Ok, one thing I have to say to all the people out there that say that shonen mangas wouldn’t portray a gay main hero because we still haven’t progressed that much as a society, is that they need to take a step back and think about this. If they haven’t started portraying that stuff by now, then...
We my shiny metal ass, though.
Marvel and DC BOTH have had gay and lesbian superheroes FOR OVER A DECADE ALREADY.
It's not our fault that East Asia insists on being stuck in the Middle Ages, where women were just fetus-making machines and LGBT folk had KOS signs over their heads.
And don't give me this "Oh but if you want to see LGBT characters you have to go read Yaoi/Yuri/Shonen-ai/Shoujo-ai, because Marvel and DC have been stories "for boys" SINCE THEIR FIRST STORIES CAME OUT.
One thing that Japanese publishers should definitely - all puns intended - open their fucking eyes to is the fact that no matter how hypocritically prudish they intend to be, if they want our fucking hard-earned gay and liberal money from the Western market they better shape up and clean up their act, because honestly, I for one am going to BASH THE HELL OUT OF WEEKLY SHONEN JUMP AND ESPECIALLY OF MASASHI FUCKING KISHIMOTO for the 15 YEARS of misleading the public that made Naruto a worldwide success for the rest of my life (and YES it was LGBT and LIBERAL money that paid for that fucking story, no way would Kishimoto crank up the gay the way he did in that story if pink money wasn't the majority of the sales).
You don't take the money from your audience for a decade and a half to suddenly flip the finger on said audience and get away with it.
I have NOTHING against shonen without LGBT characters or with heterosexual pairings, but mangaka who resort to queer-baiting MUST be boycotted by everyone simply because it's a dishonest marketing strategy.