was meant to be fairly normal (Agon being a jerkass and Unsui being a bit of a prude), ended up having parallels to an abusive relationship.
- Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) and its movie, Conqueror of Shamballa, is rife with this:
- Probably the most unfortunate case is with Ed and Al, who seem a lot more devoted to and obsessed with each other than merely brotherly affection would suggest. It doesn't help that they spend a lot more time together than in the manga or the Brotherhood anime (where they become separated from each other more often as the story progresses) and Ed doesn't get as much Ship Tease with Winry.
- The Movie arguably had some of this with Roy and Ed as well; Roy has basically withdrawn from the military and his master plan to become Führer, and it's only seeing Ed return to Amestris that lifts him out of his funk. And then they fight alongside each other, completely ignoring Riza and Winry.
- On the girls side, Winry and Sheska spend a lot of vaguely romantic moments together and Winry isn't Ed's love interest like in the manga.
- Another Ho Yay example: Game×Rush, big time. It doesn't help that there are almost no major characters besides the two main guys, who spend the first volume in a platonic Belligerent Sexual Tension states and the second volume having Deep Emotional Confrontations and Meaningful Looks and Intimate (not that intimate!) Physical Contact.
- Gundam: Masashi Ikeda, the director of Mobile Suit Gundam Wing, said in an interview that he didn't intend a romantic relationship between main characters Heero Yuy and Relena Peacecraft, considering the political and symbolic relationship between the two to be much more important than a romantic relationship. Yaoi Fangirls love to hold this interview up as supposed evidence that Heero is gay to support their shipping him with Duo Maxwell. However, they completely ignore a few other things Ikeda said, like the fact that he considered all romance in the series ancillary to the overall plot, that he considers himself horrible at writing male-female relationships, and, most importantly, that just because Heero and Relena didn't become a couple in the series doesn't mean that it'll never happen at all; Ikeda even admitted that he could see easily them getting together once their lives have settled down. This is further aided by the fact that every official sidestory has a strong emphasis on Heero and Relena's romantic attraction to one another, and that most of the cast (including Duo himself) tries to get them to admit their feelings for each other. And then the sequel novel Frozen Teardrop, written by the anime's head writer, follows through on Ikeda's assertion and sees Heero and Relena getting married at the end.
- Kirby: Right Back at Ya!:
- Kirby and Tiff are supposed to have a mother-and-child or sister-and-brother relationship, but many of their scenes together can be taken in a romantic way.
- Tiff is accidentally hinted to have a Precocious Crush on Meta Knight on many occasions.
- Tezuka's Lost World originally had a plant woman and Kenichi as the Official Couple, but Executive Meddling made him have to portray them as Like Brother and Sister. It doesn't work because of how the story invokes the Adam and Eve Plot at the end, and the art and body language still make it obvious they're supposed to be falling in love romantically.
- Jamie Marchi was accused of this when writing the dub script for Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid. Early in the show, the titular Miss Kobayashi responds to her dragon maid's advances with "I'm a woman, though." The dub took this at face value and changed it to "I'm not into women," fearing that the original was homophobic for taking it as a given that being the same gender should shut down attraction in general. The problem was that, as Yuri Fans who protested the change know, "But we're both girls" or similar statements are a Stock Phrase in the Yuri Genre, at least in the Coming-Out Story part of it, and changing it to literally convey Incompatible Orientation because the script writer honestly believed the way it was worded makes Touru and her continued advances towards Kobayashi out to be disrespectful and selfish at best, predatory at worst.
- In-Universe in Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun. Nozaki and Mikoshiba play the Dating Sim Conversations with 12 Girls/Girl Princess, but after getting their happy ending they feel bad for Tomoda, the protagonist's best friend and the game's Mr. Exposition, believing that they took up all his time and kept him from getting his own girlfriend or even enjoying his time in high school. They resolve to write a doujin to give Tomoda his own Happily Ever After, but after going through the game's cast list they conclude that the person he has the best rapport with is...the main character himself. Which results in their Doujin becoming Boys' Love, to Sakura's confusion when she sees the finished product.
- Naruto:
- Naruto and Sasuke share an Accidental Kiss in the third episode, have what can be interpreted as UST pre-Time Skip, and Naruto seems to have a "broken heart" thing going on after Sasuke leaves. Not helping is that Naruto often seems more upset about Sasuke's status as a missing-nin and terrorist than Sakura, his actual future spouse. Their "bromance" gets played up for all it's worth in their final battle, with elaborate declarations of friendship along with emotional confessions and apologies after beating the crap out of each other. It's all very, very easy to interpret as Belligerent Sexual Tension or perhaps a fight and reconciliation between two former lovers.
