@nyoron77 @rogpete Some context for you all: the origins of the BL Genre began way back in the 70's. Female fans, called Fujoshi, would read mainstream shounen/shoujo Manga and make up situations where two male characters had affection for each other. Then they would make derivative fan works about those characters and disseminate them at doujinshi conventions. The BL fan base is a large part of how doujinshi events like Comiket and Comitia got started.
Now that means the BL genre encompasses a spectrum of works. Some are explicit, pornographic works. Some are vanilla romances that don't depict sexual acts beyond kisses/handholding. And some fit the original spirit of those early doujins where the BL is barely implied. There was a funny gag about this in recent anime
The Klutzy Class Monitor and the Girl with a Too-Short Skirt. Their Fujoshi friend was in the manga club, where it was a known secret that they were all drawing BL. At the end they finally reveal the BL manga the club was making and it's just a literal battle shounen with zero romantic content. The Fujoshi tells them 'duh, that's the best kind of BL!'
There's an element to this where the question of "How BL is this?" is up to the reader to answer. Someone could take
Naruto, which is obviously not meant to be BL, but apply their subjective filter to it and imagine the BL relationship between Naruto and Sasuke. It might not be technically correct, but so what, if you have fun? (
Death of the Author is a thing.)
Which brings us back to
12 cm promise, a romance between a short king and an androgynous girl. It's not strictly BL because they're hetero. But it has several easy BL interpretations, such as imagining Ibuki as a boy, or imagining the side ship between Tomo and Tsugumi, or a yuri harem between Ibuki and her fan club. It's there if you want to take it. Or you can ignore it and read it as a straight romance. The author knows what they're doing!
