#bunnytiger

• Morning Cuddles •

There is a very specific way in which the show addresses LGBTQ+ and it's in a way where the older characters don't think about it (apart from Nathan/Fire Emblem who is queer/trans) but the younger ones do. The young women, and the 20+ year old Barnaby, and even to some degree, Ivan, all see Nathan as a woman (the young, Chinese Pao-Lin doesn't get it at first, but learns to over time).

So I have to say with very little doubt that I'm convinced Barnaby is IN LOVE WITH KOTETSU and aware of that fact by season 2, and Kotetsu is either aware of it and not saying it, or isn't aware of it because it's not something he's thought about or considers.

He keeps Kotetsu's gifts and other items from when he was with Kotetsu, thinks about him when he's not there, makes Kotetsu the center of his new, happier life, to the point that even the newcomer Ryan makes a comment about how much Kotetsu influenced him and how when Bunny says "we're not partners anymore" Ryan gives him a very dubious "if you say so" like he knows they're still definitely partners in some other way that isn't on the job.

Given that viz has marked Tiger and Bunny a romance even when the only "romantic" aspects of the show were an teenage girl having an impossible but safe crush on a middle aged man, and Kotetsu missing his dead wife, and one episode in which Keith wants to ask a girl out . There's literally no other aspect besides the central relationship between Kotetsu and Barnaby that can be read as romantic.