- Although Sasuke and Itachi are brothers some fans find them to be closer siblings than the norm given their No Sense of Personal Space around each other, their confessions of brotherly love to one another, Itachi's Headbutt of Love to Sasuke, the Konoha School AU omake where Sakura calls Itachi and Sasuke's relationship "naughty", Sasuke's obsession towards Itachi including his insistence that Itachi is perfect and his Sanity Slippage when Itachi dies. He becomes sane again when Itachi is brought back from the dead briefly, and acts almost jealous when Itachi pays more attention to capturing Naruto than fighting him in Part I. Also, Itachi is revealed to have killed the entire Uchiha clan and his lover for Konoha and kept his brother alive.
- Many fans assumed Shikamaru and Ino, and to a lesser extent Chouji and Ino, were supposed to have something going on. It doesn't help that Ino is a headstrong woman just like Shikamaru's mother and Shikamaru's eventual spouse Temari. The Distant Finale makes it clear that their friendship was never meant to be romantic. It is simply custom in their families for their clans to be good friends.
- This was intentionally Invoked and Exploited with Naruto/Sakura, mostly in the anime adaptation where they were implied to have a closer relationship than what was actually shown in the manga. In this 2017 Jump Festa interview, Kishimoto states that Naruto and Sakura were always going to be friends and teammates but nothing more, and he inserted their Ship Tease moments as deliberate Red Herrings specifically to troll their shippers. Conversely, he planned for Naruto/Hinata becoming the main Official Couple since the early stages of the manga.
- Some fans of Boruto see Hanabi's fawning over her nephew Boruto as being too close to flirting.
- There is a moment when Naruto meets his mother for the first time and fawns over her being attractive. It's supposed to be cute familial praising, but his wording is awkward. The English dub fixes this by making Naruto sound more platonic.
- While Neon Genesis Evangelion is used in the quote on the main page, that sort of thing was very much intended to add to the weirdness of the show and the psychological problems of the cast. Misato wants to be a Cool Big Sis or Parental Substitute to Shinji, but she doesn't know how to be that way towards him, so she gives mixed messages.
- Even though One Piece is a strictly No Hugging, No Kissing series as stated by the creator, Eiichiro Oda, himself, fans (especially certain ones) were quick to notice a few... interesting facts.
- Luffy, a Chaste Hero by default, nosebleeds after having seen a naked Nami, but he is not affected at all by witnessing the much more buxom Boa Hancock in that same state of undress (who is also nothing short of head over heels in love with him!). Oda's explanation for this? Something along the lines of "Luffy only acts this way around Usopp, who is a bad influence". Which is not very convincing reasoning.
- Sanji and Nami around the Zou and Totto Land arcs, have a big case of this. Generally Sanji’s lecherous crush on Nami is meant to be unrequited and while Nami is often The Tease to him to get his servitude, she has no actual romantic feelings for him. Yet when Sanji leaves in Zou, Nami is tearfully distraught and is the first to volunteer to go get him. If that wasn’t enough, when meeting Pudding Sanji’s fiancé and hearing her gush about Sanji, a panel is devoted to Nami’s reaction: a nervous sweat drop and ellipsis. Then at the Tea Party battle, Sanji catches a falling Nami in his arms — directly in front of Pudding who reacts with unmistakably jealously. Also keep in mind this is the second time in canon Nami and Sanji have had a Bridal Carry moment at a wedding.
- Zoro and Robin came off as this in the pre-timeskip, before Franky (whom Oda himself states is the Team Dad to Robin’s Team Mom) came along. Like Luffy, Zoro is a Chaste Hero who has no interest in women and initially distrusted Robin but when Enel fries her with lightning, Zoro catches Robin before she hits the ground and furiously chews Enel out for attacking her. Also later on, Kaku calling Robin “doomed woman” is enough to push the swordsman Berserk Button. Like the previous examples, these moments make it hard for fans to believe it’s purely platonic among the Straw Hats.
- Generally Luffy and Zoro or Sanji and Zoro’s bond comes across as more romantic to fans than intended at multiple points throughout the series. Although in Sanji and Zoro’s case this is conflated by Toei Animation gleefully adding Ho Yay scenes between them that weren’t in the manga.
- PandoraHearts: According to the author, Oz and Alice aren't supposed to be a romantic couple, claiming their relationship is "on another level" and therefore they can't fall in love with each other. It's rather difficult to see that earlier in the manga, especially when one of their first interactions has them kissing to form a contract. There are also Oz's utter devotion and (temporary) Yandere tendencies towards Alice, Alice's Tsundere antics and the way she keeps fighting with Oz's servant Gilbert over Oz's attention.
