I totally feel similarly, I dutifully put on the yaoi goggles when reading anything and Everyday Host is just so….neutral somehow.
I think it’s partially how Gotou Nimo writes tension, because the story is about the “everyday” nature of hosts and turning a glossy profession into just another daily grind. so when the tension starts building up during a chapter, it will always get deflated, having one character in the dynamic subvert expectations by caring more about taxes or making a couple extra thousand yen than whatever the energy that was building up was. it’s constantly diverting things back toward “normalcy” and away from the more exaggerated interpersonal emotions that give rise to shipping.
I think that’s probably why Ryolou stands out, it’s one of the dynamics that’s left to stand “as it is,” staying on that more intense and fictionalized emotional plane instead of swerving into the quotidian.
on a related note, Mio-chan-kun’s dynamic with Kou-chan is of course, by very literal definition, homoerotic, but I wouldn’t ship them.