- Pokémon: The Series:
- Word of God by Takeshi Shudō, the head writer for the Original Series, is that Ash and Misty were not supposed to be a couple. Their relationship does often come off as romantic though, be it unrequited on Ash's side or not. They have a Belligerent Sexual Tension type friendship throughout the Original Series and Misty has shown jealousy towards girls' behavior around Ash (especially in the second movie). This was not at all helped by American dub writers leaning into the pairing, with them even producing two songs sung from Misty's perspective that flat-out says she loves Ash, but Cannot Spit It Outnote . The American-produced Pokémon Live! musical also featured a romance between them.
- In later seasons, Zoey and Dawn had a noticeable fumble early on as Zoey constantly appears to be flirting with Dawn (especially in the Japanese version). Dawn's reactions don't help (blushing in response in one instance), and neither does the "Prince and Princess" motif of their Contest clothing. Numerous fans thought that they were intentionally writing in a lesbian pairing, or at least a heavy Hide Your Lesbians (or Pseudo-Romantic Friendship case), as their dynamic is very similar to their predecessors May and Drew (who did have Ship Tease). Later episodes toned it down into Zoey being Dawn's mentor.
- Possibly Ash and both his companions in Best Wishes, Iris and Cilan. The former, mostly from their rivalry and from their Plot-Mandated Friendship Failure episode coming off like two lovers with broken hearts, and another episode involving them going on a day out on the town without Cilan, doing things together that don't involve Pokemon. Cilan and Ash's Pokemon pushing Ash to get back with her makes them all seem like they ship it. Ash and Cilan get this with Cilan's very campy nature and Hero Worship of Ash, which often comes off as obsessive or romantic. The three were actually a popular OT3. To some extent, they still are.
- There's a reason why non-shippers often joke that Pikachu is the only person Ash could ever love. Their friendship is incredibly strong and the focal point of a lot of the series. It doesn't help that more than a few Pokemon canonically like Ash.
- Jessie's and James' relationship definitely counts note . They're very, very good friends (even if they don't always get along), with multiple episodes focusing on their relationship. James' childhood crush and fiancee is an Identical Stranger to Jessie, they fit the Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy trope, and they're also very touchy with each other. Despite this, in the twenty-five years the anime has been running there hasn't been any undeniable Ship Tease for them. The closest scene was Jessie blushing when James was on top of her in "Training Daze" (and that happened early in their friendship, so you can argue she lost any attraction over time). The XY series finally seemed to hint at something a little more concrete in episode 63; which revolved around Jessie deciding to leave Team Rocket to pursue a doctor she has developed a crush on, with the episode playing up James' reaction as letting Jessie go so she can be happy.
- Sailor Moon:
- In the Cloverway English dub of the original anime, the translators tried to hide lesbian couple Haruka and Michiru by making them cousins. Unfortunately, they didn't remove any of the obvious subtext between the two, which was clear enough to be picked up on even by children who barely had a concept of homosexuality to begin with. So all they effectively did was to turn a lesbian couple into a furtively incestuous lesbian couple. However, this may be a bit of Fridge Brilliance, as claiming someone was a "close cousin" was a smokescreen tactic at the time for gay couples around less accepting people.
- In a late act of the original manga, Venus and Mars have a discussion about how they can't seem to hold down normal romantic relationships. After the foe of the day is vanquished, they realize that with their duties to the princess, they will never truly have the freedom to be devoted to someone romantically. Mars makes the comment "We don't need men. We have each other."
- Seraph of the End:
- It's hard to see Mika and Yuu as just childhood friends/family the way they claim to be when you see the extent they're willing to go to for each other and their No Sense of Personal Space and other moments with each other. In fact you'd be more inclined to believe Shinoa's statement of Mika being Yuu's girlfriend or Ferid commenting that Yuu is the "precious princess" that Mika wants to save. Even better, Mika doesn't deny it when Ferid claims that he is into Yuu.
- Krul and Mika's relationship started with a forced kiss from her to make him a vampire, and there are quite some moments of No Sense of Personal Space from both of them, though they are mostly related to drinking blood, which make some fans ship them. However, later chapters/episodes downplay their undertones and depict their relationship more of the motherly kind, and Krul explicitly calls Mika her "son"◊ at one point. From then on, most fans see their relationship as parental instead, which is in all honesty a lot better than shipping them given that Krul is a Really 700 Years Old experienced woman despite her young appearance, not to mention that when she first met Mika, he was twelve.
- One Sket Dance chapter, called "Siblings" focuses on the sibling relationship between Bossun's adoptive sister, Rumi, and his estranged biological brother, Tsubaki, but their relationship looks more like Unresolved Sexual Tension. It begins with Rumi overhearing Tsubaki telling Bossun that he does not consider Rumi as his little sister, leaving her in a bad mood. In an attempt to get them "bond", Bossun has them watch a movie together, after which they proceed to follow a typical dating sequence. It ends with them clearing up their misunderstandings, and they got along much better (to which Bossun remarked that "their relationship improved too quickly").
- Soul Eater: Word of God says in an interview in the "How to make a deathscythe" guidebook that he doesn't plan to take any of the main characters' male-female relationships beyond "normal" trusting relationships. Never mind that the way they're written, many fans are convinced that Maka and Soul (for example) are already well beyond that point. A girl hugging a boy is a little tease-y, but overall innocuous. A girl hugging a boy while both are naked? It's purely platonic, of course. Strictly between friends. Nothing romantic whatsoever. There is also an arc involving the characters getting genderbent into the opposite sex. The basis for their appearances is their subconscious image of the ideal romantic/sexual partner. Soul looks an awful lot like Maka during this period, and is lampshaded as such. Black*Star and Tsubaki also look a lot like each other. Way to stick to it, Okubo.
- Season 1 of Sound! Euphonium pushes the envelope of Pseudo Romantic Friendships. Kumiko and Reina have a high amount of tension while Kumiko all-but-ignores the closest thing she has to a (male) love interest Shuichi. It seems like this might end in something, but season 2 emphasises Reina's unrequited crush on her music teacher while refocusing Kumiko's attention on Asuka. It ends in Kumiko delivering platonic confessions to her older sister Mamiko and her graduating upperclassman Asuka, the latter which occus when Kumiko and Shuichi have a Relationship Upgrade in the original book. Kumiko and Reina's relationship stays ambiguous.
- Tokyo Ghoul: Arima and Sasaki/Kaneki confess they love each other in a familial sense. The amount of detail their relationship gets, and how Arima makes it quite clear that he "owns" Sasaki in addition to Kaneki calling Arima beautiful when they first met makes it hard to see their relationship as just familial.
- In Transformers: Armada, the relationship between Starscream and Alexis was interpreted as an Interspecies Romance by many, and was a major factor in this version of Starscream becoming one of the franchise's premiere Dracos in Leather Pants. For reference, Starscream is a millennia-old, building-sized robot from outer space, and Alexis is a 12-year-old human girl.
- Wandering Son:
- Momoko acts like a Clingy Jealous Girl and Satellite Love Interest to her best friend, Chizuru, but she doesn't get much character development apart from this ambiguously gay behavior. Nothing comes of it, however, and in later chapters it is implied that she likes Oka, of all people.
- Saori and Takatsuki suffer heavily from this. They become friends over the first several dozen chapters but due to a love triangle their friendship bitterly breaks. All this does is create a lot of subtext between them. Later, when their friendship starts mending, Saori tells Takatsuki to grow out his hair because it would look nice on him, they seem to know each other's favorite drinks, and when Saori dresses up the usually masculine Takatsuki for a school event, she begins to fawn in a similar way she does to effeminate males. Later on, Saori begins dating Fumiya but that does nothing to deter their close friendship. Most of their high school appearances involve Takatsuki and Saori being together and they're even mistaken for boyfriend and girlfriend. It doesn't help that Saori and her boyfriend suffered Shipping Bed Death and she goes to a romance-related get together without him, making their relationship seem very dubious. Despite this, nothing ever happens and Takatsuki realizes he loves Nitori despite the two barely interacting anymore.
- When Marnie Was There is pretty infamous for this. It's a film about two girls who become very close. There's a lot of hugging, holding hands, cute dancing, rowboating, and emotion flowing around the two—and it doesn't help that Studio Ghibli is quite well-known for writing romance. Everything points towards a cute, bittersweet Puppy Love scenario among two girls but it isn't even meant to be a Pseudo-Romantic Friendship. Marnie was Dead All Along and is Anna's grandmother. Anna and Marnie's bond fails to seem familial to a large number of viewers.
- In Yu-Gi-Oh! Joey and Mai are just "friends." Right. note Probably because of this exact dynamic and being (relatively) popular characters, they earned the title "the only het pairing anyone likes" despite the large amount of Ho Yay in the series and the fact that Joey will be paired with any other male in the franchise you can think of.
- Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds has Yusei and Akiza, who are meant to be Implied Love Interests, but though Akiza's clearly attracted to Yusei, his status as The Stoic and Akiza being Demoted to Extra means that it's rarely reciprocated and his relationship usually comes across as arms-length. By comparison, he's extremely close to Jack and Kalin, and his interactions with them drip with Ho Yay, not helped by their shared history of running around in tight vests calling themselves "Team Satisfaction." And just when the series started playing up Yusei and Akiza, along came Bruno, who is, if anything, even more openly close with Yusei — Akiza is even visibly jealous of Bruno at one point when she sees them bonding. The whole thing comes across less as the apparently-intended Ship Tease and Heterosexual Life-Partners, and more as Yusei having a group of partners with one girl in the mix.